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.. meta::  
   :PG.Id: 35819
   :PG.Title: Lonesome Town
   :PG.Released: 2011-04-10
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: Ethel and James Dorrance
   :DC.Title: Lonesome Town
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1922
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg

=============
LONESOME TOWN
=============

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   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
   almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
   re-use it under the terms of the `Project Gutenberg License`_
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      Title: Lonesome Town
      
      Author: Ethel and James Dorrance
      
      Release Date: April 10, 2011 [EBook #35819]
      
      Language: English
      
      Character set encoding: UTF-8

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   Only at the threat of her raised crop did he drop the grasped bridle rein.

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   | :xl:`LONESOME TOWN`
   |
   | BY
   |
   | ETHEL *and* JAMES DORRANCE
   |
   | :sm:`AUTHORS OF`
   | :smi:`“Glory Rides the Range,” “Get Your Man,” etc.`
   |
   | :sm:`FRONTISPIECE BY`
   | G. W. GAGE
   |
   | NEW YORK
   | THE MACAULAY COMPANY

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   | :small-caps:`Copyright, 1922, by`
   | THE MACAULAY COMPANY
   |
   | PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

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   | To
   | FATHER KNICKERBOCKER
   | 
   | :sm:`WHO HAS WILLED TO HIS HEIRS FOREVER`
   | :sm:`THE GREAT HERITAGE OF CENTRAL PARK`

.. contents:: CONTENTS
   :depth: 1

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   :xl:`LONESOME TOWN`

CHAPTER I—SOME PLACE LIKE HOME
==============================

The trail spilled into a pool of shadows at the
bottom of the gorge. As if doubtful of following
it, the lone rider in chaps and a flannel shirt drew
up for a “breathing.” This was gratefully advantaged
by his mount. Evidently they had come at speed, whatever
the distance, for the reins were lathered and foam
flecked the bit corners.

The man removed his white sombrero and mopped
his brow with a purple bandanna. The fingers with
which he combed back his moist thatch nicely matched
the hair in color—sunburn brown. His head bulged
slightly at the back, but was balanced on a neck and
shoulders splendidly proportioned. His rather plain
face was not covered with stubble or mustache—cheek
bones high, jaw sloping in at an angle, nose straight,
lips thin by contrast with their width.

While he rests in his saddle, every pore of him
exuding healthfully to the midsummer heat of an
unusual spring, meet “Why-Not” Pape, of Hellroaring
Valley, Montana. But don’t expect to understand—not
at first hand grasp—how one christened Peter
Stansbury Pape some thirty-odd years before, had come
by his interrogatory sobriquet. No more could you
have seen in his expression excuse for the pace to which
he had put his horse. His eyes—the best of his
features—looked pleased and told of peace with the
world; gray, with dark lashes and irises, they scanned
the granite wall rising sheer from the trail-side. Sighting
a bull snake that peered down at him from its
crevasse, both of them smiled and one amiably winked.

You must have been something of a psychoanalyst—able
to go below the surface of day-time and sleep-time
dreams—to have realized the unreliability in this
case of surface indications. Only by such super-sight
could you have seen that Why-Not Pape merely appeared
to be peaceful and pleased. As a matter of fact,
his head and his heart were heavy with disappointment.
But then, a subject so deep and personal shouldn’t
be broached at this first formal introduction.

Meet also, if you please, Polkadot Pape, a cross-bred
cow-pony who soon could quip the interest of any
horse-worthy he-man and who, by virtue of his weird
and wicked style of beauty, could command the admiration
of the fair. Had you stood on the trail before
him and made the slightest friendly overture,
he would have bent a foreleg—the right one—and
offered you a hoof-shake without so much as a nudge
from the rider who most times was his master-mind.
Contrary to the suggestion of his given name, his
coat was not dotted; rather, was splotched with three
colors—sorrel and black on a background of white.
The extra splotch took him out of the pinto class
and made him a horse apart. And always he gaited
himself with the distinctive style of the bold, black
spot beneath his left eye. This late afternoon, however,
despite the toss of his head and swish of his long
white tail, his manner, like his man’s, was superficial—the
mere reflex from a habit of keeping up appearances.
Circumstances over which he had no control darkened
around him like a swarm of horse-flies.

Below a shadow pool lured. Beyond, the thin trail
beckoned. Pape glanced upward. A white circle upon
a dying elm—one of a group that struggled for their
lives up over the rocks forming the east side of the
gorge—caught his eye. Above he saw a second white
circle upon a half-withered red birch; still higher, a
third upon a bald cypress. Aware that no elm, birch,
or cypress, alive or half alive or dead, reproduced perfect
white circles on its trunk, he decided that these
had been painted there with a purpose by the hand of
man.

His desire to follow a trail so oddly blazed was indulged
as quickly as born. The caress of one knee
against saddle leather and the lightest lift of rein notified
his tricolored steed. Polkadot sprang from the
beaten path into an upward scramble over the rocks.
The going would have advised the least astute of mountain
goats to watch its step. But Dot was sure-footed
from long practice over the boundary barriers of Hellroaring
Valley.

When the white blaze faded out—when the trees
ceased to be circle-marked—neither man nor mount
would have considered a stop. From appearances, no
one ahorse had left that gorge before by that route;
probably no one would again. On and up they moved,
enticed by the mystery of what might or might not be
lurking at the top.

Across a flat bristling with rhododendrons and so
small as to be accounted scarce more than a ledge,
trotted the cow-pony; insinuated his way through a
fringe of Forsythia brush just beginning to yellow;
dug his shoe-prongs into the earth of a steep, but easier
slope. Pape, looking back, could see through the tree
tips a mountainous range of turreted peaks and flat-topped
buttes, terminating on the north in a massive
green copper dome. The height gained, he was interested
by the discovery of an unroofed blockhouse of
rough stone that literally perched upon a precipitous
granite hump. Was it a relic of Indian war-path days?
Had the flintlocks of pioneers spit defiance through the
oblong loopholes inserted at intervals in its walls? He
wondered.

“You wouldn’t be homesick at all, Dot, if your
imagination had the speed of your hoofs,” he leaned
down to adjure his horse, after a habit formed on many
a lonelier trail. “Can’t you just hear those old-fashioned
pop-guns popping? No? Well, at least you can
hear the dogwood yapping? Look around you, horse-alive!
Don’t this scene remind you of home? Of
course you’ve got to concentrate on things near at hand.
But trust me, that’s the secret of living to-day—concentration.
Look far afield and you’ll lose the illusion,
just as you bark your shins when you mix gaits.”

A shrill trill startled both; centered Pape’s attention
on the brush that edged the mesa to his right. But the
quail he suspected was too expert in the art of camouflage
to betray its presence except by a repetition of his
call, closer and more imperative than the first.

“That bird-benedict must be sized like a sage hen to
toot all that. Maybe he’s a Mormon and obliged to get
noisy to assemble his wives.”

This sanguinary illusion, along with varied others
which had preceded it, was dissipated a moment after
its inception and rather rudely. The trill sounded next
from their immediate rear. Both horse and rider
turned, to see pounding toward them a man uniformed
in blue, between his lips a nickel-bright whistle, in his
right hand a short, but official-looking club. Of the
pair of Westerners who awaited the approach, one at
least remembered that he was two-thousand-odd miles
away from the Hellroaring home range of his over-worked
imagination; appreciated that he was in for a
set-to with a “sparrow cop” of America’s most metropolitan
police.

Gasping from the effort of hoisting his considerable
avoirdupois up the height and sputtering with offended
dignity, the officer stamped to a stand alongside and
glared fearsomely.

“What you mean, leaving the bridle path? Say, I’m
asking you!”

“Horse bolted.” Pape parried with a half-truth—Dot
*had* sort of bolted up the rocks.

The official eye fixed derisively on the angora chaps;
lifted to the blue flannel shirt; stopped at the stiff-brimmed
white Stetson. “One of them film heroes,
eh?”

“Film? Not me. You’ll be asking my pardon,
brother, when you know who——”

The officer interrupted with increasing belligerence:
“Trying to play wild and woolly and never been acrost
the Hudson River, like as not! You take an out-and-outer’s
advice. Put away them Bill Hart clothes and
ride a rocking-chair until you learn to bridle a hoss.
I’ve a good mind to run you in. Why didn’t you mind
my whistle?”

“Honest, Mr. Policeman, I thought you were a quail.
You sounded just like——”

“A quail—*me*? I’ll learn you to kid a member of
the Force. You climb down offen that horse, now, and
come along with me over to the Arsenal.”

“Why Arsenal? Do you think I’m a big gun or a
keg of powder?”

“The Arsenal’s the 33d Precinct Station House.
Fresh bird yourself!”

The officer’s look told Pape even louder than his
words that the time for persiflage had passed, unless
he really wished a police court interval. He had indulged
his humor too far in likening this overgrown,
formidable “sparrow” to the most succulent tidbit of
the fowl species. He brought into play the smooth
smile that had oiled troubled waters of his past.

“No offense meant, I assure you. It happens that
my hoss and I are from exceeding far across the river
you mention—Montana. We’ve found your big town
lonesome as a sheep range. Fact, we only feel comfortable
when we’re sloping around in this park. Parts
of it are so like Hellroaring that——”

“I can pinch you again for cussin’, young feller!”

“You can’t pinch a citizen for merely mentioning the
geographical name of his home valley, which same you
can find on any map. As I was about to say, there are
spots in this stone-fenced ranch that make us think of
God’s country. Just now, when we saw a trail blazed
with white circles, we plumb forgot where we were and
bolted.”

The guardian of law and order continued to look the
part of an indignant butt of banter.

“A blazed trail in Central Park, New York?” he
scoffed. “You’ll show me or you’ll come along to the
station!”

“Why not a blazed trail—why not anything in Central
Park?”

Peter Pape put the question with that grin, half
ironic and wholly serious, with which he had faced
other such posers in his past. To him, the West come
East, this park was the heart of the town—Gotham’s
great, green heart. By its moods it controlled the pulse
of rich and poor alike; showed to all, sans price or
prejudice, that beauty which is the love of nature made
visible; inspired the most uncouth and unlearned with
the responses of the cultured and the erudite.

The human heart was capable of any emotion, from
small to great. Any deed, then, might be done within
the people’s park.

CHAPTER II—A TIP FROM THE TOP
=============================

Peter Pape swung from the saddle and, pulling
the reins over Polkadot’s head, led the law’s
“strong arm” down the heights over the way he had
ascended on horseback. A glance into the hectic visage
beside him offered the assurance that, while not yet
under arrest, he soon would be if he failed to find those
circle-marked trees.

“The town that owns this park, now, should be the
last to blame us for mistaking our locale,” he took
occasion to argue amongst their downward stumbles.
“It’s like a regular frontier wilderness—almost.
There’s nothing much around to break the solitude except
people—only about six or seven million of them
per day. And there’s nothing to break the silence except——Listen
to that never-ending drone! Don’t it sound
for all the world like the wind playing through
pines?”

“Sounds more like motors to me—Fords *and* automobiles
a-playing over macadam,” grumbled the guard.

But Why-Not Pape was not easily to be diverted
from his dream. “And yon green dome to the north
of the range—” he lifted eyes and a hand—“just
couldn’t look more like the copper stain on a butte
within binocular range of my Hellroaring ranch
house.”

“Lay off of that irreverence. You can’t cuss at the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine—not in my presence,
you can’t!”

The topmost of the trail-blazing trees Pape offered
as Exhibit “A” for the defense. The line of them,
when sighted from below, looked to be leading, he
declared.

An off-duty grin humanized the official countenance.
“White paint spots tell the tree gang to saw down
dying trunks and haul the logs to the saw-mill over in
North Meadow. If you was to follow all of them as
bridle signs you’d get yourself and that gingham nag
of yourn sentenced for life. This once I’m going to
try to believe you’re as green as you look. C’mon down
to the path.”

Their wait at the equestrian trail was not long. A
traffic policeman, mounted on a well-groomed bay,
loped toward them, evidently on his way back to stables
from a tour of duty that, from his magnificent appearance,
easily might have included several flirtations and
at least one runaway rescue. At a signal from his
fellow afoot, he drew rein.

“You’ll be doing me a favor, Medonis Moore, if
you’ll shoo this bird outen the park,” wheezed he of
the whistle. “I got a date ‘sevening and Night Court’s
not me rondy-voo.”

“What’s he gone and done, O’Shay?”

“Called me a quail for one thing, which shows you
at the start that he’s kind of off. I’m right many queer
things, like my lady friend tells me, but never that—not
a quail.”

“Nor a quailer from duty, eh Pudge?”

Ignoring the jibe, the weighty one went into detail.
“He rode his horse up to the top of the bluff. Says
he’s from somewheres far West. Framed up a foolish
excuse about believing in signs like religion. Says
them white spots on the doomed trees was no lost language
to him, but a message from the dead that led
him wrong. Get me—or him? Howsomever, I’m
willing to leave him go this time on account his being
good-natured.”

“Account of that date, don’t you mean?”

The sparrow chaser drew up with dignity. “Which
or whether, will you do me the favor, Medonis, of
shooing him out?”

The colloquy had advanced of its own spirit, without
interruption or plea from Why-Not Pape. Polkadot
had improved the interim by nose-rubbing an acquaintance
with the “’Donis” mount. Here at last
was one of his kind of whom he could approve. Even
though the police horse showed to be too much groomed—was
overly “dressy,” as Why-Not often said of
human passers-by—his tail was not docked and he wore
a saddle very near “regular,” certainly not one of those
pads of leather on which most of the park riders posted
up and down like monkeys on so many sticks.

“Come along, bo,” decided the magnificent director
of traffic. “I’m weak, but maybe I can keep you on
the crooked and narrow far as the must-you-go gate.”

With a friendly farewell to the “sparrow” who had
a “date,” Pape rode off with his new, enforced escort,
Polkadot and the officer’s bay fell into step.

“Paint that horse yourself?” inquired “’Donis”
Moore, with a grin.

This brought a laugh from Pape. “No, my friend;
he was foaled as is, so far as his colors go. He’s just
mixed a bit like me, and feels kind of lonesome in your
cold New York.”

“New York cold?”

“You see, Dot and I came expecting the kind of
time-of-our-lives we’d heard about. And we haven’t
had it—not yet.”

The handsome officer, who presumedly had been
nicknamed after Adonis by the Force, nodded understandingly.
“Ain’t the trouble with your expectations,
now? Would you be likely to hear of those times-of-lives,
if they was the regular thing?”

“But we’re not looking for the regular thing. And
why not expect? Don’t you get what you go after?
You, for instance—I should think you’d expect the
limit that kind Fate could give. If I looked like
you——”

There was a sincerity of admiration in Pape’s lanky
shrug and lapsing sigh such as “’Donis” Moore evidently
wasn’t fortified to resist. He turned his dark
eyes and fine-cut profile to a more detailed study of his
by-proxy charge.

Pape pursued the advantage. “Sound looking critter
you’re forking, officer. What you call him?”

“Hylan is his name—Traffic ‘B.’”

“That’s a new horse alias to me. Dot here does a
polka when persuaded right. If Highland, now, does
a fling, we might join them in a ‘brother’ act and put
them on the stage.”

“You’ll be trespassing the dignity of our sacred
mayor, as well as the people’s park, if you ain’t careful,”
warned ’Donis Moore. “H-y-l-a-n is what
I said was his name and he don’t own up to flings like
you mean any more than our chief executive.”

The Westerner looked interested. “Named your
nag after your boss, eh? Not an untactful idea at all.
Hope hoss Hylan explains to Polkadot what fine company
he’s in. First real acquaintance my poor brute’s
met up with since I rode him out of the home corral
and into a baggage car which I couldn’t hocus-pocus
him into thinking was the latest in stables. I reckon
it was too portable. He’ll be glad to know that he is
starting at the top in equine circles—with His Honor
the Mayor’s namesake.”

“You talk kind of discouraged, bo. Just what’s
gone wrong?”

“Nothing’s gone wrong. You see, nothing’s
started.”

“Then why don’t you start something?”

Pape’s attention looked much more arrested than his
person. “Start something?”

“Sure. Something, say, along the partic’aler line of
your ambitions.”

“The ambitions that have kept me on the move over
the four States of my past range wouldn’t lead me into
any nice place in this burg of rules and regulations, I
fear. Even out in God’s country they had to make
allowance for a lot I did. Here, seems like there’s an
Indian sign hung on me. Not a soul knows or cares
who or what I am.”

Evidently interested, the police rider checked his
mount’s manger-bound trot to a walk, for they were
nearing their division of ways.

“Would you be satisfied, now, with folks knowing
who and what you really are?” he asked impressively,
throwing his weight on the right stirrup, as he leaned
toward his charge. “Who and what do you want
to be?”

“Who doesn’t matter so much. *What* I want to be
is gay—to get as much out of playing as I do out of
working when I’m home.”

’Donis Moore looked him over critically. “You
want to be a gay bird and you ride around looking like
the last shad in the Hudson!” Obviously pleased with
his rôle of mentor, Donis’ dark, handsome face lighted
with his argument. “You see, bo, the people are right
busy in this burg. They can’t stop to chum with strangers.
You got to get in step with them—insist on
chumming with them as you swing along. First you
got to look like what you want to be. Appertainin’ to
which, I’d get me some civilized togs if I was you—that
is, if you happen to have any spare change in them
corduroys.”

“Change?” enquired Pape. “I let them keep the
change. I could buy quite a chunk of this town—a
whole cold shoulder of it—without straining my
finances. I mean that and at present prices. What I
haven’t got is friends—not one among all these millions
upon millions of effete folks. I’m wondering if
the run of the cards wouldn’t have been some different
B. P.”

“B. P.? How come? I ain’t no Greek studjent any
more than I’m a descendant of Anna Eva Fay.”

“Before Prohibition,” Why-Not accommodated.
“But then, I wouldn’t want the sort of friends whose
innards I had to win any more than I’d want those I
could win with my outards. Clothes don’t make the
man—or so the poets say.”

“That dope’s blank verse, young fellow. Leastwise,
the opposite holds in N’Yawk. The wrong clothes unmake
him.” The cop dandy straightened, with an illustrative,
downward glance over his own brass-buttoned
magnificence. “I’m giving it to you right, bo.
Unless you’re a celeb, and have earned a sort of special
license to dress contrary to form, you’d best flatter the
people you wanta trot with by harnessing out as near
like ’em as possible. You been wearing that broad-brim
on Broadway? You *have*, eh? Don’t you see
that they just naturally take you for a steerer—likely
think you’re wanting to sell ’em stock in some gilt
mine? Not meaning to hurt your feelings, I’ll say
that the piebald you’re riding is the only O. K. thing
about you. Happens to be a fawncy of our *au fait* cits.
to ride broncs this spring. Seeing you’re so careless
about your cash, you’d best throw some into the talons
of a tailor and a hatter and a near-silk-shirt grafter.
Then, after you’ve got yourself looking something like
the gay guy you say you wanta be, begin to act like
him. *Do* something, if you get me, to make ’em notice
you.”

They parted at the “Remember the Maine” monument,
the official mentor’s argument duly paid for in
thanks, and a “good-luck” hope exchanged.

What could he do to make New York notice him?

Peter Pape pondered the question as Polkadot
dodged through Columbus Circle’s whirligig of traffic—a
feat which took all the skill acquired in cutting out
steers from range round-ups. The disinterested source
of the invited advice recommended its substance. Before
he had walked his mount a block down *The* Way
he had decided to follow it. Its first half—the acquirement
of the outer habiliments of sophistication—easily
could be acted upon through the free coinage of gold.
The second half——

*How* make the big town wish to be friends with
him?

To himself he admitted the reason back of his confidence
to the friendly Medonis of the Mounted. The
very seriousness of his score-squaring mission to the
“cold” burg, made him ambitious to be taken for that
“gay guy” who must be haberdashed into his part—a
Western gold-fish come East to flap his fins in the Big
Puddle. He mustn’t forget that he now was a wealthy
man, with no obligations except one voluntary vow and
that to himself; that he still was young enough to feel
as gay as any costume could make him look; that so
far in life he had proved strong enough to do whatever
he had decided to do.

So what—*what*?

The dusk of even this daylight-saving hour was
thickening. Pape urged his mount into the rack of
Times Cañon. There, toward the convergence of each
street, clumps of vehicles spun forward, only to stop
and lose all they had gained at the command of traffic
signals. Variously bound surface cars clattered
through; clanged with self-importance; puffed with
passengers. Pedestrians darted this way, often, to
turn and dart back that, in what seemed a limb-regardless
passion to get home in the fewest possible seconds.
Like flour upon the other ingredients in some great
mixing bowl, Evening was sifted over all, then stirred
into a conglomerate, working mass—dough to be
baked by dinner time.

The sensation rather than sight of an overhead flash
caused the splotched horse to throw back his head with
a snort and the rider to hang his gaze on high. Unexpectedly,
as happen most miracles, a blaze lit the
ungeometrical square and searched the lowering
clouds—millions of watts bottled in bulbs—a fan-fare
of nitrogen dyed red, yellow, blue, green and diamond-white—incalculable
volts of power wired into legible
array.

The gray eyes of the Westerner upheld, fascinated,
to this sight of Broadway’s electric display, to him the
marvel of the marvels of to-day. Always was his
pulse stirred by it and his imagination set apace. As,
when a child, he had pored over the lurid illustrations
of his fairy-book, so now nightly he pored over this
real-life picture. For him it lit a bridle path into
byways of the unknown—into the highway of the impossible.

A moment before a problem had darkened his brow.
Now the darkness was displaced by light. Over the
suggested answer to the unanswerable he exulted.
What was difficulty of any sort except illusion? His
Fatness the Quail—that is to say, the park sparrow
cop—to-day had accused him of believing too devoutly
in signs. Yet *what* were signs for if not to point the
way?

His chuckles evoked the curiosity of Polkadot. Back
toward him waggled one white-tipped, enquiring ear.
Willingly, as at all such requests of his quadruped pal,
he leaned to oblige.

“Why not?” He laughed aloud. “I ask you that,
old hoss—*why not*?”

CHAPTER III—THE SKY SIGN
========================

Peter Pape sighed a chestful of relief. They
pulled on like ordinary pants. But of course that
was what they were expected to do. Weren’t they
direct from the work room of the most expensive
tailor he could locate in Gotham? Even so, he had
inserted his silk-socked toes into their twin tunnels
with some foreboding. They were different, these
long, straight leg-sheaths of his first full-dress suit.

There. The secret is out. Our East-exiled Westerner
had followed advice. Praying that news of his
lapse never would wing back to Hellroaring, he had
submitted himself to measurements for a claw-hammer,
known chiefly by rumor on the range as a
“swallow-tail.” The result had been delivered late that
afternoon, one week since the signs of Broadway had
directed him aright. The suit had seemed in full possession
of the dressing room of his hotel suite when
he had returned from his usual park-path sprint on
Polkadot, an event to-day distinguished by the whipcord
riding breeches of approved balloon cut which
had displaced his goat-skin chaps. Somehow it helped
to fill an apartment which hitherto had felt rather
empty; with its air of sophistication suggested the
next move in the rôle for which it was the costume
*de luxe*.

The trousers conquered in combat, Pape essayed to
don the stiff-bosomed shirt which, according to the
diagram pinned on the wall picturing a conventional
gentleman ready for an evening out, must encase his
chest. His chief conclusion, after several preparatory
moments, was that the hiring of a valet was not adequate
cause for a lynching with the first handy rope.
No. There were arguments pro valet which should
stay the hand of any one who ever had essayed to enter
the costume *de luxe* of said conventional gentleman.
What those patent plungers of his real pearl studs
couldn’t and didn’t do! With the contrariness of as
many mavericks, they preferred to puncture new holes
in the immaculate linen, rather than enter the eyelets
of the shirt-maker’s provision.

But we won’t go into the matter. Other writers
have done it so often and so soulfully. The one best
thing that may be remarked about such trials of the
spirit is that they have an end as well as a beginning.
At last and without totally wrecking the work of the
launderer, Why-Not Pape’s famed will to win won.
The shirt was harnessed; hooked-up; coupled.

Now came the test of tests for his patience and persistence—for
his tongue and other such equipment of
the genus human for the exercise of self-control. This
was not trial by fire, although the flames of suppression
singed him, but by choking. Again he thought
tolerantly of valets; might have asked even the loan
of m’lady’s maid had he been acquainted personally
with any of his fair neighbors.

“They’d ought to sell block and tackle with every
box of ’em,” he assured the ripe-tomato-colored cartoon
of himself published in the dresser mirror.

Smoothing out certain of his facial distortions, lest
they become muscularly rooted, to the ruin of his none
too comely visage, he retrieved a wandering son-of-a-button
from beneath the radiator and returned to the
fray with a fresh strip of four-ply. When thrice he
had threatened out loud to tie on a bandanna and let
it go at that, by some slip or trick of his fingers he
accomplished the impossible. His neck protruded
proudly from his first stiff collar since the Sunday
dress-ups of Lord Fauntleroy days—before the mother
and father of faint but fond memory had gone, literally
and figuratively “West,” leaving their orphan to
work the world “on his own.”

Around the collar the chart entitled, “Proper Dress
for Gents at All Hours,” dictated that he tie a narrow,
white silk tie. Anticipating difficulties here, he
had ordered a dozen. And he needed most of them;
tried out one knot after another of his extensive repertoire;
at last, by throwing a modified diamond hitch,
accomplished an effect which gratified him, although
probably no dress-tie had been treated quite that way
before.

His chortle of relief that he was at ordeal’s end
proved to be premature. Peering coldly and pointedly
at him from across the room, their twin rows of pop-eyes
perpendicularly placed, stood his patent leathers.
Clear through his arches he already had felt their maliciousness
and, as the worst of his trials, had left them
to the last. All too late he recalled the fact that brand
new buttoned shoes only meet across insteps and ankles
by suasion of a hook, even as range boots yield most
readily to jacks. Prolific as had been the growth of his
toilet articles since a week ago, that small instrument
of torture was not yet a fruit thereof. Further delay
ensued before response to the order which he telephoned
the desk for “one shoe-hooker—quick.”

Peter Stansbury Pape had emerged from the West
of his upgrowing and self-making with two projects
in view—one grave, one much less so. The grave,
when its time came, would involve a set-to in the street
called Wall with a certain earnest little group of
shearers who, seeming to take him for a woolly lamb,
*almost* had lifted his fleece. Animated by a habit of
keeping his accounts in life square, steady in his stand
as the mountain peaks that surrounded his home ranch,
his courage fortified against fear because he recognized
it at first sight and refused to yield to it, he was biding
the right time to betake himself “down-town” for the
round-up reckoning. But of all that, more anon.

His “less so” was to learn life as it is lived along
Gay Way, although he had made no promise to himself
to become a part thereof. A sincere wish to explore
the greatest Main Street on any map, whose denizens
so far had shown themselves elusive as outlaw
broncs to a set-down puncher, had moved him to acceptance
of the suggestion of ’Donis Moore.

While awaiting the pleasure—or the pain—of the
shoe-hook, he considered the indifference of his reception
at the Astor, a hotel selected for its location “in
the heart of things.” In the heart of things—in the
thick of the fight—in the teeth of the wind—right there
was where Pape liked best to be. But the room-clerk
had seemed unimpressed by his demand for the most
luxurious one-man apartment on their floor plan. The
cashier had eyed coldly the “herd” of New York drafts
which he had offered for “corralling” in the treasury
of the house. Clerks, elevator boys, even the dry-bar
tenders had parried his questions and comments with
that indifferent civility which had made this world,
said to be the Real, seem false as compared with his
hale and hearty Out-West.

The reply to his first inquiry, anent hotel stable accommodations
for the intimate equine friend who, as
a matter of course, had accompanied him on an American
Express Company ticket, had been more of a shock
to him than the height of Mt. Woolworth, first seen
while ferrying the Hudson. Mr. Astor’s palace, he
was told, had a garage of one-hundred-car capacity, but
no stable at all, not even stall space for one painted
pony. There were more rooms in the “one-man” suite
than he knew how to utilize in his rather deficient home
life, but the idea of attempting to smuggle Polkadot to
the seventh landing, as suggested by the boast of a
more modern hostelry that it elevated automobiles to
any floor, was abandoned as likely to get them both
put out. He had tramped many side-street trails before
he had found, near the river, the stable of a contractor
who still favored horses. Only this day had
he learned of a riding academy near the southern fringe
of Central Park where the beast might be boarded in
style better suited to his importance in one estimation
at least.

It is a pleasure to state that money really didn’t
matter with Pape; in any calculable probability, never
would. That constitutional demand of his—why not,
why not?—had drilled into certain subterranean lakes
beneath the range on which his unsuspecting cattle had
grazed for years; had drilled until fonts of oleose gold
had up-flowed. For months past his oil royalties literally
had swamped the county-seat bank. He had been
forced to divert the tide to Chicago and retain an attorney
to figure his income tax. Upon him—in the
*now*, instead of the hazy, hoped-for future—was the
vacation time toward which he had toiled physically
through the days of the past and through the nights
had self-trained his mind with equal vigor.

The time had come. But the place—well, so far,
America’s Bagdad had offered nothing approaching
his expectations. Perhaps the fault had been in his
surface unfitness for the censorious gaze of the Bagdadians.
Perhaps clothes had unmade his outer man
to folks too hurried to learn his inner. However,
thanks to the official Sage of Traffic Squad “B,” he
now had remedied superficial defects.

In truth, any one fairly disposed who saw his descent
of the Astor’s front steps, would have conceded
that. Despite the vicissitudes of preparation, the result
was good. A tall, strong-built, free-swinging
young man came to a halt at curb’s edge, a young man
immaculately arrayed, from silky top of hat to tips of
glistening boots. His attention, however, was not
upon the impression which he might or might not be
making. Having done his best by himself, he was not
interested in casual applause. There was a strained
eagerness in his eyes as, leaning outward, he peered
up The Way.

The night was cloudy, so that the overhead darkness
of eight-thirty was not discounted by any far-off
moon or wan-winking stars. The sky looked like a
black velvet counter for the display of man-made jewelry—Edison
diamonds in vast array—those great, vulgar
“cluster pieces” of Stage Street.

And high above all others—largest, most brilliant,
most vulgar, perhaps—was a trinket transformed
from some few bubbles of oil, the latest acquisition of
one Westerner.

There it was—*there it was*! Pape chortled aloud
from the thrill of first sight of it. Cryptic and steady
it blazed, overtopping a quick-change series of electric
messages regarding the merits of divers brands of
underwear, chewing gum, pneumatic tires, corsets,
automobiles, hosiery, movies and such. His heart
swelled from pride, his pulse quickened and his mind
lit as he viewed it. The while, his lips moved to the
words emblazoned within its frame of lurid, vari-colored
roses.

.. class:: center

   | WELCOME
   | TO OUR CITY
   | WHY-NOT PAPE

While yet he stood at the curb a limousine, doubtless
theater-bound, was halted in the traffic crush before
him. He saw a bobbed, dark head, bound by a
pearl filet with an emerald drop, protrude; saw a pointing,
bejeweled finger; heard clearly the drawled comment:

“More likely, some new food for the fat, dar-rling.
Remind me to tell mother. She gained whole ounces
on that last chaff she choked down. The poor dear is
losing her pep—starving worse than any Chinese baby
that ever——”

The heavy car was crawling on toward its next stop.
But Pape was spared any regrets in nearer diversion
as he drifted along with the tide of pavement passers.
In slowing to keep off the heels of a couple ahead, he
eaves-dropped a woman’s demand of her escort:

“Now what, do you imagine, *is* Why-Not Pape? I
do detest mysteries, although I suppose they’re the
only way to get the public nowadays. Personally, I
haven’t any use for women that won’t tell their ages,
have you? I never read serial stories and simply can’t
stand those suppressed men that some girls rave about.
The reason you make a hit with me, Jimmie, is because
you’re so frank, so natural, so sort of puppy-like.
Oh, don’t bother getting sore! You know by this
time that I——”

*What* was Why-Not Pape, indeed? Soon as the
analytical lady strayed from the vital subject to that
of her ingenuous companion, the author of the latest
Broadway riddle passed on, a breaker on the edge of
the down-sweeping tide of theater-goers, actor folk
out of work and inevitable window shoppers. Of the
several he overheard querying the new sign, none
guessed—as none do in most real-life mysteries—that
they were jostling elbows with the quite palpable solution.
His upward stare attracted a direct remark from
a pavement companion.

“You’ll read the answer in the newspapers soon.
Nobody nor nothing is going to burn real money for
long in that make-you-guess display.”

Pape was startled. Would the press take him up—possibly
in time pique the public interest to such extent
that he might need to blaze forth, within his rose-border,
answers to the questions he had raised? If
so, the coveted recognition might be considered won.

But he did not need to tell New York what or who
he was, to congratulate himself. None would have
excuse hereafter to regard lightly an introduction to
Why-Not Pape. Even though inadvertently, already
the city was welcoming him.

His one regret anent the bought-and-paid-for greeting
was that it did not include the worthy Polkadot.
He had considered a design of a light-pricked figure
of himself mounted, the horse done in natural colors,
only abandoning it when informed that black was not
effective in Edison bulbs. At that, the bronc shied at
a glare and down in his horse heart would not have
liked such presentment had he seen and understood.

And the simpler conceit seemed to be attracting a
sufficiency of attention. As well it might—well it
might! So Peter Pape assured himself, beaming back
and up at it. The Mayor’s Committee for the Entertainment
of Distinguished Strangers couldn’t have
done better by him. And any prima donna must have
been pleased with that floral frame.

CHAPTER IV—DOUBLE FOCUS
=======================

A man of action does not loiter all evening returning
his own howdy-doo to himself—not in
his first evening outfit. At Forty-second Street Pape
cast a last look at the sign in which he felt by now
devout belief, doubtless one of the most costly and
colorful ever flaunted before New York. Certainly it
was self-advertisement raised to the *N*\ th power and
worthy any one’s consideration. Yet the obligation to
escort his new suit somewhere was on him.

Where? To one of the cinematograph houses inviting
from every compass point? Unthinkable. To
the dance hall up the street, decorated in artificial
cherry blossoms, where partners to suit the individual
taste might be rented by the hour? Not in these
clothes of class. To one of the “girl” shows? He had
seen sufficient of them to realize more interest in sisters
in the prevailing demi-habille of the street. To some
romantic play? The heroes of such, sure to be admirable
in looks and conduct, always got him in a discouraged
state of mind about himself.

In his quandary Pape had approached a dignified,
sizable building of yellow brick and now stopped before
a plain-framed poster which named the pile as
the Metropolitan Opera House, within which Geraldine
Farrar was singing *Zaza* that night—that moment
probably. Grand opera! He was impressed by
the conviction that he and his new suit had been led
blindly by Fate, who never before in his experience had
shown more horse, or common, sense.

He made for the box office. The hour was late, or
so he was informed by the man at the window. The
curtains had been drawn aside many minutes before;
were about to close again. The fashionable subscribers
were seated. Wasn’t he able to see that even the S.
R. O. sign was up outside?

Standing room was not what Pape wanted—not
with those patent pincers on his feet. Matter of fact,
he wouldn’t have considered a stand-up view of anything.
Before paying for the best orchestra seat they
had—didn’t matter about the price—he’d like to know
who was Zaza, just as folks outside were asking what
was Why-Not.

The look of the man at the window accused him of
being mildly insane. “*Zaza’s Zaza*” he observed, as
he turned to his accounts.

“Naturally,” Pape replied. “But why not’s not always
why. What I want to ask you is——”

“Leslie Carter play of same name set to music—not
jazz—by French composer. House is packed to the
roof to-night, as I’ve been trying to tell you from the
start.”

Before Pape could offer other insistence he felt himself
displaced before the window by a personage disguised
in ornate livery.

“Mrs. Blackstone can’t attend. Sudden death,” said
the personage. “She’d be obliged if you could sell
these tickets and credit her account.”

“It is not Mrs. Blackstone herself who died?” was
the official’s cold query.

“Indeed, no. She knows it’s late, sir, but she’d be
obliged if you——”

“I’ll oblige her if the money changer won’t,” Pape
interrupted. “I’ll take a ticket.”

The autocrat of the box office, however, shook his
head. “Mrs. B’s box is grand tier. Can’t be split.
Six chairs.”

From what so far had seemed a mere human huddle
within one of the entrance doors, an eager figure
hurried, just behind an eager voice.

“We are five person. How much dollar for five
seats of thees box?”

At the little, oldish foreigner in large, newish ready-mades,
Fate’s unhandyman looked; then on past the
emotionful face to following emotionful faces. The
human huddle had disintegrated from a mass of despair
into animated units which now moved toward the
box office as toward a magnet. Sounds of as many
magpies filled the dignified silence—two French women
and three men venting recitatives of hope that yet they
might hear the Leoncavallo masterpiece. But them,
too, the ticket man discouraged, doubtless the more
emphatically because of their attire, which was poor,
if proud.

“Too much for your party, I’m sure. One-hundred-fifty.”

“But not for *my* party,” Pape interposed. “I’ll take
the whole half dozen.”

The sole so-far thing to impress the assistant treasurer
was the roll from which the emergency cash customer
began to strip off bank notes. The recitative of
hope soughed into a chorus of disappointment as the
moneyed young man clutched his half dozen tickets and
started for the inner door. Scarcely could he restrain
himself from out-loud laughter as he halted and turned
to command:

“Get a hurry on, party! At one-and-fifty there’d
ought to be better *parlez vous* places inside.”

Perhaps his inclusive gesture was more comprehensive
to them than his words; at any rate, his grin was
eloquent.

To his sublet box by way of the grand staircase Peter
Stanbury Pape, grand opera patron, strode at the
usher’s heels; into it, himself ushered his agitated, magpie
covey of true music-lovers. Well to one side he
slumped into the chair assigned to him by common
consent and found an inconspicuous rest for the more
tortured of his feet.

Leaning forward, he undertook to get his bearings;
concentrated on the dim and distant stage set, where
a lady chiefly dressed in an anklet and feathered hat—presumedly
Zaza of the title role from the way she
was conducting herself—seemed to be under great
stress of emotion set to song. Before he could focus
his glasses—one of the pairs for all hands round which
he had been persuaded to rent at the foot of the stair-case—the
orchestra took control and the red velvet
curtains came together between the intimate affairs of
the great French actress and those of the many—of
the great American audience.

After curtain calls had been duly accorded and recognized
and there no longer existed any reason for the
half-light cloak of a doubtful song-story, the vast auditorium
was set ablaze. And with the illumination uprose
a buzz of sound like nothing that Pape ever had
heard—more like the swarming of all the bees in Montana
within an acre of area than anything he could
imagine.

Full attention he gave to the *entre-acte* of this, his
first adventure in Orphean halls. Regretting the trusty
binoculars idling on his hotel bureau, he screwed into
focus the rented glasses; swept the waving head-tops
of the orchestra field below; lifted to the horse-shoe
of the subscribers and then to the grand tier boxes
with their content of women whom he assumed to be
of society, amazingly made up, daringly gowned, lavishly
bedecked with jewels, ostrich feathers and aigrettes.
A sprinkling of men, black-togged on the order
of himself, made them the more wondrous dazzling.
A moving, background pageant of visitors paid
them court.

After a polite, if rather futile, attempt to mix his
English, as spoken for utility in Montana, with the
highly punctuated, mostly superfluous French of his
overly grateful “party,” Pape left them to their own
devices. These seemed largely to take the form of
dislocating their necks in an effort to recognize possible
acquaintances in the sea of faces which the gallery
was spilling down from the roof. Remembering
his advice to Polkadot over the value of concentration
on the near-by, he centered his attention upon those
labeled in his mind as the “hundred-and-fifty simoleon”
class. His thoughts moved along briskly with
his inspection.

Women, women, women. Who would have
imagined in that he-man life he had lived on ranches
West that the fair were so large a complement of
humanity or that so many of them indeed were fair?
Had he lost or gained by not realizing their importance?
Suppose his ambition had been to furbelow
one such as these, could he have given himself to the
lure of making good on his own—faithfully have
followed Fate’s finger to rainbow’s end?

However that might be, now that he was freed from
slavery to the jealous jade by the finding of that automatically
refilling pot of liquid gold, might he not
think of the gentler companionship which he had
lacked? The chief thing wrong with to-night, for instance,
was the selection by chance of the women in
his box. They did not speak his language—never
could. Had there been a vacant chair for him to offer
some self-selected lady, which one from the dazzling
display before him would she be?

Perhaps the most ridiculous rule of civilized society—so
he mused—was that limiting self-selectiveness.
In the acquirement of everything else in life—stock,
land, clothes, food—a person went thoroughly
through the supply before choosing. Only in the matter
of friends must he depend upon accident or the
caprice of other friends. How much more satisfactory
and straightforward it would be to search among the
faces of strangers for one with personal appeal, then
to go to its owner and say: “You look like my idea of
a friend. How do I look to you?”

And, if advisable in casual cases, such procedure
should help especially in a man’s search for his mate.
Take himself, now, and the emptiness of his life. His
bankers had told him he could afford whatever he
wanted. Suppose he wanted a woman, what sort of
woman should he want?

Beauty? Must she be beautiful? From the quickening
of his pulse as he bent to peer into fair face
after fair face with the added interest of this idea, he
realized that he enjoyed and feared beauty at least as
greatly as the most of men.

Class? In a flashed thought of his mother, a Stansbury
of *the* Stansburys of Virginia, he decided on
that. Class she must have.

And kind she must be—tested kind to the core. Tall,
healthy, strong, of course. Graceful if possible.
Gracious, but not too much so. Frank and at the same
time reserved. Educated up to full appreciation of,
but not superiority to himself. Half boy and at least
one-and-a-half girl.

That would be plenty to start on, even for the most
deliberate and calculating of choosers, which he felt
himself dispositionally as well as financially fitted to
be. From what he knew of the difficult sex in the
rough, he should need time and study to decide accurately
just how real were appearances in a finished
feminine, trained from infancy, so he had heard, to
cover all inner and outer deficiencies. Plenty of time
and a steady nerve—that was all he should need to learn
her nature, as he had learned the tempers of the most
refractory of horses. By the time he was satisfied as
to these mentally outlined points, others doubtless
would have suggested themselves.

Pape was pleased with his theories, the first dressed-up
ones he had evolved on the subject. If all men
would go into this vital matter of self-selectiveness,
there would be fewer prosperous lawyers, he congratulated
himself. Better have a care before marriage than
a flock of them—of another sort—after. Firstly, a
choice made from personal preference, then the most
direct course toward acquaintanceship, a deliberate inspection,
a steady eye, a cool nerve——

Suddenly Pape stiffened, body and mind. His gaze
fixed on a face within a box on his own level, some
ten or so away, just where they began to curve toward
the stage. The face was young—childlike in animation
and outline. Its cheeks were oval and flushed, its
lips red-limned and laughing, its eyes a flashing black.
And black was the mass of curls that haloed it—cut
short—*bobbed*.

A brilliant enough, impish enough, barbaric enough
little head it was to catch and hold the attention of any
strange young man. But that which particularly interested
Pape was the filet that bound it—a filet of
pearls with an emerald drop.

She wasn’t noticing him—she who had thought of
him but once and then only as some new sort of anti-fat
foodstuff. But another of her party, through
lorgnetted opera lenses, was. Pape, focusing his rented
pair for close range, returned this other person’s regard.
The moment seemed long and different from
other moments during which, round glass eye into
round glass eye, they two looked.

At its end Pape rose and left his hundred-and-fifty-simoleon
box. His exit was retarded, but not once
actually halted, by the conversational overtures—somewhat
less comprehensible than before—of his unknown
guests. He moved as if under outside control, hypnotic,
magnetic, dynamic.

True, he did have a doubtful thought or two on his
progress through the foyer. She might not get his
advanced idea of to-night instantaneously and might
be too conventional to act on it, when explained. She
might not give him the benefit of every doubt, which
he was more than ready to give her, at first glance.
There might be an embarrassing moment—particularly
so for him. She might be married and taking her husband
seriously. Speaking literally, he just *might* be
thrown out.

But all such thought he counter-argued. What was
the use of conviction without courage? Husbands
were likely to be met in a one-woman world; were inconvenient,
but not necessarily to be feared. And if
she doubted him—— But she had the best eyes into
which he ever had looked, with field glasses or without.
Why shouldn’t she see all that he was at first glance?
As for possible embarrassment, wasn’t he dressed according
to chart and as good as the next man? This
was, beyond doubt, his one best opportunity for the test
of his theory of self-selection. Why not seize it?

CHAPTER V—ONLY THE BRAVE
========================

Reaching the box which, according to his count
of doors, should contain her, Peter Pape tried
the door; opened it; stepped into and across the small
cloak-room; looked through the brocaded hangings of
the outer box. There she sat, just behind the bobbed
youngster, an example of how different one black-haired
girl can look from another. Her eyes, of the
blue of tropic seas—calm, deep, mysterious—opened to
his in surprise. He felt the other eyes in the box upon
him, five pairs in all. But he looked only into hers—into
the eyes that had summoned him.

Quick at detail, he appreciated at a glance more than
the general effect of her. Her gown was of silver lace,
a moonlight shimmer that lent a paling sheen to her
shoulders and arms. She wore no ornaments, except
a cluster of purplish forget-me-nots. As if one could
forget anything about her! Forget those long, strong
lines of her, not too thin nor yet too sturdy—those
untinted cheeks of an oval blending gently into a chin
that was neither hard nor weak—those parted, definitely
dented lips, their healthful red indubitable—that
black, soft, femininely long hair, simply parted and
done in a knot on her neck?

More than at the greater distance, she looked the
sort he liked. Did she like the looks of him? He
could not voice the question direct, as in his calculations,
with eight ears beside her own to hear. But he
concentrated on the silent demand that she try to do
so as he crossed to her with hand outstretched.

“I am so glad,” said he, “to see you again.”

Her hand relaxed in his clasp. She rose to her feet;
drew up to the full height of her well-poised slenderness.
Her expression was neither welcoming nor forbidding;
rather was the puzzled, half-ashamed and
wholly honest look of a child who can’t remember.

“Didn’t you ask me to come?”

He bent to her with the low-spoken question; met
her eyes as seriously as through the lenses a moment
since; waited breathlessly for the test of just how fearless
and frank was she. With hope he saw a faint
flush spread forward from her ears and tinge delightfully
her pallor. Already he had felt the agitation of
it in her finger-tips. Relief came with her first words.

“Yes, I know I did,” she said.

She knew. Yes, she *knew*. And she had the courage
to say so. She not only looked—she *was* the sort
he liked.

Whether from suggestion of his hand or her own
volition, she stepped with him to the back of the box.
He did not give her time to deny him, even to himself
alone. With inspired assurance he urged:

“I have crossed a continent to meet you. Don’t let
your friends see that you failed to recognize me at
first. It takes only a moment to know me. Give me
that moment.”

“Am I not giving it?” She looked still puzzled, still
flushed, still brave. But she withdrew her hand and
with it something of her confidence.

Would she deny him, after all, once she understood?
She mustn’t be allowed to.

“Give me the moment toward which I’ve lived my
life,” he said. “You won’t regret it. Look at me.
Recognize me. Trust me.”

During the grave glance which she slanted slightly
upward to his six-feet-flat, she obeyed; studied him;
seemed to reach some decision regarding him, just what
he had to surmise.

“The surprise of meeting you—here—at the
opera——” she began hesitantly. “Seeing so many
people, I think, confuses me. Somehow, personalities
and places get all scrambled in my memory. Do forgive
me—but you are from——”

“Montana, of course,” he prompted her.

“Oh!” She considered. Then: “I’ve been to the
Yellowstone. It was there—that we met? I begin—to
remember that——”

“That I’m a personal friend of Horace Albright, the
superintendent,” he supplied, quick to seize the opportunity
she had made to speak a true, good word for
himself. “Every one of the Spread-Eagle Ranger
force, from Jim McBride down, calls me by my first
name, so you see that I am no tusk-hunter. You can’t
have forgotten the snap of the air on those early-morning
Y-stone rides or the colors of the border peaks
in the afternoon sun or——”

“Or the spray of Old Faithful, the painted colors of
the cañon, the whole life of the wild. Never. Never,”
she contributed. “I was fascinated with the breadth
and freedom of your West. Out there I felt like Alice
in Wonderland, with everything possible.”

His eyes reproached her. “Everything is possible
everywhere, even in your narrow, circumscribed East.
I am glad that you remember the worth-while things.
Perhaps, if you try——”

“Jane dar-rling, do you want to sit brazenly in front
or modestly in back for the second act? That first was
enough to put the Mona Lisa out of countenance. But
I’ve heard that a little child saves the second.”

The interruption came from the bobbed-haired girl,
who, from her repeated glances their way, evidently
thought their aside somewhat protracted.

So “Jane” was the favorite, old-fashioned name she
glorified! Pape was further thrilled by the touch of
her hand on his arm.

“Do forgive me and help me out,” she said low and
hurriedly. “Some hypnotist must have given me mental
suggestion that I was to forget names. I am constantly
embarrassed by lapses like this. Quick—I’ll
have to introduce you.”

“Peter Pape.” Gladly he supplied the lack.

With considerable poise she announced him as “a
friend from the Yellowstone,” who had happened in
unexpectedly and been reviving memories of that most
delightful summer she had spent in the West. If she
accented ever so slightly the “revived memories” or
flashed him a confused look with the pronouncement
of his name, none but he noticed. And he did not care.
Whether deceived by his high-handed play or playing
a higher hand herself, she hadn’t thrown him out.
Now she wouldn’t—couldn’t. He was her “friend”
from the Yellowstone—near enough home, at that,
since Hellroaring Valley was right next door. She
was committed to his commitment. His theory was
proving beyond anything he could have hoped, had he
wasted time on hope after evolving it.

In turn she named Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Allen, a
middle-aged couple who supplied ample dignity and
chaperonage for the younger element of the box party;
Mr. Mills Harford, a genial, sophisticated and well-built
young man, who would have been called handsome
by one with a taste for auburn hair, brown eyes
and close-cropped mustaches; Miss Sturgis, her little
cousin—she of the bobbed hair, filet of pearls and
affectionate address.

Even in her grown-up, down-cut evening gown of
Nile-green, the girl didn’t look more than fifteen—couldn’t
have exceeded nineteen without violating all
laws of appearances. Despite her excessive use of
make-up—blued-over eyelids, plucked brows, darkened
lashes, thick-pasted lips and high-colored cheeks—Cousin
“Irene” was quite beautiful. And her manner
proved as assertively brilliant as her looks.

“Mr. —— Pape?” she demanded thinkingly.
“Have I met you before or heard of you——”

His hand on his heart, he bowed toward her. “Why-Not
Pape.”

She stared at him much as she had at the sign.

“You don’t claim to be—— Don’t tell me that
you are—— Then you’re *not* a breakfast-food?”

“Nothing so enlivening. Not even anti-fat,” he
apologized in broad-smiling return.

“Oh—*oh*!” she gasped. “You *couldn’t* have overheard
what I said in the car coming down?”

“From the curb, Miss Sturgis.”

“And you recognized me here in the box and that’s
why—Dar-rling—” the endearment was drawled
with a brief glance toward her relative—“isn’t that
just too *utterly* romantic?”

“I hope, Irene, not *too* utterly.”

Jane’s quiet reply started a smile wreathing around
the little circle, evidently of amusement over the child-vamp’s
personal assumption of all honors.

Samuel Allen interposed in a tone of butter-melting
benignity: “Any friend of Miss Lauderdale is more
than welcome to our city so far as I am concerned.”

“Rawther! And welcome—thrice welcome to our
midst,” the madcap again interpolated, seizing one of
his large, brown hands in both her white, bejeweled,
small ones.

“Dee-lighted!” Pape breathed, returning the extra
shake.

Indeed, he felt delighted. She was *Miss* Jane Lauderdale,
the reserved, long-haired relative of this short-haired
enthusiast. And she wore no engagement ring—not
any ring on any finger. He could only hope
that she had no “understanding” with the good-looking
chap ranged beside her. If so, she’d have to be
made to mis-understand. She was more flustered over
his acceptance of the unconscious invitation of that
long, strange, magnified look than she had at first appeared.
That showed in the tight clutch of her fingers
on her feather fan. And she was taller than he had
calculated—just enough shorter than he for ideal dancing.
One thing about her he needed to decide, but
couldn’t. Did she or did she not know that she didn’t
know him?

But he must pay attention. Irene, continuing to
baby-vamp him, waved him into the chair beside that
into which she had sunk. Although of necessity she
had dropped his hand she released neither his interest
nor his eyes.

“You must be just a terribly important person to be
flashed all over Broadway in that rosy wreath. I don’t
blame your friends, though, for feeling a bit extravagant
over you. We were talking about the sign before
you came in—were guessing what kingdom you belong
to, animal, vegetable or mineral. Millsy Harford here
held out that you were more likely some manufactured
product than anti-fat. Isn’t it all quite too funny for
anything?”

“My folks used to say, from the rate of speed at
which I grew up—” Pape applied to his ready store of
persiflage—“that I was more like a vegetable than a boy.
*I* always thought I was animal, judging by my appetite,
you know. But my life’s been kind of lived with
minerals. Maybe I’m all three.”

“How interesting.” Mrs. Allen, a lady faded to
medium in coloring, age and manner, turned from an
over-rail inspection of some social notable among the
horseshoe’s elect to survey him through her lorgnette.
“Just why, if I am not too personal, are you called
‘Why-Not?’”

“My nickname about the headwaters of our greatest
river, madam.”

From her look of vague perplexity Pape turned his
glance around the group until it halted for a study of
Jane Lauderdale’s face—again Irish pale, tropic-eyed,
illegible. He chose his further words with care.

“Guess I was the first to ask myself that question
after the boys hung the sobri. on me and nailed it
there,” he said, addressing himself to none in particular.
“I made the interesting discovery that there
wasn’t any answer, although there are limitless answers
to almost every seemingly unanswerable question.
You see, when I find myself up against the impossible,
I just ask myself why not and buck it. I’ve found the
impossible a boogey-boo.”

“You call yourself, then, a possible person?”

He was not to be discountenanced by Jane’s quiet
insertion.

“Everything worth while that I’ve got in the past
I owe to that belief,” he maintained. “It happens that
I want some few extras in my near future. That’s how
I’ll get ’em, from realizing that nothing—*absolutely
nothing*—is impossible.”

Considerable of a speech this was for him. Yet he
could see that he had made something of an impression
by its delivery. One moment he marveled at his own
assurance; the next wanted to know any good and substantial
reason why he shouldn’t feel assured. He had
made himself, to be sure. But probably he had done
the job better than any one else could have done it for
him. At least he had been thorough. And his efforts
had paid in cash, if that counted.

A stir in the house—rather, a settling into silence—presaged
the parting of the curtains on Act II. Mills
Harford who, as had developed, was the host of the
evening, began to rearrange the chairs to the better
advantage of the fair of his party. The interloper felt
the obligation at least of offering to depart. Irene it
was who saved him. With a pout of the most piquantly
bowed pair of lips upon which female ever had used
unnecessary stick, she dared him to wish to watch the
second act with her as much as she wished him to.

Pape could not keep down the thrill she gave him—she
and the situation. To think that he, so lately the
wearer of an Indian sign, should be begged to stay in
such a circle! Only for a moment did he affect reluctance.
During it, he glanced across at the box that was
his by right of rental, with its content of brightly
attired “true-lovers” blooming above the rail; smiled
into the challenge of the precocious child’s black eyes;
sank into the chair just behind her.

“Your friends over there look better able to do without
you than I feel,” Irene ventured, with an over-shoulder
sigh. “I don’t know who in the world they
are, but——”

“No more do I, Miss Sturgis.”

“You don’t? You mean——”

“Righto. Just met up with ’em in the lobby. They
hadn’t any seats and I had more than I could use without
exerting myself.”

“How nice! Then they have only half as much right
to you as I have. You see, I, as well as Miss Lauderdale,
have met you before.”

“Down Broadway, you mean, and although you
didn’t know it?”

She nodded back at him tenderly. “And although
separated by circumstances—I in the car and you on
the curb. From my cousin’s descriptions, I adore
rangers. Don’t I, dar-rling?”

“No one could doubt that, eh, Jane?” Harford
made answer for Miss Lauderdale, whom he had relieved
of her fan with as much solicitude as though
each ostrich feather weighed a pound.

“I do really. *Why not*?” Low and luringly Irene
laughed. “You must look awfully picturesque in your
uniform of forest green, your cavalry hat and laced
boots.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a cowman, not a
ranger,” Pape thought advisable to state in a tone calculated
to reach the ears of her responsible for his
presence in their midst. “But most of the park service
members are my friends. I live on the edge of the
playground and know them right well.”

The young girl refused to have her enthusiasm
quashed. “Well, that’s just as good. You have their
spirit without being tied to the stake of routine, as it
were. I detest routine, don’t you? Or *do* you? On
second thought, you’re much better off. Don’t *you*
think he is, dar-rling?”

In the dimming of the auditorium lights, she leaned
closer to him; seemed to transfer the fulsomely drawled
term of endearment from her relative to him; added
in a cross between murmur and whisper:

“Isn’t dar-rling a difficult word—hard to say seriously?
Fancy caring that much for any one—I mean
any one of one’s own sex. Of course, I hope really to
love a man that much some day. That is, I do unless
I go in for a career. Careers *do* keep one from getting
fat, though. As I am constantly telling my
mother——”

“S-sh!”

Pape was relieved by Mrs. Allen’s silencing sibilant.

CHAPTER VI—JUST AU REVOIR
=========================

The great audience caught its breath and hopefully
returned attention to the affairs of the
French actress who so had shocked and fascinated
them at the first act’s end. Stripped almost to the
waist, the daring and tuneful Zaza had left them.
More conventionally, not to say comfortably clad, she
reappeared.

Pape, as deficient in French as in appreciation of
opera arias, applied himself hopefully at first to getting
the gist of the piece, but soon concluded that he
must be clear “off trail in his lingo.”

Out in Montana, the most meteoric stage luminary
never would think of singing a perfectly good wife and
mother into handing over husband and father merely
because his eyes had gone sort of blinky star-gazing at
her. No. Such a translation didn’t sound reasonable
at all; was quite too raw for the range. Better give
his ears to the music and buy a Hoyle-translated libretto
to-morrow.

Settling back in his chair, Pape allowed his gaze and
mind to concentrate, after a habit acquired of late in
Central Park, upon the nearby. She had an expressive
profile, the young woman whom he had self-selected.
If facial traits had real connection with character, that
protruding chin, although curved too youthfully to do
justice to its joints, suggested that she would not retreat
unless punished beyond her strength. If young
Irene only would take one good look at her cousin’s
chin she must give up in any contest between them.

But then, Irene’s mental eye was on herself. To her,
evidently, all other women were more or less becoming
backgrounds.

That she should be so near him, Jane; that he actually
should get—oh, it wasn’t imagination—the fragrance
of her hair; yet that he should be so far away! ... She’d
be annoyed and he must not do it, but he
felt tempted to train his hired glasses on her, as she had
trained hers on him only a few minutes since. He’d
have liked again to draw her eyes close to his through
their lensed aid and study out the answer to that teasing
question—did she or did she not know that she
didn’t know him?

One thing was clear in the semi-gloom. Her neck
and shoulders and back looked more like marble than
he’d have supposed live flesh could look. And her lines
were lovely—not too padded over to conceal the shoulder
blades, yet smooth. Above the narrow part of the
V of silver lace, a small, dark dot emphasized her
whiteness. Was it a freckle or a mole?

Another than himself seemed interested to know.
The handsome Mr. Harford was leaning forward,
elbows on knees and chin cupped in hand, his eyes
closed, his lips almost touching the beauty spot. Had
he given up to the welling wail of Zaza’s attempt to
out-sing conventions or was his attention, too, on that
tantalizing mark?

Whether or no, Pape felt at the moment that he
must prevent the imminent contact if he did not live
to do anything else in life. He, too, leaned forward.
But his eyes did not close. They remained wide open,
accurately gauging the distance between a pair of sacrilegious
mustached lips and——

Tragedy was temporarily averted or, as it turned
out, supplanted. An usher appeared between the curtains;
in subdued tones asked for Miss Lauderdale;
held up a square, white envelope.

Jane arose and passed into the cloak room. Mills
Harford followed her. Pape in turn, followed him.
Observing the girl closely as she tore open the envelope
and read the enclosure, he saw alarm on her face; saw
the sudden tension of her figure; saw her lips lengthen
into a thin line.

“Chauffeur brought it. He is waiting down stairs
for an answer,” the usher advised her.

“Tell him,” she said, “that I’ll come at once.”

The usher bowed and vanished.

“Anything wrong, Jane?” Harford asked.

“I can’t stay for the last act. Aunt Helene has
been—has sent for me.”

As if fearful lest he should insist upon knowing the
contents of her note, she crumpled it in one hand; with
the other reached for a brocaded cape that hung on one
side of the mirrored rack; allowed him to anticipate
her and lay it about her shoulders.

“I’ll go with you,” said he.

“No.” She paused in her start toward the corridor
and glanced into his face uncertainly. “Tamo is waiting
with the car. You must see the opera out. The
Farrar probably has thrills and thrills saved for the
*finale*.”

“Not for me—without you. Of course I’ll go with
you, dear.”

The ardor of the handsome chap’s last pronouncement
seemed to decide her.

“Of course you won’t.” She shook his hand from
her shoulder as if offended. “You are giving this
party. You owe it to the Allens to stay. Explain to
Irene and the rest that I——”

“At least let me put you into the car.”

“No.” Positively, she snapped this time. “I don’t
need you. I don’t want you, to be frank. You’re
coming up to the house to supper, all of you. Perhaps
then I’ll explain.”

“You’ll explain on the way up—now.”

Harford looked to have made up his mind; looked
angry. He took her elbow rather forcefully and
started with her into the corridor.

On the sill she stopped and faced him defiantly. “I
won’t explain until and unless I wish to. You can’t
use that tone with me, Mills, successful as you may
have found it with others. Mr. Pape is going to put
me into the car.”

And lo, the Westerner found himself by her side,
*his* hand at her elbow. He had felt electrified by her
summons. Although not once had she glanced toward
where he stood just outside the curtains, uncertain
whether to advance or retreat, she apparently had been
keen to his presence and had felt his readiness to serve.

Their last glance at Harford showed his face auburn
as his hair. They hurried down the grand stairway,
passed the regal doorman and queried the resplendent
starter. His signal brought the Sturgis limousine,
parked on Broadway in consideration of the emergency
call. The driver, a Japanese, was alone on the seat
in front.

Jane had not volunteered one word on the way down,
and Pape was mindful to profit by the recent demonstration
of her resentment of inquiries. Now, however,
he began to fear that she had forgotten his existence
entirely. A nod from her kept the chauffeur from
scrambling out. She let herself into the car and tried
the inside catch of the door as if to make sure that she
was well shut in—alone.

But Pape’s habit of initiative overruled his caution.
He had fractured too many rules of convention to-night
to be intimidated at this vital moment. With the same
sweep of the hand he demanded a moment more of the
driver and pulled open the door.

“Of course I’m going along, Jane dear,” said he.

She gasped from shock of his impudence; a long
moment stared at him; then, with a flash of the same
temper she had shown Mills, returned him value received.

“Of course you’re not, Peter dar-rling.”

“Why not?”

Stubbornly he placed his shiny, large, hurting right
foot on the running-board.

“Because you’re not a possible person. You’re
quite impossible.” And with the waspish exclamation
she leaned out, took him by the coat lapels and literally
pushed him out of her way. “I know that I don’t know
you at all. Did you think you had deceived me for
one instant? I am not in the habit of scraping acquaintance
with strangers, even at grand opera.”

“But—but——” he began stammered protest.

“It was partly my fault to-night. I did stare at
you,” she continued hurriedly. “You looked so different
from the regular run of men in black and white.
Maybe my curiosity did invite you and you showed
nerve that I learned to like out West by accepting. I
couldn’t be such a poor sport as to turn you down
before the rest. But it’s time now for the good-by we
*didn’t* say in the Yellowstone.” She turned to the
speaking tube. “Ready, Tamo. And don’t mind the
speed limit getting home.”

From the decision of her voice, the man from Montana
knew that she meant what she said. Never had
he found it necessary to force his presence upon a
woman. He stepped aside, heard the door pulled to
with a slam; watched the heavy machine roll away.
Its purr did not soothe him.

“Not good-by. Just *au revoir*, as Zaza’d say.”

That was all he had managed to reply to her. In
his memory it sounded simpering as the refrain of
some silly song. He hadn’t played much of a part,
compared to hers. What an opponent she would make
at stud poker, holding to the last card! She was a
credit to his judgment, this first woman of his independent
self-selection.... Good-by? The word she
had used was too final—too downright Montanan.
Although far from a linguist, as had been impressed
upon him during his late jaunt overseas, he had learned
from the French people to prefer the pleasanter possibilities
of their substitute—of *au revoir*.

As to when and where he should see her again—The
shrug of his shoulders said plainly as words,
“*Quién sabe*?” The lift of his hair in the street breeze
caused him to realize his bare-headed state. A thought
of the precipitation with which he had left both hat
and coat on his hundred-fifty-simoleon hook brought
a flash of Irene and the outraged glance she had cast
toward his departure. She had said that she “doted”
on all Westerners. Perhaps if he returned to the Harford
box on the legitimate errand of bidding his new
acquaintances a ceremonious good-night she might
come to dote on him enough in the course of another
half hour or so to invite him to that supper which——

In the vacuum left by the sudden withdrawal of the
evening’s chief distraction, he gave up for a moment
to his pedal agony. He’d a heap rather return at once
to his hotel, where he could take off his new shoes. At
least he could loosen the buttons of the patent pincers.
This he stooped to do, but never did.

Lying beside the curb to which, from his stand in
the street, he had lifted the more painful foot, was
something that interested him—something small, white,
crumpled. The overbearing Miss Lauderdale must
have dropped it in her violent effort to shove him from
the running-board. Had her flash of fury toward him
been as sincere as it had sounded? Had she left him
the note, whether consciously or sub, by way of suggestion?
Under urge of such undeveloped possibilities,
Pape strode to the nearest light and smoothed out
the crumpled sheet. It bore an engraved address in the
eight-hundreds of Fifth Avenue, and read:

    :small-caps:`Jane`, dear:—Have just discovered the wall-safe open.
    That antique *tabatière* you entrusted to my care is gone. I
    can’t understand, but fear we have been robbed. Don’t
    frighten Irene or the others, but do come home at once.
    Tamo will be waiting for you with the car. Please hurry.

    .. class:: right
    
    :small-caps:`Aunt Helene`.

So! She had been robbed of some trinket, the very
threat of whose loss had stopped the blood in her veins.
Perhaps her predicament was his opportunity to advance
a good start. He had all details of the case
literally in hand, down to the engraved house address.

Jane had proved herself the honest sort he liked in
acknowledging that first, probably involuntary invitation
of her eyes. At least it had been the invitation of
Fate. Was this the second—*her* second?

Why not find out—*why not*?

CHAPTER VII—THE EMERGENCY MAN
=============================

“Sixty-fourth and Central Park East. Otherwise
Fifth Avenue, boss.” The driver of the
pink-and-gray made the announcement through the
open window behind the wheel seat as he drew up at
the park-side curb. “Where away, now?”

“Nowhere away. We’ve arrived. How much says
the clock?”

“Dollar twenty—to you.” The overcharge was committed
with the usual stress of favoring the fare.

Why-Not Pape reached across with two green
singles. “Keep the bonus, friend robber. Likely you
need it more than I. If you’ve any scruples, though,
you can overcome ’em by telling me what building that
is, the dingy one with the turrets, back among the park
trees.”

“Arsenal they calls it. Police station.”

Succinct as his service, the licensed highwayman of
city streets stepped on the gas and was off to other
petty pilfering. Police stations and overcharges probably
did not seem suitable to him on the same block.

“The Arsenal, eh?” Pape queried himself. “Ain’t
the Arsenal where Pudge O’Shay threatened to take me
to tea the afternoon Dot polkaed up those sacred rocks
to the block-house?”

He crossed the oily asphalt, smeared with the spoor
of countless motor vehicles; turned south a few steps;
half way between Sixty-fourth and Sixty-third streets
located the eight-hundred-odd number in which he was
interested. A brownstone house, not particularly distinguishable
from its neighbors it was, entered by a
flight of steps above an old-fashioned or “American”
basement. Noting that the ground floor was dark and
the second and third illumined, he turned back across
the Avenue and stopped in the shadow of the wall that
bounds Central Park.

Between jerking into his hat and coat in full face of
the astonishment of his own opera-box party and accomplishing
the trip up in the fewest possible minutes
which could cover the roundabout traffic route prescribed
during “theater hours” he had not found time
to think out just what he was going to do when he
arrived at his destination. Now that he was on the
scene of his next impertinence, he appreciated that its
success demanded a careful plan. His self-selected
lady’s dismissal of him had been so definite that he
needed some tenable excuse for having followed her
home. Stansbury caution warned him that an offer of
assistance would, without doubt, be ignominiously
spurned. But Pape initiative was in the saddle.

He had about decided on the most direct course—to
rush up the steps, ring the bell, ask for her, tell her that
he had come to give her the note and trust to subsequent
events—when the front door of the house he was
watching flew open. A hatless man bounded down to
the sidewalk; straight as though following a surveyed
line, headed for the entrance of the Arsenal.

Pape stepped back and waited until the heavy on-comer
was about to enter the park, then sprang out and
blocked the way.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

From surprise or alarm the man backed a step or
two. “To—to the police station,” he answered nervously.

“Why didn’t you telephone? that would have been
quicker. You seem in a hell of a hurry.”

“The wires are cut, sir.”

“Who are you anyway?” Pape’s demand was uttered
with a note of authority.

“I am Jasper—the Sturgis’ butler. Mrs. Sturgis has
sent me to bring a detective.”

With a short laugh Pape approved the born butler’s
habit of subordination. “You’re in luck, Jasper. I’m
the very man you’re looking for. Lead me to the case.”

His location—he well might have been coming from
the Central Park station house—favored him. The
Arsenal could be seen a few yards within the wall.
Although he had no shield to show, nor named himself
a sergeant of the Force, the butler seemed satisfied with
the assertion and his own misconclusions. Dutifully,
he led the way back to the house which he had quitted
in such a hurry.

“This rushing about gets me in the wind, sir,” complained
Jasper *en route*. “I fear I am growing a bit
weighty. And what a comfort is the telephone. Things
like that, sir, you never miss until they’re gone. Ah,
sir, excitement like this is bad for the heart.”

Opening the door with a latch key, he conducted his
find across the reception hall, up a broad flight of stairs
and into a formally furnished drawing-room. From
between wide doors, half opened into a room beyond,
appeared a woman of medium height, whose looks
made unnecessary any introduction as Irene’s mother.
If her mauve crape dress revealed rather too distinctly
her plump outlines, it softened the middle-aged beauty
of her face and toned with the magnificent grayish
pearls she wore.

“Is this the detective, Jasper?” she asked, but did
not await an answer. “I’ll ring when I want you
again.”

She turned to the stranger as the butler passed out
of the room. “Thank you for answering our call for
help so promptly Mr. ——”

“Pape, madam.”

“Won’t you take off your coat and be seated, Mr.
Pape? This is in some respects an unusual robbery,
and your investigation probably will take some time.”

He followed her suggestion with alacrity, using a
nearby Davenport to rack his hat and overcoat. It
would be an advantage, he considered, to be in possession
of as many facts as possible, before Jane appeared
to expose him. Facts might help him in some
way to induce her to go on playing the game as she
had in the Metropolitan box.

“Best begin at the very beginning, Mrs. Sturgis.”

He seated himself in a chair opposite that into which
the matron had sunk, and leaned toward her with
frowning concentration. Too late he remembered that
the Arsenal detectives, if any were there assigned, did
not sit around at all hours in evening clothes. But if
she noticed at all his attire, it was with approval, judging
by the confidential smile she bent upon him.

“This is a manless house, except for the servants,”
she began in the modulated voice of those “to the manner”
born. “I have the misfortune to be a widow.
This evening my daughter and my niece went to the
opera with old friends of the family. I have no liking
for operas of the ‘Zaza’ type so remained at home. But
I promised the young ladies to stay up, as they wished
to bring their friends back with them to supper.”

Stopped by a thought, she indicated an ebony cigarette
outfit that topped a tabaret near his chair. “Men
think so much better when they smoke,” she suggested.
“If you prefer cigars, Mr. Pape, I’ll have some brought
in.”

“Please don’t trouble. My chest’s full of ’em.”

With a forced smile, she watched the “detective”
produce one of his own regardlessly purchased cigars,
light it and puff with manifest pleasure from its fragrance.

“This afternoon,” she proceeded, “Miss Lauderdale,
my niece, returned from a visit to an old woman who
had been her governess years ago when her father was—well,
before he lost his money. She brought back a
jeweled snuffbox of antique design which had belonged
to her great-grandfather. In some way not yet explained
to me it had came into possession of this upper
servant. Although its intrinsic value is not great—the
rubies set in its cover are small, not worth more than
a thousand dollars, I should say—Miss Lauderdale
seems to set great store by it. She asked me to lock it
up in a secret safe built in my library wall until she
should want it again.”

From his very light experience with operatives of
the force—really none at all except with those of the
printed page—Pape considered that he should begin
asking questions if he was to sustain the part. He
matched his finger-tips in pairs—in most “sleuth”
stories they did that; cleared his throat—also inevitable;
observed somewhat stupendously:

“I see. You opened the secret wall safe and within
it installed the heirloom snuffbox. At what hour, Mrs.
Sturgis, was this?”

“About five o’clock.”

“And you found the safe cracked, might I ask—its
contents gone?”

“Not at all. You anticipate me. What jewelry I
keep in the safe was all there. Some of it, at my
daughter’s coaxing, I had withdrawn for her to wear
to the opera. She is entirely too much of a child to be
allowed such adornment, but you know our young
ladies these days, Mr. Pape.”

He nodded, but none too assuredly in view of his
fathomless ignorance of “our young ladies these days.”

“And after taking out this jewelry for Miss Sturgis,
you are sure that you locked the safe—shut it securely
and turned the dial?” he asked, quite as the professional
he was trying to emulate would have pursued
the case. “Sometimes you women folks——”

“I am not the careless sort. I locked the safe.”

From the matron’s composed manner, he well could
believe her.

“It was about nine o’clock,” she continued, “when,
having changed to the gown I meant to wear to supper,
I wanted these black pearls.” She indicated the
two pendants in her ears, a ring and the vari-sized
strand about her neck. “With purple or lavender, you
see, they make the second mourning effect which I shall
always wear for my dear husband. Again I came downstairs
to the safe. Imagine my astonishment and fright
when I found it open—the door full an inch ajar.”

“But you’re wearing the pearls, madam?”

“That is the strangest part of it!” Moved at last
by her nervousness, Mrs. Sturgis arose, crossed to a
window that overlooked Central Park, clutched the curtains
and drew them apart. For a second or two she
stood looking out, then returned to her chair. “Mr.
Pope, not a single piece of my jewelry was missing.
The cash drawer had not been disturbed, though it
happened to contain a considerable sum of money. A
sheaf of Liberty Bonds in plain sight lay untouched.
Absolutely nothing was gone except Miss Lauderdale’s
heirloom snuffbox. Of course that’s no great financial
loss, but she is much upset by the loss and I can’t
help feeling my responsibility. Tell me, what do you
make of it?”

His chin cupped in one hand, Pape tried to look that
shade of study denominated as “brown.” Next he
puffed viciously at the plump middle section that was
left of his cigar—women, he had noticed, always harkened
with more respect to a man who puffed viciously
at a cigar.

“Strange—passing strange,” he muttered. From a
pocket of his figured white waistcoat he drew his watch
and looked enquiringly into its face. “You say it was
about nine o’clock when you discovered this theft?
It was after ten when you sent the butler after—after
me. Just to keep the tally straight, madam, may I ask
what you were doing in the interim?”

Mrs. Sturgis’ brows—black as her daughter’s, but
unplucked—lifted slightly, as if she were surprised by
the question. However, after a momentary pause she
answered, “At first I was uncertain just what to do.
Finally I decided to summon Miss Lauderdale from
the opera house. She, as the only loser, was the person
most concerned. She returned just now and insisted
that the police be called in. She was even more
upset than I when we discovered that our telephone was
out of commission. She sent Jasper at once to——”

Pape managed an interruptive glower of disapproval
that would have done credit to the most efficient “bull”
of the Central Office.

“You’ve wasted valuable time,” he declared. “In
robberies, it is advisable to get the authorities on the
scene of the crime at the earliest possible moment.”

“But in this instance the circumstances were so peculiar
and I——”

“I know. I know, madam. Circumstances always
are more or less peculiar.” Pape had deemed a touch
of official discourtesy not out of place. “What I want
to know next is—that is to say, the person I’d like next
to interview is this niece of yours who has been deprived
of her snuffbox.”

CHAPTER VIII—EMPTY
==================

Pape, the while, had grown most anxious to know
the exact whereabouts of the young woman in
the case. He found it nervous work, this expecting
her appearance every minute—this playing the detective
when she, with one glance, could detect him.
Would she or would she not expose him? The full
imperativeness of the question was in the gaze he bent
upon the matron.

“Miss Lauderdale will soon be down, I am sure.
She went to her room to change her gown.”

“And why, pray, should she bother changing her
gown at a time like this? The one she had on was
very—I mean to say, wasn’t the one she had on becoming?”

This demand Mrs. Sturgis met with an increase of
dignity. “We thought it might be necessary for her
to go to Police Headquarters or whatever it is you call
the place where one swears to complaints. I’ll send
her word to hurry if you wish.”

Pape did wish. However, the sending of word to
that effect proved unnecessary. Even as Mrs. Sturgis
was crossing the room to ring for Jasper, Jane entered,
dressed in a black and white checked skirt and loose
white silk blouse. At sight of the caller she stopped
short.

“Well, I’ll be ——”

“Oh no, you won’t, Miss Lauderdale—I believe?”
Pape’s advance had interrupted her ejaculation.
“You’re too much of a lady for that and far too good
a sport to—to be in despair over your loss. The game
is young yet and I am here to win it.”

Although his tone was pompous, the eyes he fixed
on her outraged expression were urgent, imploring.

Yet at the moment she did not look much as though
she had dropped the note as summons No. 2. Twice
her lips opened in angry hesitation. But her aunt interrupted
before she actually spoke.

“I was just about to send Jasper up for you, my
dear,” she said. “Mind your nerves, now. This is
an operative who has come over from The Arsenal
to solve our mystery. Mr. Pope, Miss Lauderdale.”

“Pape, you mean,” Jane corrected, then bit her lip.

“Of course, I mean Pape. I am *so* bad at names,
Mr. Pape. Here I’ve been calling you Pope. But,
Jane dear, how could you know?”

The ensuing slight pause was shattered by the soundless
insistence of a pair of gray eyes addressing a pair
of tropic blue: “Play my game. It’s a good game.
Why not—*why not* play my game?”

“Jasper told me.”

Her compliance was brief and cold—but still compliance.
With his wide smile Pape thanked and
thanked her, triumphed over her, caressed her. Jane
refused to smile back. But she did blush—slowly, deliciously,
revealingly blushed. At that moment she
looked, after all, as though she *had* meant to drop the
note. He wanted to accuse her of it and be sure.

But there was Mrs. Sturgis to be considered. Readjusting
his expression into lines professional, he returned
to the case.

“Suppose, madame, we take a look at that safe.”

Mrs. Sturgis led the way into the room from which
she had appeared on his arrival. It was a library, its
far end one huge window of many colored panes and
its walls lined with book-shelves except where family
portraits in oils were hung or where the fireplace and
its mantel interfered. An antique writing desk in the
window, a magazine-covered table off center, a pillow-piled
couch and a scattering of several comfortable-looking,
upholstered chairs comprised the furnishings,
the rich old mahogany of which was brought out by
the glow from a companionable fire of cannel coal.

To a corner of this room repaired Mrs. Sturgis and
there pressed her palm against an autumnal colored
leaf in the wall-paper design. A shelf, laden with
books moved out, one volume, by chance, falling to the
floor. Another touch—exactly what or where Pape
did not see—caused a panel to slide back, disclosing the
nickeled face of a wall safe. With assured fingers she
began to turn the dial—to the right, to the left, then a
complete turn to the right again. Every movement
added evidence of her boast of precision. Seizing the
knob, she pulled upon it hard and harder. The door
of the safe, however, did not yield.

“Peculiar!” she ejaculated, all the well-bred softness
whittled off her voice. “Never before have I made a
mistake on that combination. I know it like my own
initials.”

“Mind *your* nerve now, Aunt Helene,” advised Jane
from just behind, her tone, too, rather sharp.

For such a sweet-looking girl, she certainly could
sound sour—malicious! Not another word or glance
had she spared to him, the double-barreled interloper.
She was playing his game—yes. But was it because
he had asked her or for reasons of her own? This
dame he had self-selected would seem to be an intricate
creature.

So Pape reflected as he picked up and held in his
hands the book which had fallen. But he, at least, was
simple enough; with his very simplicity in the past had
solved more than one intricate problem. He would, if
she permitted, try to solve her.

Again Mrs. Sturgis turned and twirled; again
tugged at the knob, but with no more effect than before;
again faced about with consternation, even superstition
on her face.

“There must be something wrong here,” she half-whispered.

“That we already know,” Jane agreed, “else why the
detective in our midst?”

In Pape’s hands, suppose we say by accident, the
volume he had rescued from the floor opened upon one
of O. Henry’s *immortelles*—“Alias Jimmie Valentine.”
To him the work of the lamented Mr. Porter ever
had been fraught with suggestion for more than the
“kick” that, unlike home-brew, is always to be found
at the bottom of his bottle—at the *finis* of his tale.

The latest in amateur detectives, thus opportunely reminded,
decided that he must rise to the occasion. And
he had reason to hope that he could, once upon a time
having been shown some tricks of the tumbler profession
by a professional.

“Why else should I be in your midst,” he offered
cheerfully, “if not to open your safe for you?”

Mrs. Sturgis at once gave him the benefit of doubt;
made way for him; took a stand beside her skeptical-looking
niece. But Jane’s contempt over his essay was
frank—really, made her look downright disagreeable.

Pape made up his mind to disappoint her evident
expectations if within his powers so to do. He knelt
down; wedged his head into the vacancy left by the
swinging shelf; pressed his ear close to the lock; began
to finger the dial. There was more than hope in his
touch; there was also practice. In his ranch-house out
Hellroaring way he long ago had installed a wall safe
of his own in which to deposit the pay-roll and other
cash on hand. And one day it had disobligingly gone
on strike; but not so disobligingly that a certain derelict
whom he had fed-up on he-man advice as well as
food—one who had followed the delicate profession of
“listener”—was beyond reach.

This turned-straight cracksman, without admitting
his former avocation, had solved a pay-day dilemma by
conquering the refractory dial and later had given his
benefactor a series of lessons in the most-gentle “art,”
that the emergency might not recur. Pape, miles and
miles from the nearest town which might afford an
expert, had been convinced by the experience that a
safe is unsafe which cannot be opened at the owner’s
will.

In the course of present manipulations, the “under-graduate”
considered what he could say or do to the
contemptuous half of his audience should he fail, but
reached no satisfactory conclusion. Indeed, he felt that
the only real way of venting his chagrin would be to
wring her graceful, long, white neck for doubting him
before he failed, a proceeding quite beyond consideration
of any man from Montana. So he must not fail.
Yet how succeed?

Just as he was reminding himself for the seventh
time—seventh turn—that “slow and careful” was also
the watchword for this sort of acquaintanceship, an
electrifying response to his light-fingering sounded
from within —— a click. Turning the knob, he pulled
out the door. The yielding hinges completed an electric
circuit and an incandescent bulb lighted in the roof.

Pape sprang to his feet and back, as much amazed
over his feat as the dazed-looking Miss Lauderdale.
Then, at once, he got control of himself; straightened
his cuffs, as his teacher always had done after turning
the trick; remarked most calmly:

“The thief must have been changing the combination
in the hope of delaying the discovery of his crime and
been frightened into such a panic that he didn’t take
time to close the door.”

Mrs. Sturgis again bent to the safe. She had reached
well into it when, with a poignant cry, she put both
hands to her eyes and started back. “It’s there again!
This is getting too much for my nerves. Was I mad
before or am I going mad now? Jane—Mr. Pape—*it
isn’t gone*—*at all*!”

The girl next applied to the cavity in the wall. Her
face set in an apparent effort to “mind” her nerves.
She reached in and drew out an oblong box of gold
beautifully carved and set with small rubies in a design
of peacocks. From her expression—no longer disagreeable,
but beautiful from an ecstasy of relief—Pape
judged this to be the “stolen” heirloom upon
which she was said to set such store.

That her aunt might be absolutely reassured, Jane
Lauderdale handed her the *tabatière* so recently accounted
missing. That good lady, however, looked
weak, as if about to drop the jeweled box. Pape relieved
her of it; led her to a chair.

“I—I don’t understand.”

Like a child utterly dependent on grown-ups for explanation,
she glanced from one to the other of the
younger pair.

“Except for that famous precision of yours, it would
seem easy enough,” Jane offered with more clarity than
respect. “You must have pushed the box aside when
you took out the pieces Irene wanted to wear. Your
hands were full and you neglected to close the safe.
When you came down again for your black pearl set
and found the door open you thought at once of my
snuffbox and jumped at the conclusion, since it wasn’t
in the place you remembered putting it, that it wasn’t
there at all. Cheer up. You wouldn’t be the dearest
auntie in the world if you weren’t human.”

Pape seconded her. “The most precise of us are
liable to figments of the imagination, madam. All’s
well that ends that way. A snuffbox in hand is worth
two in the ——”

But Aunt Helene wasn’t so sure. She interrupted
in a complaining voice, as if offended at their effort to
cheer her.

“I never jump at conclusions—*never*. If I was
startled into jumping at the one you mention, Jane,
it seems strange that I selected these black pearls so
accurately. *Doesn’t* it? And I’d almost take oath that
the box wasn’t pushed to one side—that it stood, when
I found it just now, exactly on the spot where I first
placed it. And then, Mr. Pape, the trouble with the
combination——”

“Don’t worry any more about it, poor dear,” Jane
begged with a suddenly sweet, soothing air, the while
laying a sympathetic palm against her relative’s
puckered brow. “I’ve noticed that you haven’t seemed
just yourself for days. Perhaps these headaches you’ve
complained of mean that you need eyeglasses. It’s only
natural that a strain on the optic nerves should confuse
your mind, which usually *is* so precise about all——”

“Nothing of the sort, Jane. You can’t mental-suggest
me into old age!” snapped the recalcitrant patient.
“My eyes are just as good as yours. And I feel positive
that I am quite myself.”

“Then why, Aunt Helene, didn’t you go with us to
hear Farrar to-night? You aren’t usually so squeamish
about——”

“Of course not. It was indigestion, if you must
know. Certainly it had nothing to do with my optic
nerves. You shouldn’t accuse me of jumping at conclusions,
Jane, with all your irritating, positive ideas
about other people’s——”

“It is my opinion—” the unofficial investigator
thought advisable at this point to remind them that an
outsider was present—“that your remembrance of the
combination figures and the various turns was absolutely
correct—ab-so-lutely. But you may have jolted
the delicate mechanism of the lock when you shut the
door. You *may* have slammed it.”

He received two glances for his pains to maintain
peace, a quick, resentful one from the niece and a long,
grateful one from her aunt.

“A beauty, isn’t it?” he continued buoyantly, looking
at Jane, but referring to the snuffbox in his hands,
lowered for closer inspection into the light of the electric
lamp. “I don’t wonder that the thought of losing
it distressed you, my dear Miss Lauderdale.”

“Associations, my dear Mr. Pape.”

Her brevity, cut even shorter by her accent, evidently
was calculated to inform him that, although she had
played, she didn’t care much for his game. For a
young person who could warm one up so one minute,
she certainly could make one feel like an ice-crusher the
next! Since that’s what he was up against, however,
he proceeded with all his surplus enthusiasm to crush
ice.

“The sight of this heirloom takes one right back to
the days of old, doesn’t it, when ladies fair and gallants
bold——”

“You wax poetic from hearsay, Mr. Pape? You
don’t look exactly old or wise enough to have lived in
those good old days.”

“Miss Lauderdale, no. I don’t claim to have staked
any ‘Fountain of Youth.’ In fact, I ain’t much older
or wiser than I look and act. But I’ve read a bit in
my day—and night. The courtly Colonial gent, if I
remember aright, first placed the left hand on the heart—so.”
Then he bent gracefully, not to say carefully,
so that the seams of his satin straight-jackets should
not give—thus. With his right hand he next snapped
open his jeweled box and passed it around the circle
of snufflers of *the* sex, who would likely have swooned
at the thought of a cigarette as at the sight of a mouse—in
this wise.

“Oh don’t—don’t you *dare* open it!”

Pape, who duly had pressed his heart, bowed with
care, if not grace, and was in the act of pressing the
catch, felt the box snatched from his grasp. In his
fumbling, however, his thumb had succeeded. As Jane
seized her treasure the lid sprang back. One look she
gave into it, then swayed in the patch of lamplight very
like the limp ladies he had been mentioning. A face of
the pure pallor of hers scarcely could be said to turn
pale, but a ghastly light spread over it. Her eyes distended
and darkened with horror. A shudder took her.
She looked about to fall.

“It is—empty! See, *it is empty*,” she moaned.

Pape was in time to steady her into a chair. Aunt
Helene hovered over her anxiously.

“What’s gone wrong with you, childie? You’re the
one that’s in a run-down state. Here’s your box, Jane
dear. Look, it isn’t stolen at all. Pinch yourself.
Waken up. Everything’s all right.”

But Jane did not return her relative’s smile; clutched
both fat arms of the chair with both slim hands; stared
ahead fixedly, as if trying to think.

“It is,” she repeated under her breath, “*empty*.”

From his urgent desire to relieve and help her, Pape
intruded into her painful abstraction.

“Then it wasn’t the box you valued, so much as its
contents,” he stated to her. “From the shock you have
shown on finding it empty, I gather that the safe has
been robbed after all. Will you tell me of what?”

Her lips moved. He had to lean low to hear her
sporadic utterances.

“I have failed—in a trust. It meant more to me
than—it will kill him—simply kill him. He trusted
me. I can’t understand—who——”

A sudden glance of virile suspicion she flung up into
the young Westerner’s eyes.

“Who and what are you?” she demanded. “Answer
me!”

CHAPTER IX—SNUFFED
==================

So unexpected was the girl’s attack that Pape felt
at a loss how best to meet it. At his look of confusion,
she continued in quick, fierce tones:

“I can’t see how my affairs concern you. How dare
you question me? Why are you around, anyhow, here
and at the—— How did you happen to open that safe
so easily? Who and what are you—I insist on an
answer?”

“My dear, don’t let excitement make you unreasonable,”
Mrs. Sturgis intervened. “Mr. Pape is a detective
from the Arsenal. I’ve told you that. Jasper
brought him over after I——”

“He isn’t. I know very much better. He is nothing
of the sort.” The girl arose and straightened before
him, all strength now. “I suppose you expect me
to tell you all about everything like a little—like a
ninny. Well, I won’t. I won’t tell you anything. *You*
tell *me*!”

“Don’t mind in the least. Fact, I’d gladly tell you
a lot about the who and what of Peter Stansbury Pape,
but you’re not in a mood to hear. Out in Montana,
where I hail from, we think a lot of straight friendship.
If you could trust me, Miss Lauderdale, perhaps
I’d be able to demonstrate the sort of friendship I
mean.”

“Well, I can’t trust you.”

“Pardon me. Yes, you can.”

He faced her with an emphasized look of that sincerity
which before had compelled her. But she shifted
her eyes stubbornly and insisted:

“It’s very strange that on this particular night, when
I was to be robbed of something that matters more to
me than—It does seem very strange, your forcing
your way in as you did.”

“He didn’t force his way in. I tell you I sent for
him,” said Aunt Helene.

Pape, however, nodded in agreement. “It was and
is strange. I ain’t contradicting you, notice. Everything
to-night seems mighty strange—to me, as well
as to you. If you’d just stop to consider that all
friends are strangers to start with, if you’d yield to
your instinct, which won’t lead you astray in my case,
if you’d tag what’s worrying you so that I could know
where we’re headed for——”

Again Mrs. Sturgis interrupted, this time from excitement
within herself. She seized Jane’s arm by way
of claiming that difficult young relative’s attention.

“It has just occurred to me what—Jane Lauderdale,
do you mean for one minute to tell me that you’ve
found——”

“I don’t mean to tell anything.”

The click of the girl’s voice silenced further importunities.
Mrs. Sturgis clasped her hands tightly from
nervous suppression, her continued mutterings clipped
by a knife-like look from Jane.

“I do think you ought to tell if by hook or crook
you’ve found— There now, don’t flare up again! I
don’t wonder, poor dear, that you’re upset. Just remember
that I’m upset, too. And I can’t help feeling
a little hurt that you don’t show more confidence in
one who has done her best to keep you from missing
the mother who— But there, we won’t speak of that
now. What do you make of the case Mr. Po—Pape?
What does your professional instinct tell you?”

In truth, Why Not Pape’s “professional” instinct
had not been very communicative. But the result of
his unprofessional investigation—Jane’s distress, climaxing
in her suspicion of him—had brought him
through a conclusive mental process. There had been
a robbery and a peculiar one. Money, bonds and valuable
jewelry had been passed by in the theft of an
unnamed something vitally precious to a girl whom
he had offered to befriend.

Already much valuable time had been lost through
Mrs. Sturgis’ incertitude, her summons of Jane and
Jane’s unwitting summons of himself. His impulsive
participation was delaying the more expert search
which should have been instigated at once. The thief
might have escaped through his interposition of himself.
He felt that he ought to make amends if the time
for such had not already passed.

Through this mental summary, accomplished during
the moment that followed the matron’s demand, Pape
managed the appearance of a man in deep study. At
its conclusion——

“Looks like an inside job,” he declared.

“By inside you mean— Please don’t suspect any one
within my household.” Mrs. Sturgis’ color rose with
the advice.

“I have no right to suspect any one—not yet,
madam. I am considering only known facts. Your
safe has been robbed within the last few hours of the
contents of this heirloom snuff-box. I assume, Miss
Lauderdale, that you are ready to swear your treasure
was inside the box when you entrusted it to your
aunt?”

“You may—” Jane crisply. “I am not given to figments
of the imagination.”

“I congratulate you, miss. The safe was opened by
no ordinary robber, as proved by the valuables left.
Somebody who appreciated the contents of—of Miss
Lauderdale’s treasure committed the theft and in such
a hurry that he or she did not wait to extract the contents,
but took box and all. Later this person, not
knowing that Mrs. Sturgis had been to the safe in the
meantime and discovered the loss, found opportunity
to replace the now-empty box and, in the hurry of closing
the door, jarred the mechanism of the lock.”

Mrs. Sturgis nodded; looked really quite encouraged.
“That could have been done while I went up stairs to
dress after sending to the Metropolitan for my niece.
But I do hope you’re not going to make the mistake of
accusing my servants. They’ve been with me for
years.”

“I am not going to accuse any one, although servants
have a way of making less honest friends who use
them. I simply say that no professional turned this
trick. The case is one for Central Office men. Even
if it were in my line, I could not, under the circumstances,
take the responsibility of it myself.”

“Under what circumstances, Mr. Pope—that is,
*Pape*? You don’t intend to leave us—to desert us just
when——”

Pape silenced Aunt Helene’s protestations with a
creditable gesture. “The lack of confidence in me—even
suspicion of me—shown by Miss Lauderdale
makes it impossible for me to proceed. I have gone as
far as I can in a case where I’m not to be given a hint
of the nature of the stolen article which I am asked to
replace. Since, however, I’ve been called in, I must
discharge my obligation as an officer of the law. Where
is—oh, I see it. May I use your phone, Mrs. Sturgis?”

“Certainly. But w-what are you about to do?”

“To call up Headquarters and have a brace of bulls—beg
pardon—a span of detectives sent up at once.
We shall hope that they look more worthy of Miss
Lauderdale’s confidence.”

With this dignified declaration Pape strode across
the room to a telephone cabinet in the corner; sat down
and lifted the receiver. But he never heard the
response.

One ringless hand brushed past his lips and cupped
the mouthpiece, another pressed down the hook.
Jane’s face, again disagreeable, strained, strange, bent
over him. At just that moment he recalled that the
line was said to be out of commission, a fact which
they two appeared to have forgotten. Deeming the
point of distance from Aunt Helene an advantage, he
decided not to remind Jane, lest he silence what she
was about to say.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she quavered. “I don’t
want a detective—any detectives.”

“Oh, yes, you do.” Pape spoke in a tone authoritative
from his sincere wish to get her the best possible
advice in the least possible time. “Of course I’ll see it
through, too, if you want me to and ask me to. But I
must have help on the case. Just let me get a good man
detailed, then don’t worry. We’ll get a rope on your
petty thief sooner than——”

“*No.* I won’t have any one from Central Office. I
can’t have the matter made public. When I thought
the box stolen among other things I was willing. But
I’ve changed my mind now I know that only the—that
it— Oh, you don’t understand and I can’t explain!
But it isn’t a petty theft, Mr. Pape.”

She leaned lower over him. Her voice dropped into
a whispered rasp.

“You’d forgive me for not knowing whom to trust
if you could realize that what was in that box means
everything to me and that I’d never get it back if its
real value became known. Can’t you imagine something
whose loss means the completest kind of ruin to
me and to one who——”

She pressed her teeth into her lower lip, whether to
stop its quivering or its admission he did not care.
He felt his sensibilities scorched by the blue blaze of
fears which had burnt the doubt of him from her eyes.
His original ideas of how to learn this lady he had
self-selected seemed somehow thrown into the discard.
They were much too slow, much too steady, much too
cool as compared with hot, dizzy, instantaneous realization
like this. One didn’t learn *the* woman. One just
knew her. And knowing her as *the* woman, one served
her.

Without superfluous words Pape’s lips swore their
oath of allegiance—fervently kissed her hand. The
click of the receiver being returned to its useless hook
punctuated the small ceremony—that and the distant
tintillation of an electric bell.

“Thank goodness, they’re back at last, the folks for
supper!” exclaimed Aunt Helene and started for the
stair-head.

Jane started after her. “One minute, Auntie. I
want to ask—to beg a favor of you.”

Pape followed them to their stand in the hall, glancing
hastily about for his hat and overcoat. He decided
that he must escape. The returning quartette—Irene
especially—could not be expected to play his game as
had the strangely hostile, compliant and altogether
enigmatic Jane. Stripped of his professional mask, he
would lose the advantage he had gained with Aunt
Helene, even did her niece deign to let him hold it for
long. Perhaps he’d better forget his hat and coat. Yet
how to get out without passing the party——

“If you’ll point the way to the back-stairs, madam—”
he began. “It would be better if your friends did not
see me. As the sleuth on the case I don’t want to be
recognized.”

Jane interrupted, her one hand grasping his arm, her
other Mrs. Sturgis’. Rapidly Jasper could be heard
pad-padding through the lower hall to the street door.

“There’s no need for you to be named as a—a sleuth,
Mr. Pape. Aunt Helene, what I wanted to ask—to
implore is that you don’t mention the theft at all. As
the only loser, I insist on working it out my own way.
Won’t you promise, please?”

“But, my dear, there must be some explanation to
Harford—my hurrying you home and all——”

“You won’t stop at a white fib for me, Aunt Helene?
I’ll tell a million for you about anything—whenever
you say. Listen. You had an attack of—what was it?
Headache from your eyes.”

“Nothing of the sort. Indigestion. *Why* do you
insist that my eyes——”

“Indigestion, then. Anything you like. You didn’t
wish to spoil Irene’s evening, but couldn’t be alone.
You feel better now, but—quick, come back into the
library. Stretch out on the couch. Mr. Pape, help
me—help her!”

There was no time to enquire into the advisability
of Jane’s plea. As the street door thudded shut and
light voices waved upward, her tug on the matron’s
plump elbow was released in an imperative gesture to
Pape.

He, nothing loath, snatched up the surprised lady
and deposited her upon the pillow-piled couch before
the library grate. Jane, with rapid movements, completely
enveloped her with the rare old Kiskillum rug
which had draped its foot, sternly tucking in the
dimpled, pearl-adorned hands which *would* strive upward
to smooth a really unruffled coiffure.

“How does making a fright of me help?” Aunt
Helene complained.

Pape did not answer. He was looking about for the
stray bottle of smelling-salts which, for sake of realism,
he should be pressing to her nostrils. Before he could
locate any such first-aid, however, the daughter of the
house had achieved the second floor and dawdled delightedly
into the room.

Straight for the Westerner she came head-on, soft
exclamations floating from her like the sea-foam tulle
from about her throat.

“Do you know, I *knew* you’d stick around until I
came! Harfy is *fee*-urious—his mustache does look so
bristly when he gets in a rage. But I believe in trusting
each other, don’t you? Do you or don’t you, Why-Not
Pape?”

Through his mumbled response Pape realized
wretchedly that Mrs. Sturgis had been raised to a sitting
posture by strength of her astonishment. He
heard her demand:

“Irene, you know —— Jane, where in the world
could she——”

Also he heard Jane’s hurried, low-voiced explanation.

“I was trying to tell you a while ago. Don’t you
remember that I said how strange it all was? You
see, he’s an acquaintance of mine from the Yellowstone.
He was at the opera to-night. That’s why he
is wearing evening clothes. But here come the Allens.
Now, *please*——”

Mrs. Sturgis was obliged to take it at a gulp. She
sat like some ruffled chicken doctored for the pip in
her straw-heap of rug, smoothing her plumage, winking
from smart of the idea and greeting her friends. Evidently
she was none too taken with the impromptu rôle
thrust upon her—would have preferred the thriller of
lady-assailed-in-her-castle—but she played it with all
due languor, not forgetting a line, even on Irene’s demand
that she invite Mr. Pape, who to her still must
look somewhat like a mere operative from the Arsenal
Precinct, to join the supper party.

Pape’s first weak thought was to refuse. The patent
pincers at the moment gave him a twinge, as they had
several times during recent excitements. Really, he
owed it to his feet to go home. But that wouldn’t
sound either a legitimate or romantic excuse to a lady
exacting as she was young and fair. The fear that if
he went now he might never get back decided him to
accept.

Despite his inspirational superiority to all slow-but-sure
methods, he found himself unable to advance one
step that night toward the girl to whom he had made a
vow of service. Mills Harford was a substantial barrier,
although the “bristles” of his mustache relaxed to
show boyishly charming smiles. By everybody, Jasper
included, “Harfy” was accorded absolute right to seat
Miss Lauderdale at table, to serve her, to engage her
attention.

Then there was the difficulty of Irene.

“They teased me like everything for letting Cousin
Jane snatch you out of the box to-night,” she confided
to Pape. “You see she took me by surprise. I won’t
let her grab like that again. Don’t you ever worry.
Nothing is impossible to Rene, either.”

He did worry, though. In her he caught his first
glimpse of the perquisites of “our young ladies to-day,”
and he couldn’t help worrying. Why should he?
And yet, looking into ardent Irene’s eyes, why not?

When Pape descended the brownstone steps to the
sidewalk of Fifth Avenue, it was not late from the
standpoint of the company to whom he had said good-by.
But he smiled to think how Hellroaring Valley
had been wrapped in slumber hours and hours before.

He crossed the asphalt to the park side and made his
way toward Fifty-ninth Street. He did not want a
cab. A walk to the Astor was just what he needed, he
felt. It would help him to straighten out some of the
tangles which the experiences of the night had left in
his brain.

He looked off to his right upon the expanse of bare
trees with their background of tall, still-lighted buildings.
To him came the memory, as if from some far-away
day, of the alone-ness in the midst of city throngs
which had kept him loping his piebald over park bridle
paths.

“Strange,” she had called this night’s experience.
Yet she could not appreciate how strange was the fact
that he was not lonely now. He should never be lonely
again. Had he not met her? And did he not recognize
her—Jane?

Probably she did not yet recognize him. She had
snuffed his offer of service in the finding of that unnamed
treasure which she had lost, just as she had
snuffed his personal interest in her by her rather rude
dismissal of him before the Metropolitan.

But what she did or said or thought was only her
side of it—not necessarily his. He stood committed
both by word and wish to accept the situation as she
presented it, to trust her wholly in return for her refusal
to trust him, to help her whether she wished his
help or no.

And this because he, Peter, had met her, Jane!

CHAPTER X—THE OLD PARK LADY
===========================

Central Park, even with its horde of transitory
inhabitants, looked more than ever like
home to Peter Pape this late afternoon. Feeling the
necessity of a private conclusion or two, he loped Polkadot
into what he hoped would prove the less used
path. His thoughts, like the pinto’s hoof-beats, were
of a rather violent, not to say exclamatory sort.

Three whole days since he had met her, and not once
since had he seen her! Considering the emphasis with
which he had interpolated himself into her acquaintance
that opera evening, the length of the unbroken
after-pause seemed incredible. Here was he, lonelier
than before receipt of the advices of ’Donis Moore,
in that now he knew what earlier he only had suspected
he was missing.

He felt as forlorn as looked a bent old woman who
stood beneath the trail-side shade, leaning against a
tree. Out of date was her nondescript bonnet of the
poke persuasion, rusty her black silk dress, ineffectual
her attitude. Too primitive for the Society into which
he had cantered must be his Far-West methods, since
rusted over were his hopes and resultless his to-day.

Sight of a sheep herd browsing over “The Green”
sufficiently surprised and pleased his pastoral eye as to
brighten temporarily his mood. He polkaed Dot down
to a walk.

A flock of Dorsets in the Great Garden of New York
Town! More than a hundred horned heads he estimated
them, not counting the wobbly-legged lambs
trailing the ewes. Although oil was Pape’s bonanza,
cattle was his stock in trade, yet he felt none of the
cowman’s usual aversion for the wearers of fleece. He
was, as a matter of fact, a “mixed” rancher, with sheep
of his own on the Hellroaring reaches. He rejoiced
that these animals, at least, could enjoy the company of
their kind and graze to their taste. Indeed, a more
satisfactory pasture could not have been found for
them, except for the fact that an over-used auto-road
“unfenced” that side of it next the bridle path. The
condition, precarious both for the sheep and the drivers
of cars, hung heavily in his consideration until he
caught sight of the dog that was on guard.

“What d’you think of that, horse-alive?” he made
demand of Polkadot. “A police hound instead of a
collie—a Belgian, at that—close-herding the woollies?”

When one of the fattest of the mutton-heads waddled
into the auto-greased roadway in an ambitious expedition
toward the grass-tufted border along the path,
Pape pulled his painted pony to a stop and watched
with active interest.

“Quick, Kicko, round her up!”

The shouted command came from the flock-master,
appearing at a run around the far side of the band.

Unmistakable as the breed of the dog was the intelligence
of his work. With warning, staccato yelps
he dashed from among the more discreet of his charges,
cut off the stray from her goal, snatched her by a
mouthful of wool out of the path of a speeding car,
then nipped her into a return rush to the safety of The
Green.

“Great work, Kicko! Here, boy, I want to shake!”

Pape, enthusiastic over the best bit of herding he
ever had seen done under adverse circumstances, rode
toward the dog hero, swung out of the saddle and met
him more than halfway in the paw-shaking, ear-scratching
formalities that followed.

The master, a stout, middle-aged, uniformed expert,
showed himself as pleased with the introduction as his
canine assistant. He gave his name as Tom Hoey of
the Sheepfold, the gabled roof of which could be plainly
seen a short distance south and nearer the park wall.
Willingly enough he contributed to the information
fund of the easy-going stranger.

Yes, Kicko was a police dog, the gift of a returned
army captain and the only herder of his breed in captivity.
The park collie, in active service for years, had
been about ready for retirement at the time of the
foreigner’s arrival. A short chain attached to the
swivel collars on the necks of both had enabled the old
Scot to teach the young Belgian the trade of disciplining
woolly quadrupeds instead of two-legged humans.

“I, for one, don’t hope to meet a better policer in
this world and I sure don’t expect to in the next,” the
owner boasted. “He’s got a whole repertory of tricks
that he’s worked out for his own amusement, besides
knowing by heart all the dog A-B-C’s, such as shaking
hands, speaking and fetching things. One of the most
useful things he does is going for my lunch noontimes.
He brings it nice and hot in a tin pail from my house
by the wall yonder. There’s just one trouble about
him, though—eh, old side Kick? If he meets up with
one of the many friends he’s made, or even if he takes
a special shine to somebody new—Kicko’s one fault is
his sociability—he’ll like as not present my meal to
some one that ain’t half as hungry or as entitled to it
as I.”

“We’ll meet again.”

So Pape assured the shepherd pair on continuing his
ride. He wished that all the folks he met were as
friendly and as easy to understand as they. By comparison,
for instance, each and every member of that
dressed-up party of Gothamites into whose midst he
had insisted himself the other night seemed doubly
complex.

His attitude had been plain as day; theirs, both separately
and as a whole, incomprehensible. And since
that evening, the conduct of all had been as misleading
as his had been direct. This was the afternoon of the
third ineffectual after day. It was all right for handsome
fellows like the traffic cop to advise him to do
something that would “make ’em take notice.” He
had done it—done it so well that they had noticed him
enough to decide not to notice him. To him the situation
seemed to call for some deed even more noticeable.
Again, *what*? Leaving the pace to the piebald, he
brisked along in review.

At the enthusiastic hour of six :small-caps:`a.m.` that morning
after sighting Society, he had risen and rigged himself
to do and dare on the high-seas of adventure. Any
idea of adhering to the original “slow and steady” stipulation
of his experiment not already quashed by first
sight and sound of Miss Lauderdale must have been
ruled out by sub-consciousness during his brief sleep.
Slow and steady would have been proper enough in
almost any other conceivable case of discovering
whether a woman was *the* woman. But as applied to
Jane, any method other than gun-fire quick seemed
somehow a reflection on her. An excellent rule, no
doubt—slow and steady. She, however, was super-excellent—an
exception to any rule.

Realization that he was essaying rather an early
start had struck him as he steered a course through
Mr. ——or Mrs. Astor’s fleet of scrub ladies, tugging
at their brush anchors over the seas of Jersey-made
marble, evidently about ready to call it a night’s voyage.
He had left his berth without any call, as six :small-caps:`a.m.`
long had been and doubtless long would remain his
hour for setting sail into the whitecaps of each new
day.

So transformed was The Way outside that he
scarcely could recall its nocturnal whiteness or gayety.
Strict business ruled it. Luggage-laden taxis sped
toward or from the ports of early trains. Surface cars
demanded blatantly, if unnecessarily, the right o’ way.
Motor trucks groaned hither and yon with their miseries
of dripping ice, jangling milk cans, bread, vegetables—what
not. Only the pavements were empty at
that hour. Blocks and blocks of them stretched out,
practically uncontested.

A moment he “lay-to” for an upward survey of the
greeting he had bought from himself to himself, which
last evening had seemed the howdy-doo of Destiny. It
wasn’t so conspicuous in daytime with the lights off,
although the contractor had been clever about blocking
in behind the incandescents so that the letters within
the bouquet border still were legible. Even had they
not been, he shouldn’t have felt disappointed. To
every electric sign its night, as to every dog his day!
Wasn’t he now the gayest dog that ever believed in
signs? And wasn’t this to be his day?

More often than not breakfast to Pape was a matter
of bacon, coffee and buckwheat cakes. Although the
more expensive restaurants along The Way were, like
the lobby of his hotel, still in process of being scrubbed
out, he soon found a chop-house ready to “stack” for
him. At table he ate rather abstractedly, his mind and
most of his fingers engaged with the sheaf of morning
papers collected during his walk.

Yes, the curiosity of reportorial minds to the number
of three had been sufficiently stirred by the mystery
of the new sign to give it mention. One touched the
subject only to drop it, frankly suspicious of some new
advertising insult. Another treated it in jocular vein,
with that grateful spur-of-the-moment wit which occasionally
enlivens columns thrown together under
such stress of time. A third declared its ignorance of
the whyfore of Why-Not Pape, but had no objection
to his, her or its being welcomed to the city. The
question was raised, however, of just what awful thing
W. N. Pape could have committed in his past to need
the moral support of so rare and roseate a reassurance.

When the last drop of coffee had washed down the
last scrap of wheat-cake, the man from Montana
further treated himself to a series of chuckles. Was
the joke on him or on the Big Town? Which or
whether, it was catching on. And there was one small
assortment of A1 New Yorkers who would enjoy the
joke with him—who knew the kingdom, gender, case-number
and several other etceteras of Why-Not Pape.
That is, they would enjoy it if not too suspicious of
him. Just about how suspicious they were was the
next thing he needed to know.

That supper party at the Sturgis house had run its
courses smoothly enough, at least on the surface. But
their see-you-again-soons had a haziness which he could
not break through. It is true that Irene had met the
mention of his favorite pastime of horse-backing in the
park with a far from hazy hint that they “co-ride.”
But that possibility he had preferred to leave vague.
He had “pulled out” creditably, he hoped—with all the
good-form he remembered having been taught or told
about.

The evening’s paramount issue had increased in importance
overnight—that matter of a safe robbed of
unnamed loot. What could the stolen treasure be—of
a size that could be hidden in a snuff-box, yet so valuable
that its loss was tragedy?

Jane Lauderdale was a number of wonderful things.
Was she wonderfully unreasonable or more wonderfully
distrustful of him? There was a chance that
overnight she had had one of those changes of mind
said to be the pet prerogative of the fair. Just perhaps
she now would be willing to accept the service he had
offered—service which he meant should be hers whether
she wished it or not.

The next impending question regarded the hour at
which young ladies got up of a morning in this woman’s
town. This he put to the sleepy-eyed blond
cashier of the restaurant.

“You trying to kid me, customer?” was her cautious
reply. “If no, it depends upon where said lady lives.
Fifth Avenue in the Sixties? Ain’t you flapping kinda
high? I’d say anywheres from ten :small-caps:`A.M.` to twelve
noon. Why not jingle up her maid and ask? Oh,
you’re welcome and to spare. Keep the change.”

Before entering the nearest cigar store to act on this
suggestion, Pape remembered that last night the Sturgis’
phone had been declared useless—its wires cut. He
called for the repair department of the company. The
voice with a rather dubious “smile” at the other end
of the line agreed to enquire just when the number
would be restored to service.

“Say, Useless,” came the answer in a moment, “that
line’s in order. Hasn’t been out. I just got an O. K.
over it. You must have got wrong information from
one of our centrals. Excuse, please.”

He would have “excused” with more pleasure if his
simple question had not started a series of others more
involved. How did a ’phone fallacy fit into the robbery
plot? Why had the wheezy butler, Jasper, been
sent afoot to the nearest police station if the wires had
not been cut? Did Jane know or did she not that the
line was in order when she stopped him in his attempt
to call Headquarters?

He decided not to “jingle her maid” at once but to
await the hour first suggested by the “blond” cashier
before asking answers. Jane Lauderdale looked the
kind of girl who would have arisen by ten :small-caps:`a.m.` At
any rate, he would give her benefit of doubt. But no
mental preparation during the interim, as to what tack
her temper might take, in any way prepared him for
that morning’s second shock.

Jasper answered—there was no mistaking his voice.
Pape followed the announcement of his name with a
comment over the speed with which the telephone had
been fixed, to which the born butler replied smoothly,
impersonally, non-committally.

“Yes, Mr. Pape. The Telephone Company is exceedingly
efficient, sir.”

The request for speech with Miss Lauderdale was
met with equal competence.

“The family is all out. They left early this morning
for the country, sir, to seek a few days of peace
and quiet.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, Mr. Pape, all of them.”

“What’s their address?”

“They left no address. They never do, sir, when
they go for peace and quiet. Good day, sir.”

With which, actually, that sebacious, ostentatious,
fallacious importation had hung up on him.

To Pape’s daily inquiries since Jasper had replied
with consistent politeness, if with consistent lack of
information. The Westerner hated him for his very
perfection in his part; was inclined to the belief that
America was no place for an intelligence limited to being
a butler.

What about his—Why-Not’s—peace and quiet?
Wasn’t *he* entitled to any such? Indignation had flung
with him out of the booth that first morning; had
matched his pace since; was riding with him to-day.

In the interval Pape had made efforts other than over
the Sturgis telephone to locate geographically the rural
resting-place mentioned all too vaguely by Jasper. His
first visit to that mountainous district known to the
Metropolitan Police as “below the dead-line” was not
in the squaring of certain overdue accounts of his own
which had been the basic impulse of his Eastern exile,
but in the hope of locating the other members of that
Zaza box-party.

In a cloud-piercer near the corner of William and
Wall Streets he found the office suite occupied by ex-Judge
Samuel Allen and associated attorneys, evidently
an affiliation of standing “at the bar”—a phrase which,
since Volstead, is no longer misunderstood as meaning
anything but “in the Law.” He gained admittance into
the reception room, but, so far as achieving audience
with the head of the firm, the legal lair proved more
impregnable than the ranger-guarded Yellowstone to
a tusk-hunter.

The “line-fence” was ridden by thick-rouged, thin-bloused
office girls who doubtless had been instructed
that all unexpected callers were suspicious characters
and to be treated accordingly. Once the judge was in
court, which court no one seemed to know. Pape left
his name. On a second visit he was allowed to “dig
his spurs” into chair rungs most of an afternoon under
the hopeful glances of the “dolls,” while awaiting the
end of an alleged conference, only to be told with none-too-regretful
apologies that Mr. Allen, having been
called to attend the directors of the Hardened Steel
Corporation, had departed without knowing that Mr.
Pape awaited him. A third time——

But it is enough—was more than enough for him—that
he never broke through the barrier of too-red lips
with their too-patent, stock lies; never caught even a
long-distance glimpse of the jurist of small person and
large personality.

Failure to find the likeable Mills Harford came more
quickly and saved a deal of time. “Harfy’s” trail
showed plainly in the City Directory and his “ranch”
proved to be another of those “places of business”
where everything but business was attended, a real-estate
office in one of the block-square structures that
surround the Grand Central Terminal. Mr. Harford
had departed on a yachting trip around Long Island,
Pape was told—a statement which he had no cause
to doubt.

Although Peter Pape had signaled Broadway in
general with what he liked to call the “high sign,” his
desire for adventure had particularized. He could not
be satisfied to go on to a next, with the first only begun.
He finished what he started, unless for some reason
stronger than his will.

More than by the beauty of Jane Lauderdale’s face,
he was haunted by its look of fear. The little drama
at the Sturgis house that night could not have been
staged for benefit of himself, whose presence there was
purely accidental. Its unaccountable denouement had
terrorized the aunt as well as niece. Much more was
unexplained than the nature of the stolen treasure and
the cause of that false report anent the severed telephone
wires.

To epitomize the present state of mind of Why-Not
Pape, “making ’em notice him” had boiled down into
one concentrated demand that the high-strung girl
whom he had self-selected and later approved by instinct
instead of rule—that Jane Lauderdale should
notice his readiness to do or die in her service.

He had the will. Whither was the way?

Nights and days had passed since he had pressed
that thrilling kiss of allegiance upon her finger-tips.
Yet here was he strolling aimlessly down The Way,
after having stabled Polkadot for an equine feast *au
fait* and himself dined at a restaurant near Columbus
Circle. The bright lights could have no allurement for
him. Signs were dull indeed that one didn’t wish to
follow.

The wish formed in his mind for some friend with
whom to talk. Not that he was given to confidence with
men or cared to engage any feminine ear, save one.
But he would have appreciated a word or look of simple
sympathy—a moment of companionship that he knew
to be genuine with——

He turned squarely about and started back the way
he had come. The very sort of friend he needed!

Kicko would be off duty by now and likely as glad
as he to improve their acquaintance, so pleasantly begun.
If Shepherd Tom was about they could smoke
and talk sheep. There was a lot about woollies these
B’way folk didn’t know—that, for instance, they could
take care of themselves for eight months of the year
and cost only seven cents a day for the other four.
Yes, he and Tom Hoey could talk sheep at the city’s
Fold. He would seek that “peace and quiet” which he
hoped Jane had found in the deepening shade of the
only part of Manhattan that at all resembled his West;
was more likely to locate it there than along the avenue
of amperes and kilowatts.

His ambition seemed to be shared before announced.
Scarcely had he turned into the roadway leading from
Central Park West to the Sheepfold when he met the
police dog coming out. All that he had hoped for was
Kicko’s greeting. The more conveniently to vent his
feelings, the astute, sharp-featured Belgian placed upon
the ground the small tin bucket which he was carrying,
evidently the lunch pail of his favorite “trick.” Soon
picking it up, however, he issued a straight-tailed invitation
to “come along.” Pape realized that he had
some definite objective—probably was taking supper
instead of lunch to Shepherd Tom. He accepted.

Many a lead had the whys and why-nots of Peter
Pape’s nature forced him to follow, but never so interestedly
had he followed the lead of a dog. And
Kicko showed that he appreciated the confidence. He
would dash ahead; would stop and look back; would
set down his precious pail, most times merely to yap
encouragement, twice to return to his new friend and
urge him on by licking his hand.

When they left the beaten path for the natural park
and approached a hummock marked by rocks and a
group of poplars whose artistic setting Pape had admired
in passing earlier that afternoon, the police dog’s
excitement grew. Beside a dark mass, hunched-over
close to the ground, Kicko dropped the bucket with a
final yelp of accomplishment.

At once the dark mass straightened into human
shape. Pape stopped and stared. Almost at once he
recognized the poke-bonneted old lady with whose forlorn
appearance he had compared his own state. Then
she had stood leaning against a tree at the foot of the
hill. Now she looked to have been digging in the
woodsy earth. A considerable mound of soil lay beside
the hole over which she had crouched and she
brandished a trowel against Kicko’s exuberant importunities.
Her back was toward Pape.

As he hesitated over whether to advance or face
about, disliking both to startle her and to be caught in
what might seem the retreat of a spy, he overheard
what she was saying to the dog. He shivered from
an odd sensation, not like either cold or heat, that
passed up his spinal column and into his neck.

“No, you don’t, you wriggly wretch! I know perfectly
well what you’ve got in that bucket of yours this
time of day—nothing but the saved-up old bones that
they don’t want you to bury in the flower-beds about
the Sheepfold.”

When Kicko, as if acknowledging himself caught,
seized the handle of his pail and shook it toward her
appealingly, she took off the lid and laughed aloud at
his ruse. In the regardless embrace which she threw
around his scraggy neck, she spilled what showed to
be a collection of more or less aged bones.

“Just because you’re so attractive, I’ll *maybe* let you
have your way,” she informed him seriously as though
addressing a human. “If I don’t find what I’m after,
you may bury your precious *debris* as I scoop back the
dirt. But you’ll have to wait until I— Back, now! I
tell you, you’ve got to wait until I’m sure this isn’t the
place where——”

Pape didn’t stand still longer. Her voice—sweet,
strong, familiar—lured him. He forgot his question
to advance or retreat. He advanced—and rapidly. By
the time he reached her he had outstrode all his consideration
for her age and forlorn state. His hurry
made him rough. He stooped over the lowered poke
bonnet; unclasped the two arms from about Kicko’s
neck; literally, jerked the woman to her feet.

Well proportioned, for so old and ill-clad a lady, did
she show to be as she sprang back from him, surprised
into height, straightness and lissome lines. The face
within the scoop of the bonnet was pale from passion—surprise,
anger, fear—or perhaps all three. She
was——

“Jane!” he exclaimed.

“*You*!” cried she.

He stared at her, his tongue too crowded with demands
to speak any one of them. He continued to
stare as she fell back to her knees and, with her trowel,
refilled the hole she had dug. Before he realized what
she was about, she had picked up a pile of wilted plants
that lay nearby; had down-doubled her tallness,
straightness and lissomeness into her former old-lady
lines; with a rapid, shuffling walk, had started down
and around the hummock.

“Just a minute, Miss Lauderdale,” he called. “I
didn’t mean to startle you. Can’t we have a word or
two or three?”

She did not answer, did not turn—only hurried away
from him the faster. He set out after her; recrossed
the bridle path; entered the deepening shadows toward
the heart of the park.

Kicko, who had shown in his whines a spirit torn
by regret to forsake either his bones or his friends, now
caught up with Pape, briefly sniffed his hand, then
trotted after the bent, dingy, scuttling figure merging
into the gloom beyond.

The dog’s appeal she heeded, but with a well-aimed
stone.

“Go back,” she ordered him. “Don’t you dare follow
me. If you do—if anybody follows me—I’ll find a
policeman and get you both arrested for annoying me.”

Kicko, tail between legs, skulked back in the general
direction of his treasure pile.

Pape, too, heeded to some extent her warning, evidently
meant more for him than the dog. But, although
he slackened his pace, he did not turn or skulk.
There were reasons a-plenty why he felt justified in
pursuit.

CHAPTER XI—DUE EAST
===================

The greatest of parks has its bright sides, many-faceted
as the Kohinoor, croquet grounds for the
old, benches for the parlorless tenement young, shaded
arbors for the love possessed, pagodas for picknickers,
May poles for the youngsters, roller-skating on the
Mall, rowing on the lakes. Just as a jewel catches the
light from only one direction at a time, however, this
emerald of the city has also its shadows.

Already Why-Not Pape had realized this of his
adopted range; knew that, despite the scattering of such
policemen as could be spared from pavement-beats outside
and the greater number of electric lights upon
whose surveillance the City Fathers appeared to place
their chief dependence, serious crimes occasionally occurred
in Gotham’s great, green heart. Even during
his short stay he had noted in the daily news tales and
tales of outlawry that would have called out posses in
Montana—of women held up afoot or in taxis, of men
relieved of their valuables at gun-point, of children
kidnapped for ransom, of a region of caves occupied
by bandits, of footloose pickpockets and mashers.

An inclusive thought of the possibilities of the region
in the dead dark of a moonless night was what had
started him after the bent, black figure scuttling into
the fast-dropping gloom ahead. She had repulsed him
even more ungratefully than she had the dog—as scornfully
as though there were no Metropolitan Grand
Opera House at Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway, as
though her Parian pallor had not turned the hue of the
ardor with which, a few nights ago, his lips had pressed
her hand. But, whether her denial of him was from
whim or necessity, he could not permit her to cross the
park unguarded at that hour.

And surely there was enough else that was strange
about this, their third encounter, to have overcome the
prideful hesitation of the most ill-treated man. Hours
back, in mid-afternoon, he had seen her in the witch-like
disguise of an old herb-hunter, trying to locate
some particular spot without arousing the suspicions
either of passers-by or of the authorities. Her quest
had kept her long past the most fashionable dinner
hour. Doubtless she had waited until dusk before beginning
the actual digging with her trowel in order to
decrease the chances of interfering in what must be a
violation of the most sacred park regulations.

The sagacity of the Belgian dog in bringing his
bucket of bones to be buried where the burying was
easy suggested that he had met up and made friends
with her before in a like past proceeding. Now that
she was headed in the general direction of her Fifth
Avenue home, why didn’t she go to one of the nearer
exits, hail a taxi or take a street-car around? Granting
some reason why she preferred to walk, why not by
the foot-path along Traverse Road, only a few rods
below? That would have brought her out of the park
almost opposite the Sturgis home.

But she was not keeping to any of the paths; seemed
rather to avoid them as she hurried due east across the
meadow known as “The Green.”

Casting off speculation as unprofitable for the nonce,
Why-Not Pape kept after her, trailing with care lest
she realize that her biped protector had more doggedness
than the rebuked canine. It wasn’t an extremely
romantic way of “Seeing Nellie Home,” but certainly
had speed and mystery. Perhaps, at that, romance
would end the evening, as it did in books, plays, pictures!

When about halfway across the park, the girl
changed her course southward toward the truck road.
Pape, hoping that she meant to take the beaten track
the latter part of her strange retreat, increased his pace
in order to cut in ahead of her. Not that he intended
to force an interview upon her in her present mood—he
had too much consideration for himself to invite another
command which he must break. He wished
merely to conceal the bulk of himself in the first convenient
shadow, there to wait until she had passed,
then again to follow at a distance discreet, but sufficiently
close to enable him to be of service in case of
need.

By running the last hundred yards, he realized this
scheme; reached the traverse first; lowered himself over
the stone abutment; dropped to the flagging at the bottom
of the cut. The road he knew to be one of four
which cross-line Central Park as unostentatiously as
possible to accommodate the heavy vehicular traffic
from East Side to West and back again. Much as he
resented every reminder of the fallacy of Polkadot’s pet
illusion and his own—that this was a bit of home—he
appreciated that Father Knickerbocker, even for the
sake of giving his rich and poor this vast melting pot,
could not have asked “business” to drive around an
oblong extending from Fifty-ninth to One-hundred-tenth
Streets. It was something to rejoice over that,
while utility was served, the roadways were sunk so
deep that the scenic effect of the whole was scarcely
marred.

During his wait close against the shadowed side of
the wall, Pape’s thoughts sped along at something the
recent pace of his feet. The look on Jane Lauderdale’s
face when he had surprised her at her digging just now
was that same look of fear which had haunted him
since she had opened her restored, but emptied heirloom
box. The strangeness of her behavior afterward,
the cruelty of her suspicion of him, her denial of him
to-night—all only emphasized that pitiable, terrorized
look.

Had her object then and now the sameness of her
look? Was she seeking over the expanse of the park
that mysterious, stolen something which formerly had
been contained in a snuff-box? If so, what clew could
she have found that it might be cachéd beneath the
poplars?

Buried treasure! The *motif* had inspired thrillers
since thrills had been commercialized. But treasure
buried in Manhattan’s heart? So improbable was the
thought that, except for one thing, he might have adjudged
the eccentric-acting Miss Lauderdale to be
mildly mad—the one thing being that he knew she was
sane.

He did not, therefore, waste time doubting the entire
defensibility of his self-selected lady. She had good
reason for covering her personality by the garb and
gait of a crone before essaying her hunt; for feigning
to gather herbs while the daylight lasted; even for refusing
to recognize him after that first startled monosyllable
which had been the extent of her half of their
interview. In bonnet and black she had every chance of
being considered inside the law in the Irish, mother-loving
eyes of most of the “sparrow cops,” although
literally well outside. Dressed as the upper-crust young
beauty he first had met three nights ago, she would
have attracted—and deservedly—her “gallery” in no
time.

Come to consider, her crooked course home was also
logically straight. Her disguise would have aroused
suspicion in a taxi and made her conspicuous in a streetcar.
Since she knew her park, the cross-cut home was
preferable.

As the mystery of Jane and Jane’s tactics decreased,
however, the correlative mysteries increased—of the
selective robbery, the lied-about ’phone wires, the park
as a cemetery for something literally “lost” and the
direction, or mis-direction of the chief mourner’s
search.

A culminative interrogation point to add to his collection
was her next lead. She entered the Traverse
quite as his trailing sense had foretold at a spot where
the wall was easily negotiable. There he waited, assuming
that the rest of her route home would be direct
and planning, now that he had been assured of her
presence in town, that later in the evening he would
telephone the most direct and forceful plea of which he
was capable for an immediate interview.

But again she upset his calculations.

Instead of following the asphalted footpath that
hemmed the cobbles on one side of the cut, she picked
her place and scaled the south wall. Although the section
confronting him was higher, Pape lost no time in
following her example and gained the top to see her
dodging past one of the scattered lights. Darkness had
settled. Appreciating how easily he might lose her in
that unfamiliar section of municipal tumble-land, he
decreased the gap between them.

A veritable butte loomed in her path, but this she
took like a mountaineer. To Pape she appeared to be
executing some sort of an obstacle race with herself.
In his self-appointed capacity of rear-guard there was
nothing for him but to follow. Being something of a
climber himself, he reached the top just behind her,
despite her advantage of a trail which he had not been
able to find. Rounding one of the bowlder-formed
crags that gave picturesqueness to the baby mountain,
he pulled up short.

Jane was standing some few yards ahead, her bent
back toward him, a quaint, distinct silhouette in the
reflected light from Fifty-ninth Street. As she did not
once glance over-shoulder, she evidently considered his
pursuit thrown off. She may have paused to steady the
pulses disturbed by her lively climb; perhaps was enjoying
the electrical display which so fascinated him.

Indeed it was worth a long-time look, that fairyland
of The Plaza, as seen through the framing fringe
of trees, with its statues and fountains agleam; the
hotel-house of fifty-thousand candles, all lit; the lines
of Fifth Avenue’s golden globes stretching indefinitely
beyond; on all sides, far and near, the banked sky-line
of bright-blinking, essentially real palaces of modernity
which yet were so much more inconceivable than
Munchausen’s wildest dream. And that foreground
figure of an old woman on the crag—it might have
been posed as a fanciful conception of the Past pausing
to realize the Present—straining to peer into the
Future.

Into this picture, changing and marring it, intruded
a man. Up over the far side of the abutment and
straight toward the girl, as though expected, he came.
His appearance was the most distinct shock of the evening
to Pape.

“A rendezvous!” he told himself with sinking heart.
“She had to get rid of me—she had to hurry—in order
to keep a rendezvous.”

Her irregular course, her disregard of traveled
paths, her assault of this rock heap—everything in the
adventure except how she came to be rooting among
the poplars now seemed explained. Mentally he flayed
himself for his stupid assumptions and sense of personal
responsibility for her safety. He turned to descend
the way he had come—no need for her to know
what a following fool he had made of himself.

A certain quality of alarm in what he at first had
thought her greeting of the man stopped him. Then
forward he sprang, like a fragment blasted from the
rock. He closed the gap between and laid on the collar
and elbow of the lounger who had accosted her a violent
grip.

“What shall I do with him—drop him over or run
him in?”

More calmly than might have been expected, he
turned to the little old lady of his pursuit, the while
holding the fellow precariously near what might be
called, by phantasy of the night-lights, a “precipice.”

“You—again?” Whether from dread or relief,
Jane shuddered. “Are you everywhere?”

“Why not?”

His captive ceased squirming to whimper. “Leave
me go, officer. I wasn’t meaning no harm to the old
girl. Just thought I could help her down onta a safer
footing. Likely you had a mother onct yourself. For
her sake, have a heart.”

“He knows I’m not old. He has troubled me before.
If you’ll hold him a moment to make sure that
he doesn’t follow, I—I’d be much obliged.”

Jane, seeing her opportunity, took it; was off with
the agility of a Yellowstone doe; gained a trail and
disappeared down the side of the butte.

Pape did more than obey her admonition to hold
and make sure. That the meeting was rendezvous
rather than coincidence persisted in his fears. Odd,
otherwise, that she should come straight to the spot
where the man was waiting, as if for her. Even in her
complaint that he had troubled her before she admitted
previous meetings. Perhaps his own second appearance
of the evening was forcing both to play parts:
had made a sudden change of plan seem advisable to
her; would irritate the man into an attempt to deal out
punishment for the interference. Would the two meet
afterward at some second-choice point? Pape decided
to “look in”; by way of a start, dragged his captive
under an electric light which cast a sickly glow over the
flattened dome of the butte.

At once he went on guard against the “fightingest”
face he ever had glimpsed, set atop the bull-neck of a
figure that approximately matched his own in height
and weight, if not range iron. The fellow’s features
were assorted for brutishness, nose flattened as from
some past smash, lips thick, eyes small, ears cauliflower,
hair close-clipped. That a woman of Jane Lauderdale’s
type should have anything in common with so typical
a “pug” was incogitable.

For a moment, the pale eyes in turn studied him
through their narrowed, close-set shutters, evidently
“marking” for later identification. Then, in an unexpected,
forceful shove the inevitable bout began. Had
Pape not already braced himself against just such a
move, he must have toppled off the rocks. As happened,
he let go his hold and swung his body into
balance.

“Hell’s ashes, you’re no cop!”

The aggressor’s exclamation was punctuated by two
professionally ready fists. The right one led with a
surety that was in itself a warning. Only by an instinctive
duck of his head did Pape limit its damage
to a sting.

A decade or two has passed since Montana, while
still carrying “hardware” for hard cases, learned that
differences of opinion may be settled by the use of more
natural weapons; that punishment may be exacted without
calling in the coroner. Even had this metropolitan
fistic opening missed in point of impact, Why-Not
Pape would have offered satisfaction without thought
of recourse to the gun nestling under his left arm-pit.

Nature had been the Westerner’s trainer, a silver-tip
grizzly his one-best boxing instructor. With an awkwardly
efficient movement, he advanced upon his more
stealthy challenger. His arms carried close that he
might get all possible leverage behind his punches, he
waited until well within reach, then issued a series of
short-arm jabs.

The other, evidently trained to the squared circle,
depended upon his far-reaching right, which again he
landed before his bear-like opponent could cover. Beyond
an involuntary grunt, however, its effect was nil.
The Pape jaw seemed of hewn oak. In another
breath the bear-cuffs began to fall, swift, strong, confusing.

The New Yorker tried a run-around, for the butte
top had not the ring area to which apparently he was
accustomed in his “leather pushing.” A punishing left,
delivered from an impossible angle, cut him off. He
had no choice but to walk up to the medicine bottle
whose stopper was out. He feinted, but Pape seemed
not to understand what was meant by such tactics—only
hit the harder. He attempted a “one-two”—with
his left to jar Pape’s head into position for a crushing
right—and met a method of blocking which appeared
to be new to him—not so much blocking, in fact, as getting
a punch home first. One proved enough; carried
the “ice” to the Gothamite; stretched him for a couple
of counts of ten. The silver-tip’s pupil had won.

Pape did not wait for a second round. He was
satisfied that his knock-out would hold sufficiently
long for any of Jane Lauderdale’s purposes or his own.
Down in the direction which the girl had taken over
the rocks he scrambled, but could see no sign of her.
She had not, then, stayed to witness the fight, although
the whole encounter had taken but a moment. Whether
or not he had saved her an unpleasant scene, he had
lost her. Was it always to be thus—touch and go?
He wouldn’t have it. He’d beat her at her own game.

Directly as he could calculate and at his top speed,
he set out for the Arsenal gate; there took a stand on
about the spot from which he had intercepted Jasper
at the somewhat less exciting start of this same chase
several evenings ago. Surely she now would make
straight for home, whatever may have been her reason
for visiting the butte!

His eyes, searching for a poke-bonneted figure in
black, soon were rewarded. Through the pedestrian
gate near which he stood in deep shadow she came.
Watching her chance with the traffic, she darted across
the greased trail of the avenue and, once on the opposite
sidewalk, turned south. Pape continued to pursue
along his side of the street, determined to finish his
task of safeguarding her until the front door of her
aunt’s house should shut her—only briefly, he hoped—from
his sight.

But what spirit of perversity was ruling her? Toward
the steps of the Sturgis brownstone she did not
turn; did not give them so much as a glance. Briskly
as before she continued down the avenue until at the
Sixty-third Street corner she again turned east.

Was the house to be gained by some rear entrance
from the lower street—one made advisable by the disguise
she wore? From its mid-block position, this
supposition did not seem tenable. Pape decided to take
no chances, except with the traffic. Crossing the street
with a rush, he gained a point a hundred or so feet behind
her, then timed his steps with hers. Due east
they walked, at a good pace, but without undue hurry.
She seemed fully reassured. Although she inclined
her young face and bent her young back to the old part,
she did not glance back as though nervous over possible
pursuit. The block was lined mostly with homes—of
the near-rich, he judged from the look of them.
Of the few people who passed none gave more than a
casual glance at the actively shuffling “old lady.”

They crossed what the street sign told Pape was
Madison Avenue; passed several apartment houses and
more residences. Across Park and Lexington, still due
east, the tone of the section fell off. From Third
Avenue onward it went continually “down.” Pape kept
one eye on the figure he was following and the other
on his surroundings, figuratively speaking. Both were
interesting. This was his first excursion into the far
East Side and he was surprised by the mid-width of
Manhattan Isle.

They came to a block lofted with tenements on one
side and shadowed by huge, cylindric gas tanks on the
other. Children swarmed the sidewalk thick as ants
over a home-hillock and screamed like Indians on rampage.
Washings left out for overnight drying were
strung from one fire-escape to another of the scaly
brick fronts. As though laving the cross-street’s dirty
feet, the East River shimmered dimly in the lights
from shore and from passing steam craft. Beyond
loomed that isle of punishment dreams come true—the
Blackwell’s which politicians would rename “Welfare.”

Thoughts murky as the water at the foot of the hill
came to Peter Pape. Could Jane Lauderdale be seeking
the river for surcease from some disappointment or
fear more direful than he had supposed? Why should
she be, with youth, beauty and devotion all her own?
And yet, why not? Others as young, fair and fondly
desired had been depressed to such extent. His heart
swelled with protective pity for her. His pulses beat
from more than the speed with which he closed the distance
between them to about twenty feet, that he might
be ready for emergency.

They had come to a building which broke the tenement
line, a relic residence of by-gone days. With a
sudden turn, the little old lady undertook the steps. So
close was Pape that he pulled the Fedora over his eyes
lest she recognize him. But he need not have feared.
She did not look back. Her attention was focused
ahead upon some one who sat on the small Colonial-type
stoop—some one who had been waiting for her.

“Home, dear, at last!” Pape overheard the greeting
in a deep, rich voice. “I couldn’t imagine what was
keeping you. I almost risked starting out in search of
you. Did you——”

He heard no more. But he saw more than he
wished. The some one arose, a tall, strong, masculine
outline against the flickering gas light from inside the
hall; clasped an arm about her shoulders; lowered a
fine-cut profile, crowned by a mass of lightish hair, to
her kiss. The pair entered the house together and
closed the door.

Sans preface, the volunteer escort reached the crux
of his conclusions. He had seen his “Nellie” home,
yes. And the anticipated romance had come at evening’s
end—romance with another man!

CHAPTER XII—WHAT A WELCOME!
===========================

At exactly ten of the clock next morning Peter
Stansbury Pape, Esquire, garbed in the form
prescribed by the chart on the wall of his Astor suite,
was admitted for the second time to the Sturgis brownstone.
He had awakened with the idea. His mind,
which last night had felt shell-shocked out of its normal
functions by that “home-at-last-dear” bomb, must
have worked it out while he slept. The telephone, Jasper
of the jowls and a certain exuberant “young lady
of to-day”—all seemed to approve it. Even Aunt
Helene, who received him, wore a manner that went
with her *ante-meridian* negligée, pliable and gracious
as its material of rose-hued Georgette.

She was so glad to see him again, although he was
a very naughty person to have permitted her to believe
him a detective the other night. Yes, her niece had
explained all about him after he had gone. Still, she
supposed that he meant well—her pet charity was to
believe the best of every one. And she was so relieved
that all of them had lived through the excitement that
she could have forgiven a worse crime than his effort
to help under false pretense. She had narrowly saved
herself a complete nervous collapse by a few days absence
from the scene of the robbery—that robbery of
nothing at all except a keepsake of such inappreciable
value that its loser would not name its name. Her
niece, Miss Lauderdale, always had been a rather secretive,
sentimental girl, and had since regretted, she
felt sure, the worry she had caused them.

“We never permit ourselves to forget that she is an
orphan, poor dear,” added the matron. “Irene tries to
make everything up to her. Really, she is fonder of
her cousin than she could be of any one short of a twin.
And I am very glad to have it so. Jane has such a good
influence over Irene. She is much older, you know.”

“And has Miss Lauderdale no—no brothers or——”
the visitor began.

“No near relative except ourselves, nor money
enough to assure her independence. But we are only
too happy to have her need us, to love her and provide
for her. She is—” Mrs. Sturgis hesitated and seemed
to be choosing her words with a nice regard for the
delicacy of the subject. “She is perhaps just a bit
strong-minded for the taste of men, our dear Jane.
But strength is a splendid quality in a woman if applied
in the right direction. Don’t you think so? Perhaps
you don’t, though, being a tower of strength yourself.
Anyway, Jane Lauderdale is a dear girl—and *so*
dependable.”

Mrs. Sturgis *did* hope he was enjoying to the full
his stay in New York. Yes, her daughter would be
down directly and it *was* nice of him to ask the child
riding. She did not often consent to her essaying the
park. Irene’s daring was her real reason for keeping
their horses in the country, although she pretended that
it was for the horses’ sake. He, being such a friend of
her niece, came well recommended. Miss Lauderdale
had told state secrets about him—had admitted at
Irene’s demand that he was the most superb horseman
she had met in the West. That pronounced him capable
of taking care of a woman if any one could. Irene
rode well, to be sure. But there always was a risk
about a rented mount. And there were so many unexpected
turns along the park bridle paths and such whizzing
of cars and shrieking of sirens. She hoped that
he had selected a safe mount for her child.

“I thought some, ma’am, of having Polkadot, my
own friend horse, saddled up feminine,” Pape advised
her. “But he ain’t used even to the skirts of a habit
coat. Besides which, it might have put his Roman
nose out of joint to see me forking another. No telling
what a jealous horse will do.”

“Any more than a jealous woman,” she contributed.

“Can’t say as to the women. But I reckon that,
jealous, they ain’t agreeable or safe, either. I’ve made
a practice of sloping along at the first eye-flicker of that
sort of trouble. But you cheer up, Mrs. Sturgis. The
filly I picked as a trailmate for my Dot this morning is
as reliable as the hobbies in the riding school.”

Despite her manner—and, positively, she was treating
him like an eligible—the mother’s black brows had
lifted semi-occasionally during his speech, he presumed
at his choice of language. Although he jotted down a
mental note of the necessity of increased care to weed
out his unseasonable crop of hardy range vernacular,
somehow her presence made him worse. He remembered
having read somewhere that the choice of topics
in a refined duet of mixed sexes should be left to the
lady. The thought proved restful; left him some spare
time for self-communings.

Why hadn’t Jane Lauderdale at the very start of the
game told him that she was married? Worse he
wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe of her. To do her justice,
she hadn’t exactly encouraged him, yet she scarcely
could have helped seeing with both eyes bandaged the
weak state he was in.

When she had thrown open a top-floor-front window
of that old, scaly, painted-brick retreat of hers last
night, had she observed him standing in the shadow of
the odorous gas tank opposite? If so, did she understand
the hard-dying hope which had kept him stationed
there an hour, with five minutes thrown in to benefit
the sickening doubt which had been tricked into certainty?

If she had seen and understood, did she pity or exult
over his observances and deductions? The building
was four stories and an attic high. The variance in
window curtaining proclaimed it a “flat” house containing
at least four separate sets of tenants. As proof,
a young mother had emerged with a wailing infant
onto the third floor fire-escape landing; a party of four,
shirt-sleeved and kimono-clad, could be seen playing
cards at a table just within the windows of the second-floor
front; the shades of the first were jerked down
when the gas was lit. And surely none who could afford
the space of an entire house would have endured
the district.

That beneficial five minutes which failed to benefit
he had thrown in after the top floor lights had been
suddenly turned out. He’d never have known the stubbornness
of his hope that she would reappear, except
for hope’s slow death. Undoubtedly she who was known
to him as Miss Lauderdale had settled for the night in
the home of the tall, blond man who had kissed her in
the doorway. He knew where one member of the Sturgis
family, at least, went for peace and quiet!

A question had been asked him; had been repeated
with a slight crescendo of the modulated voice which
had played accompaniment to his tragic reminiscence;
recalled him to the here and now. From the matron’s
surprised look and her wait for some sort of response,
he realized that automatic answers didn’t always satisfy.
What was it she had asked?

“You have a family tree, Mr. Pope—I mean Pape?
Pape *is* such an odd name, isn’t it?”

“Sure—that is to say, certainly, madam. A forest of
the same.”

She frowned in face of his attempt at elegant diction
and intent to make her smile.

“I fear you don’t quite grasp my meaning. It is the
Pape lineage I mean. You can trace it back, I suppose?”

Just here was Peter Pape’s cue to spread out all his
Stansbury cards upon the table, but in trying to match
this mother in rose-hued negligée, he overplayed the
hand.

“Oh, we go back to the days long before kings and
queens or even jacks, Mrs. Sturgis—clear to Adam
and Eve and the apple orchard.”

This time she beamed. “Indeed! And you have an
escutcheon?”

Before he could assure her, the daughter of the
house clattered in high-heeled boots through the doorway.

Irene wore white cloth breeches and a black suede
coat, no hat at all and a radiant freshness that took his
breath. In the stress of recent doings and undoings,
he had forgotten the spectacular beauty of this particular
young lady of to-day. Crow-haired was she,
bright-cheeked, brighter-lipped. The slight unevenness
of her dazzling display of teeth but added piquancy to
her smile. She was both strong-built and lithe of body.
And as to her mind, never an incipient doubt of her
super-desirability weakened that. Truly, she was a
vital and vitalizing creature, Irene.

It was not unpleasant to have a beautiful girl greet
him with frank cordiality. After recent roughnesses
of his experience—Well, not since that floral-wreathed
sign first had blazed its reassurance into his
nostalgic gaze had he been made to feel so welcome.

“Oh, you poor man—you poor, dear, bored-to-death
man!” she offered with both her hands. “Has my maternal
mamma been talking you to pieces about my
virtues? I’ll bet you have, at that, you darling villainess!”

Freeing one hand, she shook her ivory-handled crop
at her protesting parent, then almost at once re-seized
Pape’s sunburned paw.

“It’s your very own fault I took so long to get ready.
Do I hear you asking why, Why-Not? Because your
groom rode up on the most satiny black that ever
stopped before our domicile, instead of the regular roan
I expected. I was all togged out in my new tan covert,
but of course had to change in order to be becoming to
the black. I’m *never* late!”

*“My dear!”*

There was incredulity in Mrs. Sturgis’ voice.

“You mustn’t get nasty, dar-rling. You know that
I’m *almost* never, except to punish people. And of
course Mr. Pape and I haven’t got far enough along
for me to need to punish him—*not yet*.”

Although nothing seemed to be expected of him,
Pape sought for a seemly retort. “Let us hope that we
never get that far along.”

“Let us hope that we get there soon,” she corrected
him. “Come, shan’t we be on our way?”

Mrs. Sturgis followed them to the street door;
showed a becoming anxiety; hoped, even prayed, that
they’d return safely.

“Safely and anon—don’t expect me sooner than
anon.”

Irene tossed the promise with a finger-flung kiss
from the saddle into which she had swung with scarcely
a foot-touch upon the stirrup held for her. Pape instructed
the groom as to his return to stables on the
other side of the park. They were off on the most
parade-effect ride in which he, for one, ever had participated.

The girl pulled in close enough to keep talking during
their necessarily sedate pace down the avenue toward
The Plaza entrance to the park.

“You were a dear to keep calling up while I was in
the country. Oh, don’t look so innocent!”

Her charge made him hope he wasn’t showing in
his face the strange something that happened to his
spinal column each time she called him “dear”—he felt
so sure that she only was leading up to that adorably
Yankee-ized “dar-rling” of hers.

“I’m sorry if I—glad if I look innocent.”

“You ought to be. Any modern man ought to be.”
She laughed more happily than he could manage to do
at the moment. “And don’t you deny calling me—don’t
you deny anything! It won’t do a bit of good.”

Believing that it wouldn’t—not with Irene—he
didn’t.

“You see, Jasper’s butlering job depends upon his
accuracy,” she continued. “Well he knows if he lost
me one single message from one single only man I
ever loved——”

“We trust that all your only-ever men are single?”
he persiflaged into her pause.

“Most. Never cared for the back-door and porch
affairs—one has to be so discreet. You don’t yourself,
do you, Why-Not?”

In her query Pape saw an opening for the idea which
had wakened him up. Not that he would have pried
into the affairs of Jane Lauderdale through her discreet-and-proud-of-it
young cousin any more than he
had crossed the cobbles of that soiled East Side street
last night to question her fellow-tenants on the fire escape.
No. He knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t do
anything so deliberately base as that. But if Irene must
babble, it was only fair that she babble upon a subject
that interested the semi-silent member of the colloquy.
So——

“No, I don’t like side-porch affairs,” he admitted,
“although I’ve got the reputation of being discreet.”

“That’s why you’re so nice-nice,” enthused Irene.
“The man’s being good gives the girl all the better
chance to be bad. Oh, I *hope* I’ve shocked you! Come
across, B. B.—that’s short either for ‘Blushing Bachelor’
or ‘Brazen Benedict.’ *Haven’t* I?

“You’ll shock me worse if you don’t hold in until
that traffic cop blows his horn.”

With the warning, Pape reached over and himself
curbed her black until their crossing into the bridle path
was whistle-advised.

Probably she considered that the time had come to
start “punishing” him, for, once in the park, she literally
ran away from him along the East Path which so far
he had traveled alone. But Polkadot, asserting his indignation
in none too subtle snorts, soon overhauled the
rented horse, then showed his equine etiquette by settling
to a companionable walk. His man, too, after one
look into the flushed, exultant, impish face beneath the
cloud of wind-tossed curls, forgave.

“The trouble with you, W. W., is simply this,” he
propounded, referring to her late allegation in superior
vein.

“W. W.’? Explanation!” she demanded.

Attempting a look of polite surprise, he obliged.
“Inclusive for ‘Wicked Wife’ and ‘Wiley Wirgin.’ I
am here to say that, as your sex is run nowadays, it is
hard to tell which are which. In this woman’s town
none of ’em seem to want to wear the marriage brand.
Many a Mrs. calls herself Miss. You keep too close to
your mother, likely, to be yoked without her knowing it.
But how could an outsider know, for instance, whether
or not your cousin, Miss Lauderdale——”

“Jane married? What an idea!” As expected, Irene
interrupted on getting the general drift of his remarks.
“Not but what she’s plenty old enough. She’s *twenty-six*—think
of it! Maybe I oughtn’t to tell her age.
Still, any one can see it on her face, don’t you think so—or
*do* you? And it isn’t as though you were interested
in her instead of me. Jane is considered still very attractive,
though. A good many men have admired her
even since my day and degeneration. Do you know, I
never can resist adding that ‘degeneration’ to ‘my day’!
It’s trite, I know, but it’s true—too-trite-true. Jane has
a whole raft of women friends. She’s always off
visiting them. She is down at Hempstead Plains now
with one of them.”

Pape rose in his stirrups, as it turned out, merely to
hold back a low-hung bough which had threatened to
brush the girl’s artfully tousled locks.

“Fortunately,” she babbled on, “Mills Harford still
wants to marry her. Mother and I both think she
ought to snap him up. Don’t you? Harfy has money
and he isn’t bad looking, although I myself shouldn’t
consider him as a suitor. I guess he knows that.” She
transferred her glance from him to the path ahead.
“Here’s the longest straight-away in Central Park,”
she cried. “I don’t want to leave you again—better
come along!”

Bombed again! Pape pressed one hand against his
brow as he shook Dot’s rein, a signal to follow the spurt
to which Irene had put the academy mare. He wasn’t
given to headaches from any pace of his horse, but a
sudden hurting sensation had shot through his brain.

Jane Lauderdale wasn’t, then, married so far as her
relatives knew. And she was covering her whereabouts
from them as she had tried to cover from him. By no
tax of the imagination could he think of the peeling old
brick house on East Sixty-third Street as the “place”
of any of those elite “women friends” mentioned; yet
even could he do so, why one with a husband or other
male attaché who would wait and kiss their fair guest
at the door?

Incidentally, Polkadot won the brush over this tangent,
coming up from the rear at an “I’ll-show-you”
pace. Willingly enough he waited for the black mare
where the bridle path again became winding.

Irene, on catching up, looked him over with irritation
that proved to have nothing to do with the comparative
speed of their mounts, as just counted against her.

“I don’t believe you were listening to me at all back
there,” she charged. “I *dote* on deep, dark natures, but
this doesn’t seem to me the time or place to get mysterious.
Come out of it and pay me ’tentions!”

He undertook to obey. “I’d be tickled pink to pay
you anything that——”

“You’re a deeper and darker color than pink already,”
she interrupted, “but you don’t look tickled at
all. Here, see for yourself!”

From her breast-pocket she produced a flat vanity
case covered with the black suede of her coat; flipped
open a small mirror; held it above the horn of his
saddle where he could look into it. His countenance
was, indeed, nearer beet-red than pink. After a wicked
moue over his discomfiture, she took out a “stick” and
proceeded openly, calmly, critically, to rouge her youth-ripe
lips.

“I’ll pay you,” she proposed with a smile, “anything
that you consider fair for the thoughts that brought
that blush.”

“I was just wondering if—thinking that——” he
floundered. “What a similarity of coloring there is
among you, your mother and your—your cousin, you
know, and yet how different you are.”

“You’re cheating, Why-Not. You know you weren’t
thinking anything so banal. Do you expect me to pay
for that?”

She pulled her trim little black closer to his rangy piebald
and leaned over toward him. And he bent toward
her; somehow, couldn’t help it. A moment her eyes
glittered close under his. Her blown black hair strove
toward his lips. A pout that would have tempted the
palest-corpuscled of men curved the lips so carefully
prepared—for what?

Peter Pape’s corpuscles, as happened, weren’t pale.
Then, too, he lately had been bombed out of some few;
traditions and restraints. He caught his breath; caught
the idea; caught her arm.

“Child, do you know that—Do you understand—”

“You *are* nice-nice!”

With complete understanding, she awaited his pleasure
and, possibly, her own.

Irene had shown selectiveness in the set for the scene.
The path at that point was low-leaved and lone. Nothing
broke the silence except the siren-chorus of invisible
cars. Nothing marred the woodsy fragrances except
the reek of gasoline. Nothing held Pape back except
the realization that, once he had kissed this almost irresistible
young lady of to-day——

At that, only Polkadot saved the situation. Whether
intolerant of his propinquity with a mere hireling,
whether sensing the predicament of a man-master who
never had brushed stirrups with a woman unless on
some picnic ride with a crowd along, or whether too
fed-up on stable fodder to endure such inactivity one
second longer, at any rate, the painted pony forewent
all equine etiquette; bolted.

Not until they had made a flying turn at Harlem
Mere and started cross-park toward the West Path did
Pape’s strong hand at the rein dictate that they let the
trailing black catch up. When again the two horses, as
nicely matched for contrast as were their riders, paced
side by side in form——

“You all right, dar-rling?” panted Irene, from excitement
and exercise beautiful as the favorite “still”
of a picture queen.

“Right as—as you nearly had me wrong.”

At his serious look, she laughed up at him shamelessly.
“You missed your chance that time. And a
miss to me is as good as many miles.”

“Don’t you mean,” he asked, “that a Miss is as bad
as a Mrs.?”

The rest of the ride he insisted on playing the heavy
respectful. He wasn’t to be baby-vamped into making
love to any girl; to that he had made up his mind flyingly
but firmly. Tempting, indeed, was she. But
until he should commit himself to temptation, she
should not over-tempt him. Even in this, their “day
and degeneration,” he claimed the deciding vote of the
male. Why not?

After that *he* chose the topics of conversation, favoring
one introduced that day by the girl’s own mother—genealogy.
Irene’s answers were considerably less
animated than his questions.

Yes, “family” was the hobby-pace of her only
mamma. She, herself, didn’t care a Russian kopeck
from what a man came, so that he was present when
she wanted him. Still, if Pape aspired to get along
with parent-Helene, he’d have to trump her genealogical
lead. Could he and would he produce a family escutcheon?

If there was one to be had in town! So he promised
with hand-on-heart. He had been born and bred and
all that, he declared. And he had reasons for wishing
to be properly installed as a friend of the Sturgis family.
Would an escutcheon really need to be laid within
range of the maternal lorgnette? If so, just what was
an escutcheon most like?

Ha, he began to see! It was, then, an authenticated
something which one emblazoned on what he owned
to show that he owned it, like the interrogation point
which he branded on his cattle back home? He explained
the significance of the name of the distant
Queer Question Ranch back in Hellroaring Valley, a
name derived from his own whys and why-nots. He’d
see what he could do toward authenticating a creditable
escutcheon and exhibiting the same to mamma.

They had curved around North Meadow, had skirted
the silver circle of the receiving reservoir and were approaching
The Green, before Pape’s absorption in this
self-selected topic was broken. He had cast a surreptitious
glance toward a clump of poplars that disputed
possession of a hillock with an outcrop of granite.
Beneath them he had seen what caused his heart to take
one quick flop, then stand still.

What next occurred was better understood by Friend
Polkadot than Friend Girl. The horse received a knee-pressed
signal, the meaning of which was clear, if not
the particular reason therefor. Just why Why-Not
should wish to rid himself of a riding-mate he had
seemed to find so delightful——

However, Dot was enough of a soldier never to
argue actual orders. He promptly went lame. And
he rather enjoyed doing so. The trick had been dear
to him ever since the petting lavished upon him during
his recovery from a real injury years ago. He slowed
to a stop; up-held his fore-hoof; himself demanded
“’tentions.”

“What’s matter, old hoss?”

Perfect in his part of this play to retire from trail
company no longer congenial, the Westerner flung himself
off-saddle, accepted and examined the pitiful “paw.”
Even when the supposed victim winked and drew back
his upper lip in a wide horse grin, there showed no
change in the poker face of the Montana man.

“Is it a sprain? Does it hurt so much as all that?”
Although Irene would doubtless—and justly—have
been furious to know it, her concern was the one real
factor in the incident.

“He may have slipped on that bolt of his back yonder.”
Pape wasn’t used even to suggesting lies and his
voice sounded as unconvincing to himself as though
pitched from the vicinity of Washington Square.
“Serve him right if he did. At that, I’m afraid our
ride’s ended for to-day. Fortunately——” He paused
in a search of the surroundings, presumedly to get
their exact bearings; in fact, to convince himself that
he had seen what he had seen. “Fortunately the stable
I’m using lies just over there on Central Park West.”

“And I was just about to propose that we make the
reverse round.” Irene pouted like the spoiled child
she was. “I’d set my heart on a real sprint between
my mare and your cocksure charger. It would have
been so sort of symbolic of life to-day, you know—a
race of male versus female.”

Her heart for horses, however, soon softened in pity
for Polkadot. Pape liked her cordially as he hated
himself for the endearments and consolations she showered
upon that supposed unfortunate.

“Don’t you worry one little bit, Polkadot dar-rling,”
she urged, leaning to one of the pinto’s forward-flicking
ears. “If it isn’t all right by to-morrow-day, Irene will
come around herself and rub it well for you.”

When Dot, having received no “cure” signal, limped
more noticeably than before as they neared his stable-hostelry,
she added in her sweet-lisped baby talk:

“Just a few steps more, booful boy. Don’t ‘oo care.
You’ll be all well to-morrow-day.”

Considering the tenderness of her mood toward the
four-footed fakir, her change was sudden and radical
toward the biped of the pair when she grasped that he
intended to send her home in a taxi.

“You’re not going to *take* me?” she demanded
through the down-dropped sash of the door he had
closed.

“If you’ll excuse me, no, Miss Sturgis. I am very
sorry to miss the pleasure and sorrier if I seem discourteous.
But I—I owe a duty to a friend.”

She looked with a hard glance straight into his eyes,
her lips thinning. “Then you think more of your
*horse* than you do of me?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he temporized.

She pressed the point. “You may think I lack
reserve, Mr. Pape. Sometimes I myself feel that I am
too impulsive and too—too honest.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he repeated. It was the
best he could offer and he was in doubt about that.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” she snapped. “But
why don’t you assume a virtue if you have it not—why
not be a little bit honest yourself? Why not answer
the truth? Heaven knows I might better learn
it now than later. Tell me, Why-Not, is it only Polkadot
for whom you are deserting me?”

Pape tried unobtrusively to give the chauffeur the
start signal; shifted his weight; cleared his throat.

“Well, it isn’t exactly—not entirely on account of the
horse, although a man’s cayuse is his cayuse and that’s
that. No, miss. You see, we were kind of late starting,
owing to your change of—of habits. And I have
a friend that I’m sort of committed to help because she—he——”

But his impromptu defense merged into her high-pitched
scorn which, in its turn, merged into tears before
she was through.

“I knew it. I *divined* it. And me meriting a man’s
whole soul! Kindly tell the driver to start at once. As
for you, Peter Stansbury Pape, I think you’re *contemptible*!”

Grooms were caring for the horses on Pape’s return
to the stable. The “cripple” he miraculously cured by a
word and a touch. In his dressing room, he hurried
into street clothes.

Out in the park, beneath that clump of poplars——

Talking was all very well in its way. But at last
he had sighted something to *do*!

CHAPTER XIII—IN HER SERVICE
===========================

Perhaps never had Peter Pape felt in more of a
rush to reach any given spot. Yet, once there,
he seemed in a greater rush to get away. Scarcely did
he pause in his brisk walk along the pavement outside
the park wall to study the details of the scene beneath
the poplars which so had interested him—three laborers
dressed in jeans, each equipped with pick or shovel,
digging in the shade under direction of a dapper-dressed,
slight-built stranger. But in the sprinkling of
curious bystanders, men and women who decorated
the wall like rail-birds, there was no sight of her whom
he rather had expected to find among those present.

The total absence of Jane Lauderdale, either in the
bonnet and black of East Sixty-third Street or in the
modish morning frock which might have attired her
dual self, decided his next move. By passage of several
minutes, a picked-up taxi and a dollar bill, he was
mounting the front steps of the old, scaly far-East
mansion. The front door standing open, he seemed
tacitly invited to enter without formality of a ring.
Upon undertaking the flight of stairs within he congratulated
himself that he was not superstitious. Every
step of the weathered wood squeaked, scrooped or
screeched as if in ill-omen. Never had he climbed so
foreboding a stair-case, albeit never so determinedly.

Just why he had come did not matter. There was
plenty of time, as he told himself, to argue that out
afterward. Impulse had mastered him, the same sort
of impulse that would have started him burning the
trail back home to warn a pal whose mining claim had
been jumped or whose cattle were being rustled toward
the Canadian line. Actionful resentment had moved
him, as during the previous winter when he had discovered
poachers attacking the Yellowstone buffalo
herd and had skied forty miles in blizzard weather to
warn the Spread-Eagle Rangers. So far as he cared
to figure in the emergency, a bent-back, ill-clad old lady—no
matter who else or what else or whyfore else she
might be—had preëmpted that poplar patch and owned
therefore the exclusive digging rights thereto. In the
event that she herself had not instigated the present
activity, he was here to warn her.

Whom he should meet at the top of his climb was
problematic. If it was the blond-mopped man—Well,
they both might be taking chances.

A moment did he pause before the door of the fourth
floor front. Suppose a maid attended his knock, for
whom should he ask? “Miss Lauderdale” might not be
known in the house—mention of the name might betray
an incognito. Reminding himself, however, that a
servant was the difficulty least likely to be encountered
in that tenement, he knuckled up his hand and knocked.

His first rap did not bring response; had to be repeated
more peremptorily. He could hear low voices
within. Then there was silence. Perhaps the occupants
of flats did not answer unexpected knocks. His
hand was fisted for a third when the knob turned and
the door opened a crack.

No face appeared; nothing but a voice—a woman’s,
hard and impatient.

“Yes. What is it? Who do you want?”

Pape was returned to the quandary of the maid possibility.
Before he could decide what to answer the suction
of wind from the hall drew around the edge of
the door a fluttery bit of black skirt.

“I want you, Jane,” he hazarded.

Curiosity, surprise or exasperation ruled her—perhaps
a combination of the three. Her young-white face
in its old-black bonnet followed the skirt around the
door edge, high as his own and so close that her breath,
warm and sweet as a summer zephyr off a clover field,
blew upon his cheek.

“*You*?” she gasped, as before, out under the trees.

“Again,” he finished for her with the briefest of
bows.

She narrowed the crack and moved across it, evidently
to protect the room from his inspection. Not
exactly a “welcome to our happy home” was her next
offering, although in her natural tones.

“So you followed me home last night, after all!
How dared you? What is the meaning of your
espionage?”

His courage was lit by the blaze of her look.

“There’s a particular meaning to it that I hope
you won’t find so unwelcome. I’ve whizzed hereward
to inform you that a gang of grave-diggers are exercising
their muscles ‘neath the shade of the sheltering
poplars where you and Kicko were planting bones last
evening.”

He felt gratified at the importance of his news, as
shown by its effect on her. Her lips paled as they
parted. The pansy-black irises widened within the
blue of her eyes in her concentrated stare. Lines lengthened
her face more suitably to the poke of the bonnet
that framed it.

“Who—*who*?” she demanded, her voice scarcely
more than a rasp.

“That I didn’t linger to learn. I saw them as I was
polkaing past upon my trusty steed just now. Thought
you mightn’t know.”

She turned her head and spoke as if to some one
within the room.

“Oh, what shall we do? If they’ve solved the cryptogram—if
they find——”

She checked other disclosures; again faced the volunteer
messenger, now frowning.

When no suggestion as to what they could do came
from the person who would seem to be the other half of
her “we,” Pape made cheerful offering: “The taxi-hack
that conveyed me cross-town is ticking time down in the
street. It is at your service, miss or madam, with or
without yours truly.”

She gave him a startled glance, whether for his
mode of address or his offer, he could not be sure;
then spent a moment in urgent thought.

“*Would* you wait for me a few minutes?” She all at
once announced her decision.

Without need of his answer, without a verbal
thank-you or suggestion of apology, she closed the
door in his face and, by way of insult to injury, turned
the key inside.

Seeing nothing better to do, Pape leisurely descended
the stairs. The steps protested stridently as before,
but more intelligibly now.

“She doesn’t look it,” shrieked the top one. And:
“She doesn’t—doesn’t—*doesn’t*!” repeated the several
next. “But she wouldn’t let you in—in—in,” the
hard-tried middle ones. “There’s something queer about
it all—something queer—something queer,“ creaked
the ground-floor last.

Within the stipulated “few” minutes Jane joined him
out on the Colonial portico of long-ago grandeur. Her
complete change of costume—the dingy black doffed
for a small, smart sailor hat and a gray tweed that did
credit to her tailor as well as herself—proclaimed her
something of an artist at the alias act. Also did it
quash any hope which may have been left in him that
the East Side flat-house was a place of temporary sojourn.
Evidently she kept a wardrobe there. The man
who had greeted her so tenderly last night called the
shack “home.” Jane was always going off on these
visits to her many woman friends—so Irene had said.

Such deductions halved his attention during the reflexes
of handing her into the taxi and instructing the
driver regarding the return trip. There pended a somewhat
important question. Of this he reminded her by
a level glance, his foot ready to leave the running-board
and his hand ready to shut the door from the outside.

“I am not such an ingrate as to make you walk,”
she answered.

During the cross-town ride there was but one exchange
between them.

“Jane”—Pape turned to her daringly, the humor
twitches about his mouth defying any serious attempt
which she might make to put him in his place—“I have
to call you Jane, you see, because it is the only part
of your name of which I feel sure.”

As before, at a similar suggestion, she gave him a
look of startled resentment. Then, with a faint but
very sweet smile——

“Peter,” she bade him, “pray proceed.”

He did. “Should you mind telling me, Jane,
whether what you are digging for in the park has any
connection with the theft of that something you valued
the other night?”

“I guess—I don’t mind,” said she, thoughtfully. “It
has connection.”

“Is it—— Of course refuse to answer if you wish,
with the assurance that there can be no hard feelings
between us. Is it, just possibly, buried treasure?”

“Just possibly it is.”

“Central Park, if piled up with hay, would be a right
sizeable stack. By comparison, any treasure which
might have been contained within that snuff-box would
be needle-sized.”

The girl looked intolerant, as if at stupidity on his
part.

“The treasure which I hope to unbury before those
grave-diggers you saw can unearth it for some one not
entitled to it is larger than all the park.”

Even at this, Pape didn’t doubt her entire sanity.
She had mentioned a cryptogram; merely was being a
bit cryptic herself.

“I see,” he assured her.

“I hope you don’t,” she assured him.

“That,” he finished, “you don’t trust me.”

“Trust you? Why should I trust you?”

A moment her blue eyes blazed into his. He was
feeling quite scorched by her scorn. Probably he looked
wilted. At any rate, her next move amazed as much as
it refreshed him.

One of her ungloved, ringless hands slipped into his
that lay idle on the leather of the seat; the fingers curled
around it.

“I’d like to trust you. I don’t mind admitting that.”
She turned so directly toward him that again he felt her
clover-field breath across his cheek. “But you’ll have
to excuse me for the present. I just don’t dare.”

He held her hand hard, pulsant palm to pulsant palm.
But he took his eyes off the temptation of her face; a
second or so stared straight ahead, trying to resist—trying
to answer for himself the question of her.

Who and what was she—this woman of his first, deliberate
self-selection?

“Trust—is a thing—some people have to—be
taught,” he said, steadily as he could. “You will trust
me—in time. There is only one—quick way—to
learn.”

Having gone that far, he gave up; realized that he
couldn’t resist. His eyes swept back to the temptation
of her face. His two arms swept around the temptation
of her form. His face swept down until he yielded, in
a serious kiss, to the temptation of her lips.

“Learn, Jane. Learn,” he insisted into the panic of
emotion he felt her to be in. “Your distrust has made
it hard for me to trust you. But I find I do. I trust
you with my soul. Don’t say the angry things you
might. Wait. Learn.”

At her first effort to be free, he released her; leaned
to his window; knew without turning that she was
leaning to hers. After they had swung into the wide
avenue that bounds the park on the west, he spoke
quietly.

“I’d suggest that we land here. By looking over the
wall you can see without being seen.”

Without turning, she nodded. Pape dismissed the
cab and guided his silent companion north a block. He
pointed out the group of poplars to her by their tops,
claiming what he called “the wild, or wilderness eye
for location.” When they reached what he considered
a vantage point, however, she drew back, reluctant to
look.

“If they’ve solved it—if they’ve found it, I’m lost—lost,”
she said. “Another hour last night and I’d have
known. If you hadn’t come along——”

“Ain’t I trying to make up for that?” he asked her.

Without meeting his demanding eyes, she set her
lips; stepped close to the V-topped wall; peered over.
For a space both studied the scene of activity.

“Won’t take them long,” she commented. “They’re
just common laborers—Polakers, no doubt. The short,
dressed-up man must be the boss. Wonder whether
I’ve seen him before. Wait, he’s turning! His face is
strange to me. One of their hirelings, of course.”

The silencer which Pape put upon certain questions
exploding in his mind—pertinent questions such as
what was the nature of “it,” who were “they,” why
should another hour last night have made all “known”?—was
the result of a new-made decision on his own
account. He would teach this determinedly untrusting
young person by demonstration; would aspire only to
such confidence as she saw fit to volunteer. The hope
that telepathy already was at work strengthened him to
meet manfully her calm, cold gaze when at last she
faced him.

“You say you want to make up for——” She caught
her breath and started afresh. “I am willing to—to
learn—if I can. But some women might consider that
you owed quite a bit.”

“I am—” and he bent his head, the better to see her
lips—“very deeply in your debt.”

In spite of her flush, she continued crisply. “Very
well, I am going to ask you for part payment.”

“And I am only too willing, Jane, to pay in full.”

She studied his serio-flippancy; evidently decided to
value his statement above his smile.

“I need about one hour of dusk to finish in there.
I could finish to-night if that gang could be driven
off now, before they find—what I hope to find first.
Can’t you—won’t you try to frighten them off?”

“I? What right have I——”

One of two things was certain. Either she thought
very little of the courage of the four or very much of
his frightsomeness. He did feel indebted to her,
though; appreciated the born-and-bred conventionality
which she had overcome at his request. When he compared
the scathing, stereotyped things she might have
said with the fact that she had said nothing at all—well,
despite the confusions since that Zaza night, including
the man over on East Sixty-third Street, she was—she
must be the sort she at first had seemed. He
shrugged off his own dubiousness and looked as hopeful
as he could.

“Once you pretended to be a detective,” she encouraged
him.

“Got a supper out of that.”

“Last night you were again taken for one.”

“And had a scrap that was lively while it lasted.”

“This much you may assume. Something important—something
more valuable, really, than any treasure
that could be buried in the whole length of Manhattan
Isle—something more than you possibly could imagine
is at stake. It doesn’t matter what or why or how,
but try to do what I ask. Get those hired looters out!”

“Get them out?” he objected, “Girl-alive, they have
a right to be digging in there or they wouldn’t dare to
come in force and in daylight. I’d need some authority
to object before I could— Will you stay right
here?”

Instead of vaulting the park wall, which at first had,
seemed to be the one possible response to her demand,
Pape lifted his hat and sauntered down the avenue as
though bound nowhere in particular.

CHAPTER XIV—THE CREDIT PLAN
===========================

The Sheepfold in Central Park is a U-shaped
structure of red brick walls and a low roof that is
mostly gables. One of the wings is winter quarters
for the Dorset flock. The connecting curve, the lower
half of which is an archway, houses in the upper Shepherd
Tom and his family. The remaining wing, although
built for a different purpose, is now used as a
garage for the motor cycle police. Within is parking
space for all the machines in regular use in the park and
some extras.

Into this garage strode Why-Not Pape, a man in a
hurry. His only introduction to the policeman in
charge was rather extravagant, if wordless—one made
in brute Belgian. He returned Kicko’s greeting—the
fact that he and the police dog were friends did the
rest. It was amazing how easily his coup was carried
out as planned, backed by the dog’s infallible memory.

“Which are the spare fire-crackers?” he asked the
uniformed garage keeper with bluff authority. “I’m in
a gasoline hurry to get up the line.”

His wait had more intensity than length. He counted
upon a long-standing claim among safe-workers, of
which he had been assured by that piece of human flotsam
out at Hellroaring, that the “big box” in the New
York Police Headquarters would be the easiest
“cracked” in the city were there anything in it worth
stealing. He knew it to be a fact that many never-solved
robberies and murders have been “pulled” within
the shadow of precinct stations; had seen substantiated
in the day-by-day news the theory that the best “hide-out”
is under the arresting arm of city government.
And his act upon deduction meant nothing against the
police. He simply wished to profit for once by his
knowledge of human nature reduced to the *N*\ th degree.
Even unaided by the dog, he had expected to carry
through by daring of a first-draft sort.

“What’s the case, sergeant?”

With the question the attendant member of the
force waved a hand toward the sheaf of ten machines
which are kept unassigned to particular “speed cops”—an
emergency motive-power reserve.

Without necessity of an equivocation as to who he
was, without flashing the badge of authority which he
did not have—merely by using that slang term for the
noisiest of motor vehicles which was in common usage
in the Yellowstone as well as in New York, Pape had
declared himself in his part.

“Big,” he answered. “Bigger than all the park.”

Frowning and abstracted from a hurry to be off that
was by no means assumed, he wheeled one of the emergency
machines into the open doorway.

“Want any help?”

The rookie was ready; had grasped the handles of a
second cycle.

“No. Do I look like I needed help?” In earnest now
he frowned, but not abstractedly. “Don’t want any uniforms
following me. Ain’t that kind of a case.”

Without meeting other obstacles, Pape was off upon
the marked official machine. About one minute lasted
his ride upon this steed, fleeter than Polkadot at his
best. As though for the first time noticing the diggers
among the park poplars, he stopped with a toot of the
cycle siren. Dismounting, he dropped the standard,
parked the machine at the side of the road and advanced
upon the despoilers. On the way he charged himself
that in this “kind of case”—three burlies and a boss to
one uniformed objector whose only authority was a
woman’s service—mind more than muscle would be
needed.

He was met by the thin-faced man. “S’all right,
officer. We ain’t looking for Cap’n Kidd’s treasure.”

Pape smiled more inwardly than outwardly, although
he felt that he well could afford to do both on being
mistaken, a second time within the last few minutes,
for a plain-clothes man.

“Who are you and what you up to?” he demanded.

“Name’s Welch—Swinton Welch, contractor. I’m
digging a ditch to put in a sub-surface drain. Want
to see the permit?”

Producing a worn paper from his breast pocket, the
small boss flourished it.

“Sure. Show me.”

“It’s O. K., else I wouldn’t have the navvies at work.”

“Likely it is,” countered Pape, “but show me just
the same.”

With somewhat less of a flourish the paper was presented.
Pape saw at a glance that it was written on an
official form of the Department of Parks, then scanned
it closer.

“What—” his demand was louder, gruffer, more
combative than before—“*what* you say you’re doing?”

“Just like the paper says—digging for a drain.” The
sharp-faced boss also grew more combative.

It is to be remarked that the Italian laborers had
stopped work on the instant of interference. They
always do. A shovel wasted—Fortunately the
stream of cars on the roadway below flowed on without
a ripple of curiosity as to the party on the hillock. The
pedestrian paths were further away and, at this hour,
preëmpted by the inevitable babies, mothers and nurse-maids.
In the great, green mixing-bowl of all races
within the world’s most democratic city, no man concerned
himself with the by-play near the boundary except
those directly involved.

Pape scowled over the operation, with never a glance
toward the stone wall, from over the top of which a pair
of black-irised blue eyes probably were watching him—a
pair of rose-lobed ears were listening. To make
“learning” easier he pulled another loud stop in his
voice.

“What you going to drain to where?”

“Don’t exactly know myself yet. Going according
to orders,” offered Mr. Swinton Welch. “One shovelful
at a time is my motto. Don’t make no mistakes
that way. What’s eating you, bo? I tell you it’s all
O. K. or I wouldn’t be——”

The alleged contractor was stopped in the middle
of his defense by the glare lifted to his face from the
sheet of paper. An unofficial, yet official acting thumb
was jerked over-shoulder.

“Out!” bellowed a voice of command—Pape’s.
“You don’t go wrecking this park with an order that’s
a year old, signed by a commissioner that’s already in
the discard—leastways you don’t while I’m above sod.
Call off your men and beat it!”

“I’ll call off nobody nor nothing.” Evidently the
“boss” wasn’t amenable to being bossed. “I know my
rights and I’ll stand on ’em in spite of all the plain-clothes
crooks out of Sing Sing. That permit’s good
until it’s been used. If you had half an eye in your
head you’d see that it’s never been canceled.”

Pape folded the slip and tucked it into his coat
pocket. “You’ll get off lighter if you call it canceled,”
he advised. Turning to the laborers, he added: “Go
home, you—no matter what lingo you speak. Beat it—make
tracks—vamoose!”

The huskies did not look to their foreman for advice.
To them the voice of him who had appeared upon the
thunder-bike was fuller of authority than a noon
whistle. Shouldering their implements, they straggled
toward the nearest exit. Their wage? The boss of
their boss would produce that. Sufficient unto the day
was the pay thereof. Weren’t they muscle workers—weren’t
they therefore always paid?

“You give me your number—I dare you—your number!”

The small foreman had lost the sangfroid of his type.
Like a cockroach inadvisedly investigating a hot griddle,
he danced toward the taller man.

“You don’t need to dare me twice. My number’s a
darned good one for you to know. I’m 23—that means
*skidoo*!”

Pape’s sidewise spring he had learned from one of
his Hellroaring cayuses. It brought within his reach
this second disturber of Jane Lauderdale’s peace and
quiet. Only one wrench did he need to apply to the
wrist of the hand which he had interrupted on its way
into a side pocket of a sack coat.

“Not *this* morning,” he objected.

The foreman, gone startlingly white from pain after
the recent red of his chagrin, of necessity permitted
his hand to be withdrawn empty. And he had no
power to prevent Pape’s reaching into the pocket and
confiscating a snub-nosed automatic. He did, however,
risk some contentious comment.

“Nothing a real citizen loathes like you plain-clothes
pests. I’ll show you up proper in court, you big bully.
I got a permit from a judge to carry that gun, I’ll
have you know.”

“But not to use it on me. I put quite a value, I’ll
have *you* know, on my birthday suit-of-clothes.”

The “pest’s” chortle was pitched to carry reassurance
to and over the park wall.

Removing and pocketing the cartridges, he returned
the “permitted” weapon’s frame to its owner. In consideration
of his utterly unofficial status, he probably
would have found an attempt to enforce New York
State’s anti-pistol law embarrassing. At that, the
fellow probably did have a permit—he had been told that
such were easy enough to get. He would, he felt, be
satisfied if the “drain” excavation was postponed until
Jane had that coveted hour for the finish of her own
mysterious investigation.

Perhaps the small boss regained some of what would
seem constitutional bravado from the fact that his
license to carry concealed weapons had not been demanded.
At any rate, he started fresh protest.

“Say, if you’d any idea who I was working for——”

“I know who I’m working for. That’s idea enough
for me *and* for you.”

Pape sat down with his back against the trunk of
the most aged and sturdy poplar. He looked as likely
to stay there as the tree. The foreman, with a final
sputter of indignation, stamped off down the hill, having
made no secret of his objective—the nearest telephone.
The Westerner saw him pause beside the motorcycle
and make note of the number on its P. D.
plate—a last amusing touch to a uniquely pleasurable
experience. Small satisfaction would Welch get if he
tried to trace and punish the particular “cop” who had
ridden that particular police “firecracker” that particular
afternoon. Kicko alone could give him away and
Kicko was too much of a Belgian to tell on a friend.

Some minutes after the foreman had disappeared in
the general direction of Columbus Circle, Pape arose
and sauntered toward the park wall. He did not trouble
himself further about his steed of raucous breath, steel
ribs and rubber hoofs. A “sparrow cop” would happen
upon that sooner or later and trundle it back to
the Sheepfold garage. The Force could take for
granted that its plain-clothe’s borrower had found necessity
to abandon it in course of duty. Plainly labeled
as a piece of city property by its official number plate,
it was safe enough.

He scaled the wall at a calculated point and gave himself
completely to the joys of victory when he saw her
who had sent him into the arena seated on a shaded
bench a short distance above. He joined her. Gallantly
as some champion of old he handed her the trophy
brought back from the fight—the venerable drain-building
permit.

“This is all the authority they had for daylight digging,”
he remarked.

“Then—then they haven’t deciphered it?” she
breathed with manifest relief, after a moment’s study
of the official sheet.

“It? Just what—” he began to ask, then stopped.

Let her tell him if and when she liked. Until and
unless, he would continue his rudderless, questionless
course.

“Don’t you see,” she was generous enough to add,
“if they had solved the cryptogram, they never would
have been using this? With their influence they’d have
secured a special permit. It may be that one of the
gang saw me digging there last night and assumed that
I knew more than I really do. There have been signs
recently that I was followed by more than—than yourself.
That man on the knob last night—Don’t you
suppose he had watched me—trailed me—lain in wait
for me to take from me whatever I might have dug
up?”

They? Their? The gang?

These succinct demands Pape did not put in words
although, telepathically, he did not restrain his curiosity.
Probably she got something of his vehemence
and decided that something was due him. She abstracted
her attention completely from the passers-by
and gave it to him.

“You were fine, Peter Pape, *fine*. After dark to-night
I’ll come back and finish my search. If I’d
stopped to think—except for my desperation, you know—I
never should have asked you to put those people
out, it was *so* impossible. But you were inspired with
the one-best idea. You handled the expulsion act as
artistically as—as an actor in his big scene.”

Now, had there been time for Pape to foreplan his
curtain speech he might have continued to be artistic.
But Jane’s applause seemed to go to his head. He
honestly had meant to continue histrionically suppressed,
unasking, admirable. Yet he didn’t; just
couldn’t. He stretched his arm along the back of the
bench until his finger-tips touched the tweed of her
sleeve. Perhaps the contact was unnerving. Perhaps
her eyes were too earnest. Perhaps her faint, wistful
smile was falsely promising. At any rate, he proceeded
to do what he had determined not to do.

“It *was* quite a stunt. I admit it,” he said. “Don’t
you think you sort of ought to—That is, don’t you want
to reward me?”

“Reward you?”

She drew away from him and his suggestion.

“Of course I don’t mean just that.” Pape’s eyes
were on her lips. “You paid me beforehand. What I
wish you’d do is to get me in your debt again. The
credit system is the one for me. I can do anything to
make good when I’m deep in debt. Will you—won’t
you——”

“*Odious*!”

A second or so he blinked into the blast of her interruption.
By its flare he saw her interpretation of his
bad beginning. He tried an extinguisher.

“Wait a minute. Don’t flay me before you understand.
I’m not such a jasper as to mean to exact—What
I wish you’d do—What I want to ask—Jane,
have a little mercy on me. Tell me who and what to
you is that man living in your flat.”

From the look of her, judging dispassionately as
possible, all was over between them. She got to her
feet, as he to his. She looked strengthened by righteous
rage, he weakened by unrighteous humility. She made
the only utterances—and they did not help much, being
rather fragmentary.

“You think that I—You have assumed that he—You
believe that we—So *that* is why——”

In the pause that preceded the lash of further language,
Peter Pape realized what it was to be a dumb
brute. He felt as must certain dogs he had tried to
understand—faithful, well-intentioned, unequal to explaining
themselves. He knew that he did not deserve
chastisement at the beloved hand, yet could not resent
or avert it. Like a dog he leveled his eyes on hers and
looked—silent, honest, worshipful.

And Jane Lauderdale proved to have a heart for
dumb brutes.

A taxi with flag out had slowed at her gesture. She
was about to enter it. In quiet, crisp tones she gave
her address to the driver; then these instructions to
Pape:

“Get the next cab that comes along and follow me
to East Sixty-third Street. Under the circumstances
you will excuse me for preferring to ride over alone.
I’ll wait for you on the stoop.”

She did. And without a word she preceded him up
the three screeching, scrooping, shrieking flights, which
were not nearly so uncommunicative as his guide.

“Life’s a shaky thing. But love is worse—worse—worse”—the
first. And the scroopy second: “Things
get queerer every step—queerer—queerer.” Shrieked
the third: “Look out. Like as not he’ll leap and lam
you. Look out lest he leap and lam!”

The fourth floor front was empty when they entered.
Pape noted its quaint consistency during the moment
she left him alone—an oblong room fitted sparingly
with Colonial antiques, with a round rag rug over the
boards of its floor, with several old, interesting engravings
on its walls. He merely glanced at the horsehair
Davenport to which she had waved him; turned and
stood with face toward the sliding door through which
she had disappeared.

Soon this door was drawn open. Forward she led
by the hand the man. A tall, fit specimen he was, his
face clean-shaved and strong-featured, his hair a tawny
mass which probably once had been auburn, but now
was blond from a two-thirds admixture of gray.

The light of devotion irradiated the girl’s uplifted
face as she stopped before him. She looked like a slender
white taper beside some shrine, her lips the live red,
her eyes the blaze blue, her hair the waving suggestion
of its lighted tip.

“Dear,” she said to her companion, “I want to introduce
Mr. Why-Not Pape, the Westerner I told you
about.”

The man’s smile was cordial, beautiful. He stepped
forward with outstretched hand.

“Welcome to our city, Why-Not Pape,” he quoted
from the Times Cañon sign which, patently, had been
part of Jane’s tale.

But Pape didn’t—just couldn’t meet the advance.
He stood stubbornly still before the Davenport, his
arms stiff at his sides, his suffering eyes upon the lit
taper—upon Jane.

And into her devotional mood seemed to return that
gentling comprehension of dumb brutes.

“I *beg* your pardon,” she said to him. “Mr. Pape,
my father.”

CHAPTER XV—THE LIMIT OF TRUST
=============================

Not until Jane was finishing an account of his
disposal of the “grave-diggers” did Pape feel
sure that the splendid old man was blind. Suspicion
had come from the uncertainty with which he had
veered toward the chair placed for him, from his indirect
gaze toward the girl, from the hand outstretched
for the touch of her hand. Conclusion surprised from
the Westerner a low, sympathetic exclamation which
Jane heard, evidently understood and chose to answer
openly.

“Yes,” said she, “my father has been unable to see
since the war. France, you know, and mustard gas.”

“Do you suppose—” Curtis Lauderdale himself put
the question—“that otherwise I’d permit my dear girl
to conduct this search against our enemies?”

“But the war—at your age, sir?” murmured Pape.
“Weren’t there enough of us who were young and free
of family responsibilities to go into service?”

Again that rarely beautiful smile from eyes which
appeared somehow to see more than was visible to those
blessed with sight. “I was willing for you youngsters
to do the actual fighting. But I felt called upon to take
some part. What are two eyes compared with the inner
knowledge that you did your bit? I only helped to
make trench life easier, along with many other K-C’s
and wearers of the ‘Y.’”

“And how did they—get you?”

“Enemy gas bombs didn’t respect non-combative insignia
or uniforms. One of them blinded me and the
gray horde got—well, one more American prisoner. I
was later than most getting back home.”

There was a vitality in his manner—a throb of pure
joy in his voice—which eased the poignancy of the
younger man’s pity and reminded him that one mercy
amid the heartbreaks of the big fight would seem to be
the compensation seen by those whose gaze has been
focused forever inward.

Pape turned from father to daughter. “But your
aunt, Mrs. Sturgis, told me that your father was——”

“Yes.” Again Jane divined his perplexity. “Aunt
Helene thinks that dad ‘went West,’ as they say, in the
war. She was very much against his going. And
when he came back so late and so—so much the worse
for wear, he and I decided that she and the rest should
continue to believe the report which had preceded him
across the Atlantic, at least until after we forced——”

She did not hesitate; just stopped, having said what
she evidently considered enough. As she showed no
curiosity over the when, where or whyfore of auntie’s
confidence, Pape forced upon her no report, either of
that interview or the canter through conversational and
Central Park by-paths with Cousin Irene. Rather, he
gave to the charm of personality in the older man—a
magnet toward which he had turned willingly since
Jane’s justification in that quiet “my father.”

“But since you are freed, sir—now that you are
back——”

Jane’s eyes stopped him, so dark with suspicion was
their blue.

“I don’t know just what is back of your interest,
Why-Not Pape. But it will do no harm, whichever
side you are on, to admit a truth about my father known
to both his friends and foes. He is under a shadow—an
undeserved disgrace which culminated in an indictment.
Until that shadow is dissipated it is better that
none should know he has come back. What I decided
to trust you with before you found it out for yourself,
was the identity of the man with whom you thought
that I——”

“I am too grateful—” in his turn Pape interrupted—“ever
to let you regret that trust.”

He spoke as he felt, with revealing sincerity. His
look held hers; the thrill of his voice the moment.

The blind man lightened the pause. “The only thing
I had to thank our enemies for was the loss of my identity.
We thought advisable that it stay lost to all but
Jane. My sister-in-law, kind as she has been to my
girl-child, must have been more relieved than grieved
over the alleged finish of one supposed to have disgraced
the name. Why my daughter has seen fit to let
you, a comparative stranger, into the secret which we
have guarded so carefully——”

Why? Judging by Jane’s set look at the implied
criticism, she either could not or would not explain.
The interloper’s eyes, still fixed on hers, reiterated the
counter-demand, why not—*why not*?

Her father, as though sensing much more than he
could see, reached out and stroked her soft, parted,
night-black hair.

“Never mind, Jen-Jen,” he said. “The fact that
you do a thing makes it right enough for me.”

With sudden penitent fervor, she seized and kissed
his hand. “I don’t know, daddy dear. It is hard to be
sure about forced, snap judgments. I hope this Westerner
is what I’ve told you he looks. I am glad to have
brought him here to have you help me decide. And I
haven’t exactly let him into anything. Of his own
force—curiosity, superfluous energy or whatever it is
that animates him—he has sort of dashed into my life.
He knows about the theft of grandfather’s cryptogram
and that I’m trying to follow it from memory in my
park hunt. But, of course, the enemy knows that or
they wouldn’t be watching me or— *Oh*, I do hope that
it’s all right—that he’s all right! Now that he has
trailed me here, that he knows who and where you are,
so much depends upon his integrity. If he is against
us and is clever, wouldn’t he pretend just the same to
be with us?”

Had she forgotten his presence in their midst or was
she super-acutely remembering it? Pape wondered.
He felt as nearly futile as was constitutional about
further attempts to convince her of his fealty. On the
part of the Self-Selected, if not on his, that slow-but-sure
method would have to do. Time and acts would
tell—time and acts and this high-priest of hers, for love
of whom she had lit into a devotional taper.

He—her father—proceeded at once to fulfill her
prayer—to “help her decide.”

“Dear,” he proposed, “would it be too much to ask
you to serve us tea? If it is, just forget my bad habit.
But that last Orange Pekoe you got is delicious. And
there are a few fig-cakes left in the box. I’ll try to
entertain this latest acquisition of yours while you’re
bringing the water to a boil.”

He did try—and succeeded. As soon as the girl had
left the room, he began in a lowered tone:

“I was glad to do what I could for my country, even
at the cost. My misfortune I have learned to look on
as the *fortune* of war. My keenest regret—” he gave a
sightless glance toward the closed door—“is the loss of
seeing Jane’s face. From her babyhood up, I have so
enjoyed Jane’s face. I keep wondering and wondering
whether it has changed or aged from the years and the
suffering I’ve caused her—whether it is less or more
lovely than when I last saw it that day I kissed it
good-by.”

“It is,” said Pape with conviction, “more lovely. It
must be. You or any man would need to be a patriot,
sir, to love and leave such a face. It reminds me of
one I didn’t have to leave—one that led me over that
long road Over There to and through hell.”

“And whose face was that?”

“My mother’s.”

The old man looked arrested and pleased. He
nodded, as though in realization of a hope.

“Tell me,” he bade the younger, “what Jane looks
like to you.”

Well it was, perhaps, that he could not see the embarrassment
he had caused. Indeed, Pape didn’t feel
up to the sudden demand upon his sparse supply of fine
language. He couldn’t have felt less adequate, he was
sure, had he been called upon for an extemporaneous
critique upon the Sistine Madonna in the presence of
its creator.

And yet there were reasons and reasons in this case
why he should try to satisfy the eagerness of the fine
old face bent his way in a listening attitude. The
pathos of eyes from which the soul of sight had gone,
the worthiness of the subject and a certain longing
within himself to express to the next most interested
person the appreciation which so far he had been unable
to confide even in her who had inspired it—all urged
him to make an effort.

He drew a deep breath; wondered how far away she
was; hoped, then feared that possibly she would overhear.
He feared, lest he fall short of the flattery which
must have been poured, her life long, into her ears.
He hoped that she might the sooner get an idea of his
reverential admiration.

“Ever been to the Yellowstone?”

At his abrupt question the old man chuckled.

“Boy,” said he, “I knew our West before you were
born. I was one of the first whites into the Park, then
a wilderness. Jane tells me you’re from Hellroaring.
I was one of the party that named the region.”

“You don’t tell me that you are—Why, of course!
I should have known. We have a peak named after
you. Your hand, old scout!”

The grip that answered was one of the sort Pape
understood, a strong, firm, promising pact to the West
that had come East. Surer at least of his visible audience,
he roweled into the subject of the moment.

“In terms of our Yellowstone, then, your daughter’s
eyes remind me of Morning Glory Geyser. Could I
say more for their color, sir?”

“No. The same sun that whitened the Glory’s spray
seemed to make the deeps of its pool a stronger blue.
And her hair, young man, is it——?”

“Black as the jade of Obsidian Cliffs,” Pape supplied,
then corrected himself. “Yet that don’t seem an
altogether proper simile, it is so soft. Of course, I’ve
never touched it, sir, but I’ve an idea that the mountain
moss, where we find the giant violets, would feel harsh
to the hand that had smoothed your daughter’s hair.”

“It would that. Thank God they didn’t blind my
sense of touch! My fingers never tire of seeing Jane’s
soft hair.”

“Then your fingers must be able to see her lips, too,
for they are as definitely dented as those of an antelope
doe. And they’re as healthy a red as ever they
could have been in her childhood—red as the sun when
it gets over into Idaho. And the Teton Range itself
can’t beat her for clean, strong lines. I’ve never seen a
woman who was such a blend of delicacy and power
as your Jane. Still or in movement, I admire to watch
her.”

Lauderdale leaned back into his chair with a sigh of
satisfaction. “I used to call her ‘Little Lynx.’ There
never was such a child for sinuousness. Ah, what a
treat you’re giving me, Mr. Pape, to help me see again
the beauties of my beautiful girl! Tell me—” The
father’s voice lowered without loss of eagerness. His
hands quavered forward, as though to supply the lack
in his misted, striving eyes. “I want to know particularly
about the expression of her face. Has the trouble
I’ve brought upon her shadowed its brilliant paleness?
Has it still that rare repose, with only a lift of the eyelid,
a twitch of a corner of her lips or a quiver of her
chin, to show the emotions beneath?”

Pape drew back from the he-man habit of hiding his
heart; then, after a thought, leaned forward again.
Why hide from this one man who could be her true
lover, yet no rival to himself? Why not show what
he felt? He closed his eyes, the better and more companionably
to picture Jane. He felt that they two, both
sightless now, saw the same vision as he spoke.

“I ain’t what you’d call up in art, sir. But I saw in
Paris the finest statues in the world, or so they told
me. The quiet of those still, white people sort of got
on my imagination. Their suppression seemed to spoil
me for the awful animation of the average face. Likely
that’s why your Jane’s got me at first sight, although
I hadn’t thought it out up to now. Hers is the first
female face I ever was glad to watch in vain for a
smile. There couldn’t be a marble paler or purer or
with features finer lined. Just as I used to thank
Heaven, looking at those statued ladies, that they
couldn’t relax from their perfection, I feel like praying
that Jane never will relax into a smile—until she smiles
on me.”

A crowded silence fell between, but did not separate
them. Its most vital question the Westerner next answered
bluntly, after his way.

“It ain’t impudence, my calling her by her first name,
Mr. Lauderdale. I haven’t had a real good opportunity
as yet to ask your daughter to marry me. You see,
we haven’t met any too often—this is time the fourth
and only a shade less perturbed than the former three.
But rest assured that I’ll take advantage of the first
chance. Our ‘happily-ever-afterward’ is all settled so
far as I am concerned.”

“I see.”

Although in one way the blind man’s quiet statement
wasn’t true, in another he looked as though it was.

At a call from the rear room, Pape sprang to open
the door and relieve Jane of her laden tea-tray. On
turning, he noticed that the father’s one hand gripped
the other in his strong, firm, Westernwise clasp, as
though in self-congratulation. He looked as though he
now felt sincere in the welcome extended earlier for
form’s sake to one Peter Stansbury Pape. Just why?
Well, why not?

CHAPTER XVI—AN ACCEPTED ALLY
============================

“Mr. Pape has been painting your picture with a
brush dipped in colors of the Yellowstone,“
observed Curtis Lauderdale as he sipped the fragrant
amber brew which his daughter had poured and passed.

The girl flashed their guest an indignant glance.
“Attacking dad at his weakest point? For that I
should paint him an awful picture of you.”

“With a brush dipped in colors of the truth?”

At her threat and Pape’s meek retort, the old man’s
eyes continued to beam their way, as only sightless eyes
can beam.

“You needn’t, Jen-Jen. It doesn’t matter what Mr.
Pape looks like. Men show less on the outside what
they are than women. I’d rather see him as he is inwardly.
Already I know that he has both an imagination
and a sense of humor. And he is direct with the
*skookum* talk, which doesn’t lend to lies. As for his
exterior, I imagine him as moderately sizeable and
well-muscled and plain, or you wouldn’t have brought
him around.”

“Immoderately plain,” she corrected, still with a
punishing air.

“Good. Then I’ve got him—” her parent with a
chuckle. “Now it seems to me, if he’s done for us all
you say he has, that we owe him some explanation.”

At once Jane’s quasi-disapproval of their quickly
established fellowship turned into real.

“Explanation has been our downfall, dad,” she
warned. “You know your failing. You trust too
much and too soon. You seem to have got worse instead
of better—positively—since you went to the
war.”

“She’s right, Mr. Lauderdale,” Pape advised. “It
is too soon to trust me in *skookum* or any other foreign
language. But you seem shy some sort of help which
I’d like to supply if I can. Why waste time explaining?
You’re entitled—on face value, you know—to
the best I can give. There’ll be plenty of time to explain
after we’ve horned off all these nesters that seem
to be rooting around your ranch.”

“Another good quality—generosity,” commented the
older man in an argumentative way to his daughter.
“Don’t you think, dear, that it would be safe enough
to tell him a certain amount of the truth, even though
he should prove to be an active agent of our enemies?
If on the other side, he’d know it anyhow. If on ours,
he’d be at a serious disadvantage without some of the
facts. We are in no position to despise an ally, Jane,
and——”

Pape was determined that her confidence should not
be forced, even by her father. He interrupted briskly:

“Which or whether, let me trust you folks first. I
am almost as much a stranger to you as you to me—and
no more given to explanations than our young
friend here. I feel kind of called to tell you who I am
and why I’m stranded in this Far East of New York.
You may scent something in common in the sad little
story of my life, for I, too, am on a still hunt for an
enemy or enemies unknown.”

He offered his tea cup for a refilling, climbed to his
feet and steadied the china across to the white marble
mantelpiece. There he stood and drank the beverage
between the deliberate lines of his opening. He began
at the beginning—or thereabouts—of Peter Pape.
Over the early days of his stock-raising struggle to
those of comparative, present success on the Queer
Question Ranch he passed in fair style and with reasonable
rapidity. Thence he slowed down to the near past
and its sudden, oleaginous wealth.

As is so often the case in oil, he, as owner of the
land, had been the last to suspect the presence of this
liquid “gold” beneath his acres. Only the fact that he
loved his ranch and would not sell the heart of it had
saved him. Price proffers had risen slowly but surely
until they reached figures which caused him to suspect,
not the worst, but the best. He had drilled on a chance
to a ceaseless flow of fortune.

His account carried its own conviction and fulfilled
his preface except for one point. Where had he any
cause, in this generous deal of Fate, to be resenting or
seeking to punish enemies, unknown or otherwise?
The blind man pointed the omission.

“Notwithstanding the enough-and-to-spare that I’ve
got, sir, they stung me, these sharpers, through a lot of
poor folks who couldn’t afford even a nettle prick.
Before I got hep to what was up I had sold a small
tract for which I had no further use to an alleged student
of agriculture who had interested me in a new
scheme for making alfalfa grow where nothing much
ever had grown before. When my wells began to gush
by fifties and hundreds of barrels, the backer of this
fake farmer organized an oil company on the strength
of his buy and floated stock right and left.”

He paused to clinch and thump a fist upon the
mantel-shelf; then glowered unreasonably at the nervous
quivers of the wax flowers within the glass case
which formed its centerpiece.

“When widows with orphans from everywhere and
some of my friends from nearby cow-towns began to
write and ask me about their promised dividends—Well,
folks, in time I got wisened to the fact that my
name had been used along with the fame of Queer
Question production. I asked myself a question that
didn’t sound as queer to me as to the bunch of sharpers
that I soon put it to. After I’d gathered them in and
the Federal Court had helped me hand ’em what was
over-due, I started on a long, long trail after the big
guy that had planned the crooked deal. I’m still stalking
him. He’s lurking down in that gulch of Wall
Street to-day or I’m clean off the trail. You see,
friends, the Montana Gusher Oil Fields, Inc., hasn’t
even a smell of oil. When I find the promoter——”

“Montana Gusher—was that the company’s name?”
Jane’s interruption was more than interested; was
voiced with suppressed excitement. She turned toward
her father. “You remember my telling you of Aunt
Helene’s narrow escape from buying a block of worthless
oil stock a year ago? She was only saved by——”

“Child, child, don’t name names,” the blind man
reproved her. On his face, however, was the reflex of
her startled look.

“It’s all right to say ‘child, child,’” insisted the girl
vehemently. “You never would believe ill of any one
until it was proved at your expense. Doesn’t it strike
you as strange that *he* should have been the one to know
all about these far-away oil fields without time for
investigation—that *he* was able to dissuade Auntie
against the smooth arguments of a salesman whose
claim on him as a friend he had acknowledged? Do
you suppose the promoter of Montana Gusher could
have been——”

“Wait, Jen-Jen. You’d better be sure before suggesting
such a charge to this young man. You can
see that he is in earnest. If you should be wrong——”

“You’re plumb right about my being in earnest,”
Pape cut in. “But I’m willing to go into all details
before asking you to name me that name. I shouldn’t
have minded so much had it been my bank account that
was tapped. What they did me out of, though, was the
good-faith of my friends and neighbors. When they
made *me* look like the robber of widows and orphans
instead of themselves—Well, if ever I get a rope
around the scrub neck of that——”

On account of an interruption he did not finish the
threat. A peculiarly tuneful auto siren sounded up
from the street through the open windows. Jane got
to her feet with such suddenness as to jeopard the
entire China population of the tea-table. She crossed
to one of the windows; held the Swiss curtain before
her face; looked out and down.

“I thought I couldn’t be mistaken.” Her report was
low-spoken, but tense. “The Allen car has stopped in
the street, across from the house.”

“Not—Sam Allen couldn’t have found me over
here?” The blind man also arose. With hands out, he
swayed after her. “You must be mistaken, Jane. Look
again!”

“How could I be mistaken? They are out of the
car now. They’re looking at the house number. What—*what*
can this mean?”

Jane drew in from the window; leveled upon her
parent a look of acute alarm; saw and remembered
Pape. With an attempt at naturalness she explained:

“Mr. Allen was my father’s lawyer and one of his
oldest friends. We are surprised by this visit because
he isn’t supposed to know even that dad is alive, let
alone his address in New York.”

“You said ‘they,’ Jane,” her father puzzled. “Who
else——”

“Mills Harford is with him.”

The old man seemed shaken anew. “How could
Harford know that we’re here unless Jasper——”

“No, dad, not Jasper. He is faithful as the moon.
You know that. It strikes me as more possible
that—” In a return rush of suspicion she faced the
Westerner. “Mr. Pape met both Mills and Judge Allen
at the opera and later at Aunt Helene’s. He is the
only person who, to my knowledge, has discovered my
disguise and our whereabouts.”

Pape returned her look steadily and rather resentfully.
“That is true, Miss Lauderdale. But I have
had no communication with either of them since, although
I did visit both their offices with the hope of
locating you. Only yesterday I was told that Harford
was out of town.”

The blind man threw up his hands intolerantly.
“Out of town, was he, and leaving a love-letter a day
at the Sturgis house for Jasper to deliver, all written
at his club? Do you think that hare-hound would go
out of town so long as he suspects that Jane is in it?
What are they doing now?”

“Crossing straight toward our steps—” the girl in
low, quick tones from the window. “Judge Allen probably
recognizes the house, despite its condition. He
was here several times in granddad’s day. He won’t
have to ask the way up.”

“But, Jane, they mustn’t come up here—mustn’t get
in. What shall we do?”

“I don’t know, dad. Let me think. Meantime you,
Mr. Pape——”

Again the Westerner heard that persistent suspicion
of him in her voice and saw that she had whipped from
out her blouse a very small, very black, very competent-looking
something which he was glad to know she
wore.

“You are not to show your face at the window and
you are not to cross the room when they knock,” she
told him. “If you so much as cough——”

Pape eyed her interestedly and decided that she meant
the implied threat. The puzzle of the Lauderdales, far
from being solved, was growing more intricate. Why
should these two delightful and, he felt sure, innocent
persons so fear the prospective visit—the old man from
his lawyer and friend, his daughter from the personable
and wealthy young real-estater whom Irene Sturgis
had declared to be her most ardent suitor? Truly, the
case was one for a show of blind, dumb and deaf
faith.

The increase of tension as heavy steps began to
scroop up the stairs seemed to emanate from the figure
of Jane Lauderdale. Straight and strong she stood in
the center of the room, her face more marble-like than
the mantel. Her head was thrown up in an attitude
of alert listening. The black something in her right
hand continued to command the suspect of circumstance.

He, although in a somewhat easy attitude, demonstrated
that he knew how to behave when “covered.”
He did not so much as glance toward the window.
And he showed no tendency to cough. His one deflection
was a scarcely audible whisper.

“If I should have to sneeze, you won’t shoot me,
Jane? If you do, you’ll miss a lot of love.”

At the first light rap on the door, Lauderdale’s knees
seemed to weaken and he sat down upon one end of
the Davenport. The younger pair stiffened; held their
breath; eyed each other.

A second knock sounded, then a more imperative
third. An advisory discussion outside, too low-voiced
for intelligibility, ended in a fourth demand for admittance,
knuckled to carry to the rear of the house and
waken any sleeper within.

At each repetition the blind man had shuddered and
gripped harder the arm of the Davenport. Now he
flung out a summoning hand toward his daughter.
She, with her trio of eyes on their silent guest—her
own blazing blue pair and the single black one of the
gun—crossed and bent to her father’s rasp:

“If they should force the lock—should batter down
the door——”

Jane made no attempt to reassure him. At a step
toward them of the stranger she retraced her steps and
gestured him back with the pistol, silently but most
significantly.

Pape, the while, threw a trusting smile into the three
eyes, then strode straight toward them. Close to Jane’s
ear he whispered:

“You won’t shoot me. You can’t. You’d lose too
much good faith.”

Despite her outraged gasp, he continued toward the
door that was being importuned. Another smile he
threw over-shoulder to reassure her of his confidence.

And Jane didn’t shoot. Probably she couldn’t. No
report shocked the air. Nothing sounded except a
gruff demand from the inner side of the door.

“Who’s there? Wha’d’you want?”

From outside: “Old friends. We wish to see Miss
Lauderdale.”

“*Who*?”

“Lauderdale—Miss Lau-der-dale.”

“Who in holy Hemlock directed you here, then?
My name ain’t Lauderdale. Never will be. Stop the
noise, will you?”

There ensued further low-voiced consultation without.
A moment later footsteps began a descent of the
stairs. Scroop ... screak ... screech.

Not until the musical siren announced the departure
from the block of the would-be visitors, did Pape
relax from his listening attitude at the door. On turning
he saw that Jane, too, had slumped, limp and white,
into a chair, the very black and ominous something
with which she had threatened him dropped into her
lap. A look half-dazed, yet wholly hopeful was on
her face.

“Thank Heaven—thank you, Peter Pape—they’ve
gone!”

“But they’ll come back.” Her father’s voice echoed
none of her relief. “Allen and Harford must have
reason to suspect that you, at least, are here in the old
house. Otherwise they’d not have come. If my presence,
too, is suspected, it won’t be long until that other
pack comes to hound me down. Jane, you can’t go
on with this search, vital though it be. Come what
may, you shan’t be sacrificed. It’s no business for a
girl alone and unprotected. We’ll have to give it all
up, dear. I’ll go away somewhere—anywhere.”

“But Jane ain’t alone and unprotected.” Pape
crossed the room and faced them both. “Looks clear
enough to me why I sloped out of the West and into
the far East just in the nick o’ time. I’m hoping the
reason will soon get clear to you.”

The girl’s lips moved, although she did not speak.
She looked and looked at him. Her father, unable to
see, worded the demand of her eyes.

“Exactly what do you mean, Mr. Pape? What do
you offer and why?”

“*Why*? Why not?” he asked in turn. “From this
moment on, just as from the same back to that Zaza
night, I am at Miss Lauderdale’s service. I have a
trusty bit of hardware myself—” in substantiation he
drew from somewhere beneath his coat a blue-black
revolver of heavy caliber—“and I am not so slow on
the draw as some. If this pack you say is trailing you
is determined to get itself shot up, it would be better
for me to do it than for her, wouldn’t it? And while
we’re waiting for the mix-up, I could dig for whatever
it is she is looking for. Oh, you needn’t tell me what
that is! I’ve worked blind before. You folks just tell
me when and where to dig and I’ll *dig*!”

The girl turned to her parent. “I think, after all,
I’ll tell Mr. Pape——”

“I think it is time—high time, Jane.” He nodded in
vehement approval.

Rising, she faced their guest; spoke rapidly, although
in a thinking way.

“You’ve earned the partial confidence that dad
wished to give you, Why-Not Pape. This old house
belonged to my grandfather. He grew eccentric in
later life. The more this East Side section ran down,
the tighter he clung to it. Toward the end, he fitted
up this top-floor flat for himself and rented out the
others. From sentiment my father didn’t sell the house,
although we could have used the money. We are not
rich like the Sturgis branch of the family.”

“That is, we are not unless——”

“I am getting to that, dad.” With a shadow of her
former frown, Jane cut off her parent’s interruption.
“My grandfather’s other particular haunt was Central
Park. He knew it from Scholars Gate at Fifty-ninth
and Fifth to Pioneers at the farther northwest corner.
He played croquet with other ‘old boys’ on the knoll
above the North Meadow, sailed miniature yachts for
silver cups on Conservatory Lake and helped the predecessors
of Shepherd Tom tend their flocks on The
Green. He had an eccentric’s distrust of banks and
deposit vaults and chose a spot in the park as the secret
repository for the most valuable thing he had to leave
behind him. The only key to the exact spot is a cryptogram
which he worked out and by which he expected
my father to locate his inheritance.”

Pape filled the pause which, evidently, was for the
weighing of further information. “So this cryptogram
or map was in the stolen heirloom snuff-box the
night that I—that we——”

“Yes. My grandfather, on his death bed, tried to
tell me where he had hidden it, but he waited a moment
too long. For years father and I hunted in vain. Not
until the other day—the day of the night on which you
and I met, Peter Pape—did I come upon it quite by
accident in the attic space of this house. It was in the
old snuff-box. I took both to Aunt Helene’s that
night, hoping to find time to study and decipher it.
And I did read it through several times, memorizing a
verse or two of it and some of the figures before the
opera. I asked my aunt to put the box in her safe, not
telling her its contents. The rest you know.”

Although Pape felt the danger of his “little knowledge,”
he drove no prod; simply waited for her to
volunteer.

“A number of people knew of our long search for
grandfather’s covered map, among them an enemy
through whom we have been deprived, but whose name
we do not know. How he could have been informed
just when I found or where I placed it, I cannot conceive.
Possibly the safe has been under periodic
search, although we never suspected. Possibly some
one within the house is in the employ of this unknown
enemy and saw me give it to my aunt for deposit or
heard that I had turned over some valuable. I was
unforgivably careless.”

“An inside job?” Pape queried. “I thought so.”

“But not through Jasper—I’d stake anything on
that!” the girl exclaimed. “He was our own butler in
better days and is loyal, I know. Since that disastrous
night, I’ve been trying to work out the verses of the
crypt from memory before its present possessor would
get the key to a translation. ‘To whispers of poplars
four’ was the second line of one of the verses. That
is why——”

The rising of Curtis Lauderdale interrupted her.
He crossed, with a nervous clutch on this chair and
that, to where Pape stood in the room’s center.

“There’s very great need of haste,” he said. “Now
that they are watching Jane’s movements—Since
they’ve trailed her here—Mr. Pape, I cannot afford
to mistrust you, even were I inclined to do so. My
dear girl here blames me for trusting people, but since
I must trust her to some one, I’d rather it should be
you. I accept and hold you to your offer to see her
safely through to-night. Much more than you could
imagine hangs in the balance. This may be our last
chance.”

“I never acknowledge any chance as the last until
success, sir.” Pape again grasped the forward fluttering
right of the blind man. His left hand he extended
to the girl. “I’ll try to deserve your father’s
confidence—and yours, Jane.”

“Near the four poplars, then, at dusk,” she consented.

Also she gave him a smile, all the lovelier for its
faintness and rarity.

That moment of au revoir, in which they formed a
complete circle, palms to palms, Pape felt to be his
initiation into what was to him a divine triumvirate.
“At dusk!” There was nothing—quite nothing which
he could not accomplish for the common, if still unknown
cause that night, then, at dusk.

CHAPTER XVII—POPLARS FOUR
=========================

HAD Peter Pape been at home in Hellroaring the
late afternoon of this crowded day in New
York, he doubtless would have saddled Polkadot and
climbed to some lonely mesa for meditative fingering
of the odd chain into which he had forged himself as
a link. Instead, he locked himself in the Astor suite,
little used hitherto except for sleep. The telephone he
silenced with a towel wrapped around the bell. He
closed the windows against distractions from the street
and switched off the electric fan, the whirr of which
sounded above the traffic roar.

Yet with all these aids to concentration, his résumé
of facts newly given out in the affairs of his self-selected
lady reached no conclusion. Varying the metaphor,
no point or eye could he see to that needle, greater
than Central Park itself, which would sew the fate of
the Lauderdales. The best he could do in preparation
for contingencies ahead was to throw a diamond hitch
around his resolve to do and dare unquestioningly in
the service to which he now was sworn—to advance
from initiate into full membership of the triumvirate.

He planned by the clock. At six sharp, he rang for
dinner upstairs. Seven found him again in the garb
worn from the West, which appealed to him as more
suitable than any of the “masterpieces” tailored for less
important functions than that of to-night.

The blond floor-clerk, whose hall desk stood near the
entrance door to his suite, awaited his approach with
an “Indian sign” of warning. But she and he couldn’t
have come from the same tribe; at least he did not
grasp its import until later developments translated it
for him.

“Oh, Mr. Pape,” she lisped, as, actually, he was
about to pass her by without his usual breezy greeting,
“you’ve had three calls s’evening. You’re getting so
popular. But I must say I don’t wonder at all.”

“Three calls—and for me?” He was halted by honest
amaze. “How come? I mean, from whom and
what about? Say, was one a lady’s voice, sort of cool,
yet kind, soft yet strong, gentle yet——”

“No such riddle voice helloed you,” snapped the
girl. “Three adult males they were that wanted you
and one of them none too kind or soft or gentle, at
that. I told ’em what I thought was the truth. Personally,
you know, I make a specialty of the truth when
it doesn’t do any harm. I said that you hadn’t been in
since morning. They didn’t appear to have any names,
no more than messages to leave.”

“Saves time answering.” Pape got underway for
the elevator. “Greetings and thank-yous, ma’am, and
many of them. If any more males call me, I may not
be in *until* morning.”

“You *do* lead the life!”

Her exclamation faded into her stock-in-trade smile.
But curiosity was in the baby stare with which she
followed him to the grated door. A queer customer
among the Astor’s queer. At that, though, as she admitted
to her deeper self, she was “intrigued” rather
than “peeved” by his utter lack of interest in what she
did with her blond self when off duty.

Swinging across the rotunda six floors below, Pape
was startled to see a face he recognized—that “fightingest”
face of the bully with whom he had gone the
single round on the park butte-top. A clockward
glance reminded him that he was in considerable of a
hurry. He had adequate time to keep the most important
appointment of his recent life, although none to
spare. The pug probably had been one of those to call
him on the ’phone. But wonder over how and why he
had been located by his late antagonist must be deferred
until some moment less engaged.

Next second Pape heard what he instantly surmised
to be the voice of a second of the three inquirers—that
of Swinton Welch, boss digger at the four poplars.
Now, he really felt indebted to the dapper sub-contractor
who, together with the “grave diggers,” on the
sacred spot, had put him in stride for the vast progress
of his day. Moreover, he was interested in the possible
connection between Welch and the unnamed battler
he had overcome, as indicated by their joint wait
at his hotel. Although he located Welch at once leaning
against the news-stand, he felt he should not stop,
even for a word of thanks or a pointed question. Tilting
the brim of his sombrero over his eyes, he made
for the Broadway entrance.

“There he goes, Duffy!”

From close behind, the thin voice of the thin boss
answered several of the queries which Pape might have
put without need of his putting them. So, the name
of his adversary of the night before was Duffy! There
was some connection between him and Welch. Both
were waiting for him.

A heavy hand clamped his shoulder. “Hey you,
what’s your hurry?”

Shaking the clutch, Pape turned forcefully just as
Welch joined Duffy. With but a fragment of a prefatory
plan, his arms flung out flail-like and brought his
two untimely callers into violent collision. A short-arm
jab just below the curve of Duffy’s ribs doubled
him over his undersized partner with a yap of pain.
Before the lobby crowd realized that anything untoward
was being punched, Pape’s identity as aggressor
had been lost by his dash for the revolving exit.

Almost was he within one of the door’s compartments
when again halted—this time by a slender youth
with an eye-brow mustache.

“I beg pardon, but isn’t this Mr. Why-Not——”

That is as far as the probable third of the “adult
males” got with his mannerly question. Perhaps the
weariness of his voice and the weakness of his hirsute
adornment gave Pape the idea. At any rate an unoccupied
arm chair stood ready. Seizing the man’s slender
shoulders, he seated his third caller therein with
more force than courtesy.

“So glad to meet you, Mr. Pape,” this in a sort of
gasp. “I’ve been here to see you several times. A
small matter of business. I’m from the——”

Pape did not wait. He was not nearly so much
concerned over the source of the youth as that Welch
and Duffy soon would be up and after him. He had
no time for further bouts with one, two or three, regardless
of a constitutional disinclination to shirk battle.
He pushed through the revolving door and into
the traffic out front. On the opposite side of Broadway,
he dived into the up-tide of pedestrians.

One observation disturbed him as he eased himself
into an empty taxi, with an order to stop at the Maine
Monument. Although all others of the varied sky-signs
were alive, flaunting the wan daylight with their
artificial blaze, the rose-wrought welcome to Why-Not
Pape was dead. He’d find time in the morning to set
off a less artificial blaze of indignation before the electric
company for their neglect. Surely they could spare
him as many kilowatts as that sausage maker or this
movie maid! His need of the hired cheer of the sign
no longer was urgent, now that he had been hand-clasped
into the Lauderdale triumvirate. Still, the
sign that had lit his way to Jane was worthy of
perpetuation.

----

Before night-fall no likely place was left in the near
vicinity of the poplars four for any old lady’s “laborer”
to dig. From the shadow of the park wall,
where crouched a poke-bonneted figure, sounded an
order to cease work.

“Hope has died hard, harder even than you have
dug, you human steam-shovel. I guess it’s no use.”
Jane’s voice was as forlorn as she looked when Pape
swung up at her call.

He leaned upon the man-sized spade which he had
purchased at a small hardware store near Columbus
Circle just before keeping their rendezvous. He
mopped from brow, neck and hands the sweat of toil
as honest as ever he had done.

“So far as I’ve been able to discover,” the girl continued,
“this is the only group of trees the length and
breadth of the park that answers description. But
evidently they are not the ones of grandfather’s
rhyme.”

Pape drew some few breaths calculated to steady his
pulse to normal. “Being only one of the laboring class
and uneducated as most over the ultimate object of my
labors—in other words, never having glimpsed the
word-map of that crypt, I can’t be of much mental
assistance.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t mind telling you the lines if I only
could remember them,” Jane conceded. “One distinctly
says to dig near the ‘whisper of poplars four.’ Confound
grandfathers and their mysterious ways! Despite
your willingness and energy, Mr. Pape——”

“Peter, if you please, Jane.”

“Peter, we shall have to give it up. If you’ll smooth
back the earth you’ve disturbed, I’ll take off my two
score years and ten.”

“You mean to retire my little old lady of the park?”

“Must, I’m due to return to Aunt Helene’s to-night
from my—my visit. I have on my gray suit under this
loose old black thing and a hat in my bag. If you’ll
escort me to the house, I’ll be that much more obliged.”

Tugging at the strings of the poke bonnet, she
stepped toward the cover of a nearby black haw whose
flat-topped, branch-end clusters of bloom gleamed like
phosphorus over a dark sea. He turned back to his
task with his consistent superiority to intelligent inquiry.
Muscularly, at least, he had earned her confidence.
So far free from interruption more staying than
a chance glance or careless comment, they seemed
about to end an evening successful in its unsuccess,
when there sounded a verbal assault.

“You’re under arrest—the both of yous—and caught
with the goods, at that!”

To Pape’s ears the Irish accent had a familiar sound.
Straightening to confront the two uniformed figures
now materializing from the dusk and the hillock’s
crest, he executed a signal which he hoped would be
understood by his companion as a suggestion that she
“slide out”—leave him to wriggle from the clutch of
the law as best he might.

“Arrest? And for what, if you have time to swap
me word for word?” he put demand.

“For the messing up and maltreating of Central Park
in violation of enough statutes to hang and then jail
you for a year. Don’t bother denying or it’ll be used
again you. We been watching a whole half hour.
You haven’t a chance at a get-away, so come along
nice and companionable.”

The last admonition was shared with the bent old
lady, who was too dim-sighted, evidently, to have seen
her laborer’s telepogram and now appeared from
around the misnamed white-blooming black haw.

“We wouldn’t like to be rough with a lady.”

The suggestive warning came from the second officer.
At his voice, Pape sprang forward and peered
into two familiar faces—into the chiseled smile of
’Donis Moore and the fat surprise of the “sparrow
cop,” Pudge O’Shay. He couldn’t decide at the moment
whether to be sorry or hopeful that these two
friendly enemies should be the ones again to catch him
at misdemeanor within the sacred oblong of the park.

Jane didn’t like, any more than they, that they should
be “rough” with her, to judge by the readiness with
which she gave up the possibility of escape and ranged
alongside the Westerner, quite a bit less humped and
helpless looking, however, than in her approach.

“I’ll say this is a pleasure—to be pinched by the only
two friends I’ve got on the Force,” offered Pape with
his hand. “How are you to-night, ’Donis Moore?
O’Shay, greetings!”

“No shaking with prisoners!” The gruffness of the
foot policeman was remindful of that previous meeting
in which his whistle had been mistaken for a quail’s.

Adonis ignored proprieties and gripped the proffered
hand.

“What you up to now, Montana—unhorsed and
scratching up our front yard?”

“I’m a-digging,” Pape returned.

“A-digging for what?”

Jane supplied: “For an herb called Root-of-Evil.”

“I see. Herb-roots for mother, eh?”  Moore
squinted a confidential wink toward the Westerner.
“If you’d taken my advice, you’d be throwing something
better than dirt around for some one younger
and——”

“But I did take your advice. This is what it led
me to.”

“Not in them clothes, you didn’t. Why don’t you
hire out to the Sewer Department, if excavating’s your
line? Sorry, but you and mother is in Dutch with us.”

There came a growl from Pudge. “Not Dutch—German,
and with more than us. Report of your doin’s
was ’phoned the station. They sent me out to round
you up. I happened on me handsome friend here off-duty
and brought him along for good measure. I
was minded to leave you go that other time, you cheerful
lunatic. But now I’m a-going to take you in.
Watch ’em, ’Donis, whilst I go ring for the wagon.”

At this mention of the auto-patrol vehicle, behind
the gratings of which the lawless and unfortunate are
exhibited, like caged wildlings, through the city streets,
Jane stepped toward Pape. He felt her hand steal into
the crook of his elbow, as if for protection from such
a disgrace. Although personally he had no objection
to wagoning across the park to the Arsenal, he vibrated
to her mute appeal.

“As a favor, Moore, would you mind walking us to
your calaboose?” he asked. “I give you my cross-my-heart-and-hope
that we’ll not try to get away. Don’t
refuse on mother’s account. She’s mighty spry on her
feet.”

Pudge O’Shay continued to grumble. Being a sparrow
cop was no job for a flat-foot, especially a fat one,
he declared. He was tired and sorry for himself out
loud. After a small controversy, however, he withdrew
his objection to the stroll, if not taken at speed.

The procession started along No. 1 Traverse, the
shortest route to the Arsenal. The arresting officer
led. The prime culprit, his young-old accomplice clinging
to his arm, followed. The dismounted officer
brought up as rear guard.

“Got a permit for your automatic?” Pape was able
to ask Jane in a murmur well below the scrunch of feet.

“No. But I’ve got the automatic with me.”

“Slip it to me!”

He did not explain the request. Whether he meant
to force a gun-point escape and needed her pistol to
supplement his own against their two captors or
whether he feared some such desperate initiative on her
part, he left her to wonder. Watching their chance, he
whispered “Now!” Next second he had safe inside
his own coat pocket that very small, very black and
very competent looking something with which she had
commanded him in vain earlier in the day.

“Just try to trust me, Jane,” was his response to
the unquestioning obedience which had produced it
from the blouse beneath her old-lady black.

“To try to trust you is getting easier, Peter.”

The guarded admission sounded sweeter than the
rhododendrons smelled. He felt happier going to jail
with Jane than ever in his life before; was luxuriating
in sentimentality when a roar like that of flaunted Fate
lacerated the air. Pape started and stared about; saw
that they were nearing Fifth Avenue and the menagerie
that flanks the Arsenal; assumed that some monarch of
the wild caged there had but vented his heart. A calming
hand he placed over the girl’s two which had
gripped his arm.

“Just a moth-eaten old lion dreaming of his native
jungle and talking in his sleep.”

“But you don’t understand what it might mean, that
Nubian roar. It may be another clew to point the location
of—of what grandfather buried in the park, you
know.”

Through the gloom he stared down into the gloomier
scoop of her bonnet.

“Say,” he enquired, mildly as he could, “you ain’t
going to ask me next to play Daniel and to dig in that
lion’s den?”

“Hush. Don’t make fun. This is very important.
If we can find four poplars over on this side of the
park, within earshot of the menagerie lions—The first
crypt verse starts off like this:

   | “‘List to the Nubian roar
   | And whisper of poplars four.’”

“I wish I could remember more accurately! It
rhymes about bed-rock and crock, height and might
and fight, then trails off into figures. But I am certain
about those first two lines. Maybe we’re getting close.
With that Nubian roar as a center, let’s walk round
and round, in widening circles, until we list to the whisper
of poplars four.”

Pape’s perplexity had not been eased by his steady
stare into the poke.

“Very nice,” he said, “that stroll round and round,
provided we don’t go too fast and get dizzy. But we
can’t start at the present moment.”

“Why not?”—she, this time impatiently.

“You forget, my dear young lady, that we are arrested.”

That was true. They were—and before the door
of their jail.

CHAPTER XVIII—TOO READY RESCUE
==============================

Before the desk sergeant of a metropolitan police
station friendship usually ceases. It did tonight
in the Arsenal, otherwise the 33rd Precinct.
By not so much as the ghost of a grin could the be-mustached
official in a uniform striped by decades of
service have detected even a speaking acquaintance between
captors and prisoners.

The “case” was Pudge O’Shay’s and he made the
arraignment, Moore having subsided into a wooden
arm-chair tilted against the wall.

“These are the grub worms that the ’phone message
was about,” announced the sparrow cop.

“Mind telling me who sent in that get-your-gun
alarm?” Pape asked with a naïveté that masked the
effrontery of his request.

The sergeant stared at him in amazement. “None
of your business, you human mole.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” was his easy-manner counter.
“A sharp-faced little crook named Swinton Welch.”

“Easy there with the hard names, young fellow!
Swin Welch is a friend of mine and no person’s going
to call him a crook to my face, much less a prisoner.”

“Thought so,” said Pape with a grin. “If he ain’t
a crook, how about the folks he’s working for?”

Ignoring him, the sergeant opened the blotter.

“Name?”

“Peter Stansbury——”

“Never heard about a little rule of ladies first, I
reckon,” interrupted the officer. “If the ship was sinking
you’d make the first boat, I bet. Answer up,
mother.”

For the first time the poke-bonneted head of the less
aggressive prisoner lifted sufficiently to show the face
within.

“Well, I’ll be——”

He was—struck dumb, if that was what he had been
about to say. Next minute, however, he must have
remembered that sergeants are supposed to be superior
to shock. At any rate, he began the routine questions.

The red, soft-curved lips of youth answered readily
from the shadow of the antiquated headgear. Even
“How old are you?” had no terrors for one who had
voted at the last election. Her “more than twenty-one”
suggested the folly of pressing the point.

“Are you armed?” asked the officer in charge when
the skeleton biography was completed.

Jane’s startled glance at Pape told him at least that
now she understood the commandeering of her automatic—that
some penalty was imposed for the bearing
of weapons without permit. With a word and wag of
chin she replied in the negative.

“Not having a matron here to search you, I’ll have
to take your say-so.” The sergeant, after a meditative
tug at his gray mustache, waved her back.

Pape was pedigreed with scant ceremony and his answers
recorded as he gave them, even to “Hotel Astor,
residence.”

“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
pass 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 entitled 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?”

Assuming 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
circumstance 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
shores from the ocean of post-war inactivity.

The entrance of Irene Sturgis was “staged”—anticipated,
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 Arsenal.
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 noble 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 assure 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 assured 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 encompassed 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.”

“Arrested—*you?* I guess I don’t understand. How
does it come that you are here when you’re visiting the
Giffords in Southampton? And how in the world did
you and Why-Not—You two were hauled up—*together?*”

Her final utterance was in a tone fictionally describable
as “tinged by the bitterness of despair.”

As Jane seemed disinclined to explain, Pape tried to
ease the moment. “We happened to meet near the
Maine Monument. I was out for—for exercise, you
see. Your cousin here showed me some new ways of
getting the same.”

“Sure, blame it on her, Adam,” Pudge O’Shay made
grumpy interposition. “Remember, though, that this
ain’t the first evening I’ve caught you trying new ways
of exercising in the park.”

Jane turned toward the sergeant. “Can’t we settle
about the bail and be off, sir?”

He coughed, bent for a moment’s scribbling; made
answer direct to Irene.

“Here’s a receipt for your jewelry, miss. I’ll take
a chance on its value. While I don’t congratulate anybody
on getting pinched, I’m glad that your friends, if
they must cut capers, have you to help them out.
Thank you for breezing into this gloomy old place.”

“Good for you, you nice old barking dog that don’t
bite!” enthused the girl. “I *thought* you weren’t half
as cross as you look. I don’t know what my friends
have done to get the law down on them, but I *do* believe
in their innocence of motive and so may you.
My cousin is the stormy petrel sort, with the best intentions
in the world, but *always* getting herself and others
into trouble. And Why-Not Pape—He’s just from
the West, you know, and I haven’t had time yet to
teach him how to behave in a city. In a way you have
done me a favor in pinching them, as you so cleverly
put it. It is *something* for a true woman to be given
the opportunity to show by her actions just how
much she—You get what I mean, don’t you—or
*do* you?”

Others in the room got it rather more forcefully
than he. Pape suppressed a groan at the flush which
had blotted the pallor of Jane’s face. Fast though he
had worked, this infant fiend worked faster. Hard
though he had tried, she had upset all his gains with a
laugh and a sigh. Desperate though he felt to protest
her claim on him, the fact that she claimed him discounted
any protestation he might make. His West
had schooled him in deeds, not words. By deeds he
would—he *must* prove the truth.

Characteristically Irene rewarded Adonis Moore.
He was a “dear” of a horse cop and wore his uniform
just “scrumptiously.” He must keep an eye out for
her when next she rode over park bridle-paths. She
thanked him for her friends, therefore for her.
It was these acts of simple human kindness that
made the world worth while. Didn’t he agree with
her—or *did* he? She only hoped that others were as
appreciative of *her* efforts as was she of his.

Even for Pudge O’Shay, whose case it was, she had
a cordial *au revoir*. She had noticed from first glance
that he looked worried. But he mustn’t worry, not
one tiny bit. Worry made one thin and he had such
an imposing appearance—so official—just as he was.
He must rely on her. Surely he could—or *couldn’t* he?
She had taken the case in hand now and would return
the two out-on-bails to court if she had to carry them.
He was merely loaning them to her over night.
Wouldn’t he try to remember that?

“Good-night, you nice persons, one and all!”

She shook hands with the uniformed three before
attaching herself, dangle-wise, to Pape’s weak right
arm.

“Come along, crooks,” she advised the “pinched”
pair cheerfully. “This paper declares me your custodian—says
it will cost me the family jools not to produce
you in court at ten of to-morrow morn. No
matter how guilty you be or be not, I shall produce!”

CHAPTER XIX—TEN OF TO-MORROW MORN
=================================

Not until the police court arraignment, held
shortly after the prescribed hour next morning,
had Peter Pape been impressed by the personality and
power of ex-Judge Samuel Allen. Pinkish were the
little jurist’s cheeks, modest his mustaches and by no
means commanding his chubby, under-height figure.
Yet at that bar of “justice” in the magistrate’s court,
he had proved a powerful ally.

Mrs. Sturgis’ first act after Irene’s return home with
her out-on-bails the evening before had been to send
for the judge. He had pointed that the truth must not
come out in open court—that the romance of a new
search for Granddad Lauderdale’s mysterious legacy
would be seized upon by reporters and given undesirable
newspaper publicity. Personally, he appeared more
amused by the escapade than shocked, as was the matron,
and had refused to take it seriously for a moment.
He had undertaken to fix things along the lines of
“silence, secrecy and suppression” if the two culprits
would promise to go and sin no more.

And with a neatness and dispatch that made his nondescript
looks and mild manner seem a disguise, he had
made good his promise. The complicity of Miss Jane
Lauderdale had been dismissed in a whisper and a
wave of the hand. Caught at digging in sacred ground
on a bet, her companion’s case was only one more illustration
of the efficiency of the park police. This plea,
to the utter astonishment of Peter Pape, had been
briefly outlined by the jurist and a fine of ten dollars
set. A word from the magistrate had persuaded the
press representative present to crumple his sheet of
notes and promise not even a brevity of a case which,
less expertly suppressed, would have been worth headlines.
By the magic of political affiliations between attorney
and magistrate, Irene was returned the ransom
jewelry and her two prisoners were freed.

Not until the chief culprit found himself standing
alone on the curb before the antiquated court-house did
he appreciate the serious consequences to himself of the
contretemps. The two girls, with whom he had not
accomplished a single word aside, had just driven off
in Judge Allen’s soft-sirened car. He had not been
offered a lift, not even by Irene. As for Jane, she had
given no sign of recognizing his existence beyond her
two rather abstracted nods of “good-morning” and
“good-by.” Until now he had tried to ascribe this
manner to her idea of propriety in court proceedings,
as also Irene’s mercifully subdued air. That both
should desert him the moment they were free was
enough of a shock to hold him on the spot, pondering.
The cut had been unanimous, as though foreplanned.
So smoothly had it seemed to sever all connection between
them that he did not realize it until staring after
the numerals on the tail-plate of the automobile.

She had “quit him cold,” his self-selected lady.
True, she had done so several times before. But it
mattered more now. He had declared his fealty; to
some extent, had proved it; had hoped that he was
gaining in her esteem. Now he was dropped, like a
superfluous cat, in a strange alley. He felt as flattened-out
as the cement of the pavement on which he stood.
Into it, through the soles of his boots, his heart seemed
to sink from its weight ... down ... down.

But as his heart sank, his mind rose in a malediction
strong as his pulse was weak:

“To hell with the perquisites of our young ladies of
to-day! Do I say so—or *don’t* I?”

His plans for the morning, which had included a
start at that “round and round” stroll in search of four
poplars within earshot of the park menagerie, were
scrambled as had been his breakfast eggs. Not even
the shell of a plan was left. The divine triumvirate
was reduced to its original separateness—a blind father
over in the East Side yellow brick, a daughter luxuriously
ensconced on the avenue, a Western stray-about-town,
lonely and alone.

And the worst of it was that he could not see just
how to right himself; could not blame Jane any more
than Irene or himself. Loyalty was a thing to live,
not to talk about. After his statements to Jane, both
direct and through her father, he looked, in the light
of cousinly disclosures, an arrant philanderer—the sort
of man who was willing, in Montana sport parlance,
“to play both ends against the middle.”

The tongue of the bobbed-haired youngling had run
according to form. Her belief in her own desirability
had put him at a serious disadvantage. He could not
follow the cousins, demand a hearing and assert unmanfully
that he didn’t love the one who said he did,
but did love her who now believed that he did not.

Just as a peach was as much the down on its cheek
as the pit, the response he craved from Jane must have
a delicate, adhering confidence over its heart and soul.
If she did not know the one-woman-ness of his feeling
for her, then the time had not come to tell her. He
wouldn’t have wished to talk her into caring for him,
even were he given to verbal suasion. Trust
was not a thing to be added afterward. It must be
component, delicate, adhering—part of the peach. She
did—she must already trust him. But she must have
her own time for realization.

As for Irene, he’d have to boomerang the extravagant
utterances and acts of that perquisitory young
admirer back to their source as little like a cad as possible.
He felt sure she would not have seized on him
had she known the havoc she wrought. She must not
be unduly humiliated.

If only folks were wholly good or wholly bad, therefore
deserving of absolute punishment or absolute reward
as in the movies, life and its living would be less
of a strain. So philosophized Peter Pape. If, for instance,
Jane were a perfect heroine, she would have
loved and trusted him at first sight, as he had her. If
he were a *reel* hero, either caveman or domesticated,
he’d have conquered her by brawn or brain long ere
this pitiable pass. Mills Harford, as rival, would have
been ulteriorly and interiorly bad, rather than a likeable,
fine chap much more worthy the girl, no doubt, than
himself. Judge Allen, as builder of barriers between
them, should be a long-nosed, hard-voiced, scintillating
personage, instead of the rosy, round, restrained little
man he was. And “the young lady of to-day”—There
would be needed a long explanatory sub-title between
a close-up of that guilelessly guilty, tender torment and
one of her prototype, the histrionic, hectic vamp of
yesteryear.

Still stationed on the curb, Pape gained strength
from these theories to advance into consideration of
his most effective and immediate course toward the end
of his present adventure. He had decided that he must
continue his attempt to serve in the disintegrated triumvirate,
that he must again force his presence upon
Jane if she did not send for him soon, that he must fail
absolutely to recognize the insidious claims of Irene,
when he became conscious of the purring approach of
a sport car. On hearing himself hailed by name, he
looked up and saw that the man behind the wheel was
Mills Harford.

“Have they come or gone?” the real-estater asked.

“Both.” Pape’s mind still was somewhat afield.

“Just my luck to be too late. Mrs. Sturgis might
have ’phoned me sooner. Seems to me I should have
been sent for first, whatever the scrape. Tell me, she
got off all right—Miss Lauderdale?”

“Why not?” Pape nodded, his mental eye upon the
good and bad in this rival to whom the baby vamp in
the cast had erroneously assigned the successful suitor
rôle. “We both are loose,” he added. “She got off
scot-free and I, fortunately, was able to pay my fine.
Mr. Allen fixed everything. He’s a capable somebody,
the judge, a valuable acquaintance for anybody restricted
to life in an overgrown town like N’ York.
He has a new client if anything else happens to me.”

At these assorted remarks Harford’s manner
changed. The concern on his handsome face made way
for a positive glare as he leaned over the side of the car
toward his informant.

“Can’t say I’m greatly concerned in what may or
may not happen to you in the near or far future, Pape,
but I’ll contribute gratis a word or two of advice. Remember
that you are in the semi-civilization of N’ York
Town, not the wild and woolly. Be a bit more careful.”

“Ain’t used to being careful for my own sake.” The
Westerner all at once felt inspired that the occasion
was one for a show of good-cheer. “Like as not,
though, I’d better take your advices to heart, especially
as they’re gratis, for the sake of my friends and playmates.”

Harford snapped him up. “At any rate, in the future
don’t involve women. If you must run amuck, run
it and muck it alone. If you make any more disturbance
around Miss Lauderdale, you’ll hear from me.”

Now, this sounded more like “legitimate” than the
movies. The potential villain’s sneer and tone of
superiority brought out the regular impulses of a hero
like a rash on Pape. Only with effort did he guard his
tongue.

“Wouldn’t take any bets on my being in a listening
mood, Harfy,” he made remark.

“You’ll listen to what I have to say, I guess, mood
or no mood,” Harford continued. “Your debut into a
circle where you never can belong was amusing at first.
But any joke may be overplayed. This one is getting
too tiresome to be practical. I’ve tried to keep to myself
what I think about an oil-stock shark like you
catapulting himself into such a family as the Sturgis’,
but if you want me to illustrate——”

He had slid over on the seat from behind the steering
wheel. Now he half rose, his hand upon the latch
of the car door, as though about to descend to the pavement.
But he did not turn the handle.

With synchronous movements Pape stepped to the
running board, clapped two heavy hands upon the real-estater’s
immaculately tailored shoulders and sat his
would-be social mentor down upon the seat with what
must have been a tooth-toddling jar. That mention of
oil stock had been several syllables too many in strictures
to which he was not accustomed.

Only Jane and Curtis Lauderdale had direct knowledge
of his wrong-righting mission to the East and
they, he felt certain, had not spoken with Harford
since he with them. The question was pertinent how
this handsome, fiery-pated young metropolitan, so
frankly and unexpectedly showing himself as an out-and-out
enemy, had happened on the connection. To
wring the facts out of him then and there would have
been a treat. Yet neither the time nor set was propitious
for measures as drastic as their slump to type in
character and motivation made imminent.

“Having just been before the august court, I ain’t
homesick to return,” Pape said, easing, but not foregoing
his shoulder hold. “So if you’ll just postpone
that illustration until a more suitable time and place
for me to illustrate back what I think of your dam’
impudence, I won’t get hauled in again and you hauled
out of a reg’lar back-home bashing up.”

By way of agreement, Harford threw off his hold
and moved across the seat. That he made no further
effort to leave the car did not deceive Pape as to his
courage or capacity. His coloring bespoke a temper
of fierce impulses and physically he looked fit, a few
pounds heavy, but strong-framed and plastered with
muscles.

Pape dismissed the present opportunity by stepping
back to the pavement. “Let's hope our trails will cross
soon in a get-together place. I’m mighty interested
in oil stock and I’ve got to get exercise somehow.”

“Where did the others go from here?” Harford
enquired, with an abrupt resumption of his accustomed
*savoir-faire*.

“Heard the judge say ‘Home, James’ to his chauffeur”—Pape,
adaptably. “I wouldn’t have been here
to answer your questions if he hadn’t plumb forgot
to ask me to climb aboard.”

The forward movement of the sport car made safe
Harford’s back-thrown jibe:

“He didn’t forget, Pape. He *remembered* not to
ask you to ride. It’s been a generation since Judge
Allen has appeared in police court. He’s through with
you, as are the rest of us.”

“Oh, no, he ain’t,” the ranchman called after the
car, with what outward cheer he could exact from his
inner confidence. “He’s only begun with me—he and
the rest of you.”

In retrospect the maliciousness of the rich real-estater’s
snub gained upon him. So he was not and
never could be of their sort—was a social ineligible!

He didn’t feel that way. In blood, brain and brawn
he always had considered himself anybody’s equal.
And what else mattered in the make-up of he-man?
He owed it to the expanses from which he had come—limitless
space, freedom of winds, resource to feed
the world—to show Harfy, the Sturgises and even the
Lauderdales just what, from what and toward what he
was headed. He owed it to the graduate school of
the Great West to prove the manliness of its alumni.
He owed it to all the past Peter Stansburys and Papes
who had done and dared to demonstrate that the last
of the two lines had inherited some degree of their
courage, good-faith and initiative. Before to-day he
had been asked as to his family tree. He must show
these Back Easters some symbol of the myriad horsepower
of the roof of the continent, a share in which
had strengthened him to defy difficulty and command
success. Why should he? For certain he wouldn’t be
Why-Not Pape if he let them twit him twice! He’d
show them—by some sign, he’d show them that he, too,
was born to an escutcheon rampant!

As he started toward Lexington Avenue and a disengaged
taxi, he searched the sea of resource for the
likeliest channel through which to bring his promise-threat
into port and the anchorage of accomplishment.

CHAPTER XX—ONE LIVELY ESCUTCHEON
================================

Interrogatory argument had forced most
answers in Pape’s career. Now two of a pertinent
order forced an italicized third which, under limitations
of the moment, was unanswerable.

Why delay a reappearance before his self-selected
lady?

By way of excuse, why not realize on that well-bred
dare of Aunt Helene—why not make good on his
agreement to match the Sturgis coat-of-arms with that
of the house of Pape?

*After which, what?*

Even more alive than was he must his escutcheon
be. Just how dynamically alive, he’d be able soon to
demonstrate, unless the West Shore Railroad’s fast
freight from Chicago had met with delay. He’d ask
no recourse to the weighty tomes of ancient history
or the public library’s genealogical records. His showing
must be more representative of the last of the line
than that and up to the second.

The flags of all the taxis he sighted were furled for
earlier fares, but a flat-wheeled Fifty-ninth Street surface
car bore him cross-town. The checker at the
door of Polkadot’s palatial boarding-house further
taxed his time.

“Gent here asking for you, Mr. Pape, not more than
half hour ago.... No, he wasn’t small or sharp-faced—not
partic’aler so. No, he didn’t have no cauliflower
ear. What I did notice was his wat’ry voice
and what might pass for a mustache if you had magnifying
eyes.... Said he’d just stick around.”

So! His trailer of the moment was neither Welch
nor Duffy, but the youth of the slightly adorned lip.
The nature of that small matter of business which
had brought him to the Astor last evening might better
remain a mystery since mysteries were the order of
the day and attempted solutions were likely to land one
before a magistrate.

Pape hurried into the stable and the whinnied greeting
of his three-hued best friend. His change into
riding clothes took no more time than was needed by
the groom to put Polkadot into his leather. He was
riding out the main “gate,” his mind upon the plan
that had come with the speed of inspiration, when——

“Pardon my persistence, Mr. Pape, but that’s what
I’m hired for.”

He had “stuck around,” the thin-voiced, thin-mustached,
thin-visaged weakling; was blocking the
exit; now incensed Dot by a curbing hand on the
bridle rein.

Hurriedly Pape considered whether to jump the
horse past the human barrier or to temporize. Fearing
delay from more entanglement in the city’s red tape,
he made an overture.

“If persistence is what you’re hired for, how much
to give up?”

“To give up—just what?”

“Whatever you’re hired to run me down for. At
that it looks to me as if you were working on the
wrong job.”

The youth straightened with some show of self-respect.
“Right or wrong it’s regular—a steady job
for life if I do my part.”

“For life?” Pape snorted. “You don’t mean to say
you’re going to persist after me *for life?”*

“Until you come across, sir——”

“You trying to pull a polite hold-up? I’ll ride over
your remains, son, if you don’t drop that bridle and
let me——”

“Until you pay what you owe, I mean.”

Pape tweaked a sunburned ear in puzzling the thickened
plot. “Haven’t I said I was more than willing
to pay you——”

“Pay the company, not me, Mr. Pape.”

“The com——What company?”

“The New York Edison Company.”

Indignantly the Westerner stared down into the
vacuous face of this latest impediment to progress.

“You’re an agent for—for phonographs?” he
guessed. “Sorry, but I’ve got more of those sing-tanks
around home than I can spare ears to hear ’em. Lay
off my horse! You can’t sell me anything this afternoon.”

“B-but, wait a minute!” The Edison emissary continued
to earn his salary by the way he hung on.
“You’ve already bought all I’m asking you to pay for.
Unless it’s inconvenient—if you’d only take a minute
off and settle——”

“Inconvenient—*unless?*” Pape was beginning to
fear a loss of self-control.

Polkadot was equally vociferous, if less intelligible,
for he detested alien hands upon his harness.

Pushing back his stirrups, Pape leaned over the
horn of his saddle to demand: “Say, do I look like a
dodo that was just loafing around for a chance chat
with a persistency specialist like you? Now you tell me
in not more than one short word what you want me to
settle for or I’ll——”

“Juice,” interrupted the mild-mannered youth, obedient
to the syllable.

“Juice?” As though a button had been pushed,
light flooded Pape’s mind. He straightened, began to
laugh, then stopped again to query the collector. “So
you’re from— So they sent you to— So *that’s*
why——”

His pause was to tickle Polkadot’s back-waggling
ears—to share that responsive pal’s quiver of mirth.
When again able to articulate——

“How much? Let’s see your persistency passport, if
you brought one. Humph! Not much to waste all
this two-man time for. Say, you go back and tell
your skimpy electro-factory that you persisted just long
enough to prevent my making an attack in force upon
their main office.”

“An attack—why?” the youth asked gently.

“*Why not?*” demanded Pape. “Maybe you can tell
me why all the current is running to Goldfish Movie and
Yutu Corset signs—why last night at 7:15 they were
blazing and not a letter of Welcome-To-Our-City was
lit, nor a rose of my wreath blooming for me! If
they call that service——”

“You can’t have service without paying the bills,
Mr. Pape. Just what I was trying to tell you at your
hotel last evening. Your sign burns up credit, I tell
you. It won’t light up another night until——”

“Until I fuel up, eh?” Already Pape had pulled
from pocket a wallet fat with bills freshly parked for
ransom against any possible expense of New York
justice. “This will cover the bill with a couple of centuries
in advance for a few days future service. Express
my apologies to Mr. Edison. Explain that the
reason you couldn’t make me dig up last night was
because I had an engagement to dig down. You might
add that it was with some one to whom the welcome
sign had made me welcome. You can say for me
that my career since he howdy-dooed me in watts and
kilowatts would make a live-wire ad. for the concern.
The facts ain’t ready for rose-wreathed publicity yet—not
yet awhile—but they would turn the president of
a gas company into an enthusiastic rooter for electric
signs.”

Pape chuckled from more than appreciation of his
own pithy remarks—with more than satisfaction at
overly paying an over-due bill, as he waved a hand in
cordial *au revoir* and started out the stable. He considered
this elimination of his eye-brow mustached
caller—the out-speeding of his third shadow, so to say—a
good omen. With like conclusiveness would he in
time dispose of the tack-faced Welch and Duffy of the
vegetable ear, not to mention any foes unidentified
as yet, such as the ring-leader of the plot against the
Lauderdales and his own quarry in Gotham’s underbrush,
that promoter of Montana Gusher oil stock.

He felt convinced that luck again was with him when,
at the end of his ride to the wharf-studded bank of the
Hudson River, he found that for once the West Shore
Road had not disappointed a consignee. In one of the
high-fenced, unroofed pens of a wholesale butcher
stood twenty-five or thirty sleek steers, red splotched
with white, upon the rump of each the interrogation
brand of the Queer Question Ranch.

The range smell of the beasts caused Dot’s nostrils
to quiver from delight over the reminder of home;
caused his hind-hoofs to polka about the yard and his
fore to lift in a proffered horseshoe shake to the beef
handlers, one and all. And Pape himself felt hugely
pleased over the showing of his product in this “foreign”
market, for which they had been bred and fed.

Dissatisfied with the returns from shipments to the
established stock-yards of the Middle West—those of
Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha having proved in
turn equally deficient—he had conceived a plan of shipping
direct by fast freight to the seaboard Metropolis.
His hopes were based upon New York’s reputation of
paying for its luxuries and the fact that absolutely
fresh beef was a luxury. He soon had found an eager
distributor and there promised to be no lack of consumers
who were able and willing to pay. In time he
hoped to gain for “Montana beef” as ambitious a
place on high-class menus as that so long and honorably
held by “Virginia ham,” “Vermont maple syrup,”
“Philadelphia squab” or “Long Island duckling.”

At the moment, however, his interest was not centered
in the commercial origin of the project; rather, in
“showing” the town, inclusive of one particularly jealous
gentleman snob. From the foreman of the yard he
borrowed the services of a couple of transplanted punchers
who looked efficient and to whom he confided the
nature of an impromptu act. Personally he selected
and cut-out of the bunch its finest specimen—a huge
red steer with wide-flung horns, whose Queer Question
brand was distinctly burned.

Polkadot, a-quiver from the exercise so remindful of
home, was all capers, grins and hee-haws by the end of
the task. The yard employees, turned rail-birds for
the nonce, were vociferous in their applause over the
skill of man and mount. Only the steer showed irritation.

“Not a bad idea,” observed the foreman to Pape.
“Bold, but not bad at all—this eat-ad. of beef on the
hoof.”

The Westerner stared at him a moment, then decided
to let the surmise stand. These metropolitan cowboys
scarcely would appreciate the importance of the purpose
to which he meant to put the brute, even did he care to
explain. Under his direction the two punchers “hung
their strings” about the horns of the elect, one on
either side. His own rope he neatly attached to the
left hind hoof, to act as a brake in case of an attempted
stampede. The small procession got under way.

Although at the start their pace was no more than
that of a reasonably brisk funeral procession, they
attracted the attention of the West Side youngsters, to
whom they appeared to have much of the interest of
a circus parade. At once, as if a growth sprung
from asphalt and cobblestone fields, a veritable swarm
of under-fifteens surrounded the outfit. Well it was
for these embryonic rooters of the ward that Polkadot
disdained to use his dancing feet for anything so
*gauche* as kicks, for they banked about his rear-guard
position, in order the more intimately to admire his
color splotches and prancy step, and even took drag-holds
upon his silken tail, as well as Pape’s stirrups,
that they might not fall behind.

“Taking him to a bull fight, mister?”

The question was variously couched, but unanimously
excited.

Except for this darting, swooping, whooping escort,
the early advance of Pape’s escutcheon toward Fifth
Avenue was accomplished without undue excitement.
At Columbus Circle, however, the roving “wall” eyes
of the beef-brute sighted the green of South Meadow.
Doubtless its appetite was hurting for fresh grass after
the long journey on cured food, his brain confused
by the blur of strange sights and sounds, his muscles
aching for the Montana-wide freedom so suddenly curtailed
at the gate of a cow-town shipping pen.

Whether actuated by one or all of these impulses, or
merely moved by inherent wildness, the red executed a
flank movement that had nothing to do with steak. In
terms of action he showed a desperate desire to throw
off his rope shackles and bolt into Central Park. The
press of vehicular traffic aided him by hampering his
guard. Could they have spread out triangularly, they
might have held him helpless. An attempted swerve
tangled the puncher on the left in his own rope and
forced him to dismount to save himself a spill. He on
the right was prevented from closing in by regard for
the young lives and limbs of their admirers.

Relieved of the three-ply pressure, the steer essayed a
headdown rush to accept the gift of the grass. This
soon was tautened into a three-legged run, through
Pape’s hoof-hold from behind. At that, the captive had
the over-plus of power and might easily have controlled
their course except for ramming into a street car which
had slowed down that the motor man might enjoy the
show. In the moment in which he stood stunned, the
unhorsed puncher regained his rope and saddle, his fellow
cleared a way and Pape quit his drag from the
rear. The steer stampede in Manhattan’s heart was
under control. The lively Pape escutcheon again was
headed toward its destination.

In front of the Sturgis house a groom was holding
three saddlers. Pape’s wonder as to who might be
riding with whom was answered. Scarcely had he
and his aides stopped his hoofed exhibit when Jane
Lauderdale, in a crisp gray riding suit, appeared from
the vestibule. She was followed by Irene and Mills
Harford. The trio stood at the top of the stone flight
and gaped with sheer amazement at the unexpected
delegation.

Irene was first to recover her sangfroid, probably
because endowed with an excess of that quality.

“Only look who’s here!” was her lilt of greeting as
she clattered down the steps. “The possible person back
again and—— *How* in the world did you suspect,
Why-Not, that I am keen about cows? This specimen
is a perfect dar-rling. I could just hug her to death.”

“You could that—to your own death. Look out.
Don’t come closer than the curb.”

With the warning, Pape threw a snake-like wriggle
into his rope which loosened its noose-hold upon the
hoof of the seemingly subdued steer. Coiling it upon
his saddle horn, he swung to the asphalt and saluted her,
army fashion.

Jane, from a stand halfway down the steps, added
only the inquiry of her eyes.

Harford it was who strode forward with demand.
“What’s the big idea, Pape? You trying to make a
spectacle of us for the benefit of the neighbors?”

Pape answered them inclusively. “No pet cow knocks
at your gates, but a steer rounded up and cut-out at
Mrs. Sturgis’ request. Is the lady in?”

“Aunt Helene? Impossible!”—Jane, with a gasp for
exclamation point.

“Ignore the practical joker,” urged Harford. “Let’s
leave him to do his ridiculous worst and go on with
our ride.”

Ignore him, eh? The word interested the Westerner.
That was what he had decided to do to the claims of
Irene. But one attempt promised to be about as successful
as the other to judge by the clutch of resentment
within him and the clutch of that young woman’s fingers
upon his arm. He faced another moment when heart’s
ease and fate hung upon a thread of most uncertain
feminine spin.

CHAPTER XXI—IGNORING IRENE
==========================

In her self-sufficient egoism Irene Sturgis had no
mercy. She continued to ravel the thread.

“At times, dar-rling, you get too terribly eccentric
for even me to—to swallow.” She gulped at the midway
modified metaphor. “If you’d sent me a bunch
of orchids now, by way of suggesting your gratitude
for last night’s rescue from limbo, or if you’d brought
around a pinkie ring with a birthstone set—diamonds
are for April, you know—which mother *might* let me
keep if I coaxed her and explained how it humiliates
me always to be borrowing jewelry—I’d not have lifted
a questioning lash. But to steer up a ton of beef——”

She paused to survey again the bulk of his assumed
gift, but not long enough for successful interruption.
“Still, one shouldn’t look a gift-cow in the mouth, I
suppose. What does one feed her—him, Why-Not,
and where will it sleep? His eyes are so wild, poor
pretty, she looks as if it hadn’t had a good night in a
week. Nice moo-moo—nice bossy!”

Despite her liberty with genders, none of her hearers
failed to grasp her meaning.

“Irene” Harford interposed, “have you forgotten
what your mother told you to do—rather not to do-regarding——”

His stern tone made the acquisitive little creature’s
fingers tighten on Pape’s arm; also made him lean toward
her with the sympathy of a shared resentment.
So the family had settled it in council—at Harford’s
suggestion, doubtless—that Irene, as well as Jane, must
cut the Montana ineligible.

His shoulders shrugged for a bit of ignoring on his
own account and his speech was all for Irene. “The
critter’s too hoofed to take in to your mother, but if
you’d ask her to come out on the steps——”

“Aren’t you too *cute*?” the girl enthused. “I’ve
heard about old-time, old-country suitors listing their
oxen and asses when asking their lady-love’s hand. I
*hope* mother will get the thought back of the deed.
She’s got to, even if she don’t. She’ll be startled to
small bits, but I’ll drag her out and——”

Her hand slid up to his shoulder and she stood on
tip-toe to confide hurriedly: “It’s all right, their telling
me what not to do. When it comes to you, Peter
dar-rling, I *know* what to do. Fortunately I have the
courage of my corpuscles and I’m almost as keen about
your cow as I am about——”

Before Pape suspected her intention, so all too unaccustomed
was he to demonstrations of such sort, she
had pressed her ripe-rouged lips against his paling own
in a kiss that spoke the perquisitory passion of one
young lady of to-day.

Ignore Irene? Not any more than certain other
somebodies should ignore him!

As she darted off, he felt moved by the initiative of
desperation toward one of the witnesses. He anchored
Polkadot by dropping the reins over his head; strode
toward the foot of the steps where Jane was leaning
against the balustrade; lifted a look straight as a board
to hers. Despite the expression of repose-at-all-costs so
becoming to her perfect features, despite the frank
scowl of the more favored suitor standing literally and
figuratively on the same level with her, he spoke from
the heart.

“Jane,” said he, “everything I have and everything
I am are at your service.”

“Steer and all?” She put the question in a curiously
unimpassioned voice that made him ache with its
reproach.

“Steer and all—you’ll see,” he declared. “You can’t
afford to doubt me, any more than I could afford to
doubt the power that beast represents. Look at me
with your own eyes and you’ll see that I am as incapable
as the red of deceit or double-dealing toward you.
Trust me, unless—You don’t *want* to doubt me,
do you, Jane?”

Evidently Mrs. Sturgis was not accustomed to being
dragged out on the pavement fronting her town house—at
any rate not in negligée. The protests which bubbled
from her lips and spilled down the steps with this
latest caprice of her daughter, however, were of no
avail. Irene had a firm grip on her arm and defied
any attempt to assert maternal authority with a cluster
of long-stemmed red roses which she brandished in her
free hand.

Although Jane’s lips had moved twice, as if from
desire to make Pape some reply, she was deterred
by the outburst from above. He, too, turned to meet
the new issue, in this case a conventional matron forced
to behave in an unconventional way. Her several
glances were directed down at the steer, up at the windows
of such fashionable neighbors as might or might
not be peering through front blinds, across into the
easy, amiable grin of the Westerner voted to be too
“wild” in recent family council. Her attempt to discountenance
him with a stony stare combined rather
pitifully with the outraged decorum and flush of
fright on her face.

“Mr. Pape, w-what does this m-menagerie mean?”

“It means, madame—” with his sombrero Pape
dusted a section of the pavement cement in his bow—“that
I have the honor of fulfilling your urgent request.
In yonder bovine I present for your inspection a copy of
the Stansbury-Pape escutcheon—verily the fruit of
my family tree. I trust he may meet with your approval
as a genealogical guarantee.”

“But Irene said—I must say that I—I don’t understand.”

“Ma’am, Irene herself doesn’t understand, therefore
cannot explain. Pray allow *me* to elucidate.”

He included the rest as hearers by a mandatory
glance, all except the perquisitory person. She was
sidling, fascinated, toward what was to her the latest
in love tokens.

Drops of curiosity were wearing away the stone of
the matron’s stare.

“By bovine—it’s so long since I studied Latin—are
you referring to that wicked-looking cow, young man?”
she demanded.

“He don’t look feline or canine or even equine—I ask
you, does he, now?” Pape waved a prideful hand toward
his fellow Montanan. “You enquired if I had a
coat-of-arms. You remember? You seem to set store
on the insignia of a fellow’s who, whence and whither.
Yonder steer, ma’am, wears my escutcheon.”

“*Wears* it? I—I don’t seem to *begin* to understand
you.”

“Then it is well that I am here to help you understand.
Your necessity is my opportunity.” Pape thoroughly
dusted another block of cement. “Note, if you
please, the interrogation mark burned into the hair of
the red’s right rump and the odd angle at which it is
placed. That is the shield of the house of Pape.”

Whether at his words or the hand on her elbow which
was inviting her closer to the hang-head exhibit in the
street, Mrs. Sturgis laughed with a nervous note.

“But that is absurd! A question-mark a shield?”

“Pardon me—no more absurd than any new idea
before demonstration.”

All whimsicality disappeared in the serious set of the
Westerner’s face. He straightened; demanded Jane
Lauderdale’s attention with a look; continued:

“To take nothing for granted, but to question everything
has become my shield. With it before me, the
fights I find necessary are forewon. Nobody can take
me by surprise or press through my guard. Nothing—positively
nothing that I want is impossible to obtain.”

This rather extravagant sounding claim Harford
contested—Pape had hoped he would, while fearing he
wouldn’t.

“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “you seem to be a sort of
natural-born New Thoughter.”

“Not born—*made*.” The ranchman’s look slashed
through the space between him and the Gothamite.
“Out in Montana, Harfy, that escutcheon means a lot—to
stock rustlers and brand-blotters and oil share
fakers. Make a note of the fact that Why-Not Pape
queer-questions every man that gets in his way. Few—and
I don’t think you—can answer straight.”

“You don’t think—You take that back, you
ill-bred bounder or I’ll—I’ll——”

With a spring from step to pavement, Harford
squared off to make good his unfinished threat. His
face and eyes went as red as his hair. His fingers
tightened as if to the curve of a throat.

Pape met him with a well-pleased look.

Forgetful of the metropolitan scene, of those possible
eyes and eyes of behind-shutter neighbors and of the
fears of their own fair, the two closed in that desire-to-conquer
conflict which, from primordial times through
the hazy stretch of days-after-to-morrows-and-morrows,
ever has been and ever shall be the lust of love.
There was no preliminary feinting. From its start the
fight promised to go the limit which, in this case, would
be the finish.

A suppressed shriek escaped Mrs. Sturgis, then she
rushed to her niece and demanded that the two be
separated and the scandal of a street brawl before
her house averted. Jane did not answer in words,
but she threw off the clutch with which her relative
was both urging and staying her, and started toward
the passion-flaring pair.

Denied his throat hold by queer-question tactics,
Harford settled back to a slugging match in which his
heavier weight might lend him an advantage. Again,
as on the park butte-top in a recent electric-lighted mill,
Pape adopted grizzly form.

If any one of the excited group heard, none attended
certain regardless utterances with which Irene, the
while, had been wooing to win her glare-eyed gift of
gratitude. Poised daintily on the curb’s edge, she was
endeavoring to regale the steer with a whiff of the long-stemmed
red roses which she had brought from the
house.

“Here bossy, poor old bossy, see what Rene has
brought out for you. My *nice* moo-moo. Oh, don’t
shake your horns! Why not enjoy the little things in
life while you may? C’mon, have a sniff on me!”

Leaning far out, she continued to tease his nostrils
with her offering as the two punchers steadied the beast
with remindful pulls upon the “strings” which they
had about his horns.

“Sook, bossy! That’s cow language, if you get me.
You’re an absolute *dar-rling* and I know it. You can’t
scare me off with those mean glances. Understand me,
I like ’em fierce. The fiercer the fonder.”

Now, it is highly improbable that the beef-brute took
her dare or even grasped a word of it; more likely
that the fresh scent of the roses rewoke his longing
for what he had smelled and striven toward and failed
to attain on his first whiff of Central Park. Or perhaps
their color was wholly responsible—perhaps it
acted as a red flag upon inherited bull instincts.

At any rate, the Stansbury-Pape escutcheon threw up
his part with a violent coördination of horns, head and
heels. And he let out a bawl that announced to the
humans about him and their neighbors all his return
in spirit to the wild. The tumult of the moment opened
with a wild-eyed charge upon the nearer of the attendant
punchers. So sudden was this that it could not
be avoided—both mount and man “bit” the asphalt. In
falling, the unfortunate had sufficient presence of mind
to throw off the hitch of rope about his saddle horn and
save himself being burned in the tangle of hemp.

Half free, the red torpedo started in ponderous pursuit
of a Fire Department runabout that chanced at the
moment to clang a right-of-way for him up the avenue.
The puncher still attached braced his cayuse to throw
the steer when the slack of his rope was taken up.
This proved a tactical error. While he did not over-rate
the strength and willingness of his mount, he did
that of the lariat. At the severance of its strands, the
reddest wearer of the Queer Question Brand was quite
free and going strong in the general direction of
Harlem. The trailing length of one rope and fragment
of the other seemed to urge him into increased efforts
to outrun them. His head held high. His horns tossed
threateningly. His nostrils snorted acceptance of the
invitation of the grass.

At the beginning of the steer’s initiative the issue of
East vs. West had been unanimously postponed. Pape
had sprung to his thrown aide, dragged him from under
the floundering horse and made sure that the leg which
had been caught was not seriously injured.

“Jane—Mrs. Sturgis, won’t you——”

His appeal to the New Yorkers, started in words and
finished in gesture, consigned the man injured within
their gates—had they had any gates—to their mercy.
Ordering the puncher of the tactical error to follow, he
lofted into his own saddle and was off in pursuit of his
imported beef on the hoof.

Scarcely three minutes later—certainly not more—Mrs.
Helene Sturgis stood deserted upon her front
steps, staring up the world-famed highway after the
strangest chase which she, at least, had witnessed in its
history. She was all a-tremble from the various and
violent protests she had shrilled—to Jane, to Harfy, to
Irene. Her hands were clutched together in remonstrance
over what had been. Her face was drawn with
terror over what was. Keen was her dread of what
might be. A prairie steer scarcely could run amuck
in the heart of New York without spreading more or
less havoc. And the responsibility—would her own
innocent child, through participation in the pursuit, be
forced to share in that?

On the sidewalk below, the injured puncher was
feeling his leg, the pain wincing his weathered face.
She heard some one come out the door above.

“Jasper?”

“Yes, madame.”

She had the butler help the man into the house and
herself followed up the steps. At the top she turned;
shivered in the warm spring air; lifting hand to brow,
again strained her gaze up the Avenue.

That her niece, whom she expected always to be dependable,
should have caught the epidemic wildness of
this Westerner—that Jane should have leaped her horse
and started at top speed after him! And that Mills
Harford, after following and overtaking her, should
prove too afraid of her temper forcefully to stop her!
Worst of all that her own Irene should join the disgraceful
and dangerous street race and actually outrun
the other two!

A hand against a heart heavy with foreboding the
matron pressed as she looked.... The cow-creature—it
was swerving from the straight-away.... Was it
about to—Yes, it *did* clear the park wall at a bound....
The two hurdling after probably were Pape and
the puncher. A mother’s hope that the next horse to
top the hazard might be Jane’s died in a groan as
she caught the red flash of the roses to which her
daughter had clung through all the excitement of the
start.... Would she land safely on the other side—this
young lady of to-day who once had been her babe-at-breast?

Evidently Jane, too late to save the situation, but in
good time to save herself a possible fall, had come into
some degree of discretion. She and Mills were turning
in at a convenient gate.

What was it the Why-Not person had said? “Nothing—positively
nothing is impossible.”... Perhaps it
would do no harm to go inside and pray. There was
nothing else a woman of yesterday could do. It might
help to bring them all back alive and unbroken as to
bones. These modern young folks, what were they
coming to—more appropriately, where were they going?

CHAPTER XXII—BEEF ON THE HOOF
=============================

Often the entrances to Central Park had spanned
a couple of thousand miles for Peter Pape and
his “Friend Equus.” Now it seemed to do as much
for the Montana bovine. In the expanses he sighted
freedom. Off the spring breeze he breathed the joy
of life. More riotously tossed his horns. Faster
and harder pounded his hoofs in a fresh access of speed.

Through the early afternoon lull, his passage was
terrifying, indeed. Slow-strollers and bench-warmers
suddenly became animated into record retreat. Nursemaids
shrieked as they trundled baby-carriages behind
protecting tree trunks or snatched toddlers out of danger’s
path. An equestrian pair who came cantering
along took the nearest bank like chamois. Fortunate
was it that the season and hour were not later, when the
great, green melting-pot would have been brimful and
possibilities of casualty greater.

So far, any interference along the way had served but
to accelerate the steer’s stampede. The one pedestrian
on the avenue who had dared seize the snake-writhing
lariat that trailed from its unyielding horn-hold had
been thrown to a fall on the oiled asphalt before he
could snub the rope about a tree. A policeman on beat
who had essayed the same feat farther along had let
go in time to save himself a worse sprawl. Now the
rope was suffering a rapid curtailment as it frayed
against shrubs, trees and rocks.

When Polkadot had cleared the stone wall with
inches to spare, landed lightly and gone on without losing
a stride, Pape turned to wave orders for the transplanted
cowboy to spread out. Not until another day
did he understand the disappearance of his aide—that
he lay stunned at the base of the wall where he had
been thrown. Instead, he saw Irene Sturgis coming
over the top.

A thrill caught him as she closed up with all the
recklessness of a cow-girl—a thrill that forced forgiveness
for all the heart-wrenching wrongs she had
done him. A flashed thought of Jane brought both
relief and regret. If only she, too, had leaped to
saddle and followed him—had yielded to the impulse
of interest regained or never lost! Deeds, not words
told the heart. He tried to be glad that she had thought
first of herself, yet was sorry that he did not rank
before the first in action’s hour.

Polkadot’s pace, however, soon outran vain regrets;
caught up with hopes ahead. Through the scattered
trees that fringe the park and across the bridle path
led the steer. Down the asphalted roadway he pounded
with such disregard of entitled traffic that drivers
reached for their emergency brakes. A congestion of
cars which forced Pape to pull up momentarily gave
the runaway a gain upon his owner-pursuer. By the
time egress was effected the big red had crossed the
Mall and entered the meadow beyond.

As acre after acre of turf unrolled ahead, the too-live-stock
loosened to the going. Pape put the pinto
to an emulative gallop. Only a glance to one side
did he spare when the shrill of a whistle located the
fat figure of Pudge O’Shay, both hands and feet animated
by a frenzy of outraged authority.

“No Queer Questioner stops for a quail—quit your
tooting at us!” Pape shouted as, far from keeping
“off the grass,” he urged his mount to deeper digs and
an appreciable increase of speed.

At sound of hoof-beats behind, he turned, thinking
to reinstruct the puncher. Instead, he saw that Irene,
luckier than he in crossing the road and Mall, was
closing up. The red roses still clutched in her waving
hand bespoke excitement’s forgetfulness.

The steer changed his direction, although not at order
of the jumping-jack in police blue. From the traverse
road and out over the meadow directly toward the outlaw
a second woman rider had dashed. A shout from
behind her announced a male escort who followed, but
could not detain her. Straight on she came, a slim
streak of black and white that blent in the color of
courage. And as she came, a single-syllabled cry from
before greeted her—a salute from one man’s heart of
fear-full gratitude.

“Jane!”

Deeds, then, did speak for his self-selected one! The
climacteric impulse of woman to follow her man, to do
and dare for him, if need be to die with him had
conquered her tutored calm in this emergency. The repose
of her face was a mask. Her spirit now dared his
own. Why? Why not? Thank God, *why not*?

The rider behind her was Mills Harford. That
Pape had seen at second glance. But any hope of him
as an active aide in recapturing the run-amuck was
gainsaid by his efforts to get the girl out of the chase.
He caught up with her, argued with her, tried himself
to turn about her mount by force. Only at threat of her
crop did he drop the grasped bridle rein.

Pape decided if possible to draft him into service
against the bovine enemy.

“Spread out and turn the steer!” he shouted across
the meadow. “Head him this way so I can rope him.”

Harford looked around as though he had heard.
Then, instead of following directions, he rode full tilt
after the beast, brandishing his hat and shouting in *a*
manner calculated to continue the stampede.

Whether he had misunderstood through ignorance
of range practice or was deliberately attempting to
make more serious the predicament of one for whom
he had that day shown such cordial dislike, Pape had
no time to ponder. He swung Polkadot into an oblique
course on the chance of preventing the runaway’s
escape into that roughest cross-section of the park
which begins just north of the Seventy-second-Street
“parallel.”

The syncopated patter of hoofs just behind him told
that Irene, too, had swerved and was carrying on.
Ahead, Jane urged her mount after Harford and his
ill-conceived move.

For several minutes the four-party pursuit pounded
over the keep-off meadow, whose grass was being held
in reserve against the hot waves of next summer, when
it would be thrown open to furnish cool green couches
for thousands of tenement swelterers. So unseemly
was the interruption as to draw gapes of amazement
from such onlookers as held the border walks and
bellows of command from outraged policemen.

The pinto’s full-speed-ahead was reminiscent in terms
of motion of Hellroaring days and deeds. With full
realization of what the man-master expected of him,
he winged across intervening spaces like a compact
tornado. Pape unlimbered his lariat for a throw calculated
to bring down the red for hog-tying.

While passing Jane, he shouted an order that she
pull up and keep out of the scrimmage likely to attend
the fight’s finish. A dozen rods farther on and almost
within rope reach, he called to Harford.

“Out of the way—I’m going to hang my string on
him!”

“What’s that?”

The real-estater, who was showing superb riding
form, turned in his saddle and leaned to listen, as
though he had not heard. But he scarcely could have
failed to see the noose over Pape’s head circling rounder
and faster with his onward rush. His next move
was unaccountable. As the Montanan’s rope slithered
suddenly straight ahead from an aim calculated to pick
up the steer’s hind hoof for a fall, the Gothamite
spurred his mount and cut directly across it. The
throw fell short, borne out of line by the body of Harford’s
black thoroughbred. In the moment lost to
free it from entanglement the steer took to the rocks
with the agility of a mountain goat.

At last Pape whipped his gun from its under-coat
holster. Infuriated by this second exhibition of what
was either extreme stupidity or deliberate malice, he
was tempted to throw down on the human rather than
the splendid Queer Question specimen, now well up the
height, which he had wished to take alive.

But he did not press the trigger. Although a steer
more or less was incidental in his life and cruelty to
animals was not to be weighed in the same scales with
the catastrophes possible in a continuance of the stampede,
second thought had advised the improbability of
inflicting a vital wound in that huge body with a revolver
shot from the rear. Anything short of a *coup
de grace* would serve only to increase potential dangers.

Through the untangling and winding of his rope the
Westerner voiced no complaint of Harford’s interference,
but his face went chalk-white beneath its burn and
his jaw set hard. His one direct glance read triumph
in the New Yorker’s grin and decided him to finish the
battle begun on the Sturgis front steps whenever and
wherever he could spare the time. Just now——

“Wait for me here—all of you,” he commanded the
three.

Straightway he put Polkadot to the height.

There is an abruptness and complexity about the upheaval
of primary rock marking the park’s center that
has been of advantage to renegades since that great
playground’s inception in the late 50‘s. Although lately
most of the caves have been electric-lighted and railings
placed on the more dangerous cliff-edge paths, there
remain dribbling recesses and shadowy spaces between
trap-rock bowlders which suggest hide-outs. This physical
condition now favored the Queer Question outlaw;
enabled him to disappear from sight before Pape had
resumed the chase.

The painted pony, used to rocky going about the
borders of the home ranch, did not hesitate over essay
of the goat trail into the park’s rough heart taken by
the red. In the upward scramble, his rider shifted
weight in the saddle according to the conformation.
Ultimately, if by devious ways, they gained the highest
point in Manhattan’s eight-hundred-forty acre “paradise”—the
snub-nosed pinnacle that lies off Seventy-ninth
Street.

Drawing rein, Pape rose in the stirrups and scanned
the upturned region. From near to far, until his gaze
encompassed the bench-studded walks and auto-crowded
roadways on its skirts, he noted all details. So remindful
of his own Yellowstone in physical features
was this tamed wild-wood—and yet so different!

Within its comparatively cramped quarters more love—as
that emotion is known to park-habitués—than he
had seen in the whole vast West was on display. The
turfed stretches were safety-razored, rather than allowed
to grow nature’s full beards. The only furred
creatures in evidence—except chipmunks and squirrels—were
worn about the shoulders of fair bipeds instead
of prowling on four feet, uncured, through the underbrush.
From the steel framework of a new sky-scraper
that rose like a fire-stripped forest on the east to the
turreted peaks of a range of apartment houses on the
west, the scene invited comparison in detail.

But Pape had no time for detail except the one of
a live dash of sorrel. The vital greens of grass and
trees were rife, the deep blues of lakes, the silver of
sunlight on the distances and the more mysterious regal
purple of shadows. So far as concerned any splash
of tabasco red, however, he might better have been
seeking a maverick on the outreaches of Hellroaring.

Twice had he shifted his point of survey when he was
rewarded by sudden sight of the steer upon a rhododendron
covered mound, not more than a city block away.
Unconcernedly the long-horn trotted onto the scene,
glanced about, then slowed to a walk and began to
browse. The hope of recapturing the fine creature uninjured
before he injured others re-awoke in Pape. A
cautious approach, a forward swish of rope, a forceful
reaction— Unless luck all lay with his too rampant
escutcheon, the chapter might be closed.

But luck this afternoon seemed to favor quadrupeds.
Just as Polkadot slithered toward the green mound—just
as, almost, he had borne his man-mate within
roping distance, he chanced to misplace a topply bowlder
and sent it crashing down the side of a rock-ribbed
gorge, on its way sounding an alarm above the plash
of a rainbowed waterfall. Again the steer was off.
Again the bone-risking pursuit for man and beast was
on.

Around hillocks, hurdling bowlders, dodging cones
and knobs that were too slippery for climbing, ran
the race. Once the brute leader miscalculated the space
between a striped maple and a pignut hickory; for a
moment was caught and held in a vise-like grip. But
before his pursuer could close in, he had managed to
wriggle free, shy only some few tufts of short hair, with
no loss of determination to retain the freedom so energetically
won.

Bellowing as if in self-congratulation, the steer
bore away in an untried direction—one that led up a
second summit almost as high as the “top of the park.”
That this already was preëmpted by a group of busy
beings and a couple of two-wheeled tool cars of the
miniature Noah’s Ark sort used by highway contractors,
did not concern the runaway. The red flag that waved
above one of the supply wagons as a warning of blasting
powder, however, did. With lowered head he
charged, scattering the workers in as many directions as
they numbered.

Pape did not stop to consider the danger of an explosion
should the steer ram into the explosive. He
spurred forward, his rope again circumscribing his
head, ready for a throw the moment opportunity
offered.

But the red took no chances of so soon ending his
lively afternoon. Having learned to beware of enemies
vehicular through his earlier impact against that Columbus
Circle trolley, he dodged between the carts and bore
off to the westward.

Pape, in his following rush across the butte-top,
glimpsed a face that almost caused him to draw rein.
Distorted by surprise and annoyance was the expression
of the man crouched behind the powder cart, but
not enough so to mask one of the hirelings of the
Lauderdale enemy.

And the trees then whispering on the breeze-swept
height were poplars! No time to stop to count them—no
attention to spare for speculation as to whether the
roar of a menagerie-imprisoned Nubian would carry
that far. Nevertheless, the concentration of the rider,
if not the pace of his mount, slackened somewhat
through the continued pursuit of their wide-horned
quarry.

“And a bunch of beef shall lead them,” paraphrased
Pape close to one of Dot’s obligingly back-waggled
ears.

An hour before he had assured Jane Lauderdale that
his steer, as well as he, was at her service. Now that
vicarious promise had been redeemed—the beef-brute
sure had served her! The opposition party, probably
with the stolen cryptogram in hand, had decided on this
particular butte top as the likeliest location of treasure
buried by eccentric grand-sires and were getting underway
some larger scheme of excavation. And he, in
pursuit of his too-live-stock, was started on another
pursuit of Swinton Welch and his crew.

Pape felt keen to turn in deed, as well as thought.
Despite the red’s service rendered, he breathed a prayer
that something would happen to the beast—anything
drastic enough to end his career as pace setter to the
queerest of questioners.

Answer to this prayer came with the unexpectedness
which all afternoon had been marked—an answer decisive
as the bluff-edge ahead. In his head-down rush
the excited animal had not seen until too late the precipice
that marked trail’s end. With a conclusive back
flop in midair, he disappeared.

Hot on his hoofs, just out of rope reach, pounded
Polkadot. But he, with super-instinct, sensed the drop
in time to swerve on the shale of the brink. Frantically
he then began a struggle to overcome its shift.

A lake lapped the bottom of the void—one of the several
that add their quiet blues and rippling whites to
the color scheme of the park and of a Sunday furnish
exercise for as many enthusiastic “crab-catchers” as
there are flat-bottomed row boats to rent. Pape saw it
from cliff’s edge. He did not shiver—time for that if
they went down. Flinging from the saddle, he spread
his length upon the ground, digging in with toes and
elbows to increase the weight of the drag made by his
body. As determined to save his equine pal as himself,
he threw all the strength of his arms into a steady pull
upon the reins.

CHAPTER XXIII—THE MAN BEHIND
============================

Pape’s ride down from the height of No-Man’s
Land was rapid as his advisedly devious course
would allow—rapid from his desire to communicate his
steer-led discovery to Jane Lauderdale with the least
possible delay and devious for two reasons. He did
not wish to attract the attention of the treasure blasters
until after the girl had looked them over. And he did
not wish to fall into the hands of the police who had
hauled his run-amuck escutcheon out of the lake and
taken him in charge.

On reaching the meadow where he had asked his
quondam pursuit pardners to await him, he could sight
none of them. He concluded that they had cut for the
nearest bridle path to avoid any such accounting to the
park authorities as had been exacted after last evening’s
irregularities. Stansbury caution advised that he do
likewise, but the Pape habit of riding rough-shod by the
short-cut trail overruled.

A demand upon him strong as physical force or a
voiced cry caused him to turn and peer into the mouth
of a sort of gulch into which the green tailed off. There
he saw some one gray-clad, dismounted, waiting—Jane,
silently calling him.

Spurring to her, he found that the three had thought
it advisable to take cover in a small glen, irregularly
oval in shape, that would have served excellently as a
bull-ring had its granite sides been tiered with seats.
Harford and Irene still sat their saddles, the girl holding
rein on the horse ridden by Jane, who evidently
had reconnoitered that he might not miss them on his
promised return.

Pape’s heart quickened from appreciation of her
fealty. He decided if possible to “cut out” her alone
from her undependable “bunch” and show her the discovery
to which the beef-brute had led him—the latest
operation of the Lauderdale enemy.

“Why Not! So you’re safe?” The glad cry was
Irene’s, as she pressed up to him. “But my pet cow—don’t
tell me you let him get away?”

“The ‘dar-rling’ is on the road to the calaboose—pinched
for all sorts of crimes,” returned Pape unfeelingly.
“You’ll need a larger crop of bail weeds than
you possibly can gather to make good your claim to
him.”

She, with a voice throb of regret: “That’s what I
get for not following. A girl’s got to keep on the heels
of her live-stock, be he man or cow, *these* rapid days.
Think of me sitting here, losing out as if I’d been born
a hundred years ago—*obeying* a mere male!”

Jane had remounted and now rode up.

“But if the steer is arrested,” she asked, “how do
you come to be free? Did you disown him?”

“Didn’t have to.” Pape’s speech was that of a man
in a hurry. “Trail’s-end for the red was an air pocket
over a toy lake. He made a magnificent splash and
started swimming for the other shore. In the water
he was about as dangerous as a pollywog. Proved easy
pickings for that active little arrester of last night,
Pudge O’Shay. Another policeman sat in the stern of
his commandeered row-boat, over-working a piece of
rope. I wish ’em joy taking my escutcheon in.”

He omitted report of his own desperate feat of saving
Polkadot and himself a similar high-dive off the bluff
edge. More authoritatively he turned back to Irene.

“Likely his fate will make you feel some better over
that obey oversight. If you’d like to get the habit,
you’d do me a favor by hunting up the village pound
and paying the dues put on that shield rampant o’ mine.
Here’s a roll that ought to be a gent cow’s sufficiency.
And you’d favor me further by taking the family friend
along.”

“You mean——”

“*Your* Harfy. Maybe you can impress him with the
desirability of obeying orders. Got to confess I failed.”

“You precious puzzle!”—the young lady of to-day.
“You aren’t—Oh, you are—you *are*!”

“Are I—just what?”

“Jealous, you silly! Haven’t I told you that Harfy
long ago gave up hopes of me, that he is as naught
to me—ab-so-lutely naught more than a friend
who——”

“At that, he’s more to you than he’s shown himself
to me,” Pape interposed with point.

Harford pulled up his mount’s head with something
the decisive fling of his own. “I admit that I give
orders better than take them. Come, Jane. Come,
Irene. Maybe I can get you out of this mess yet without
unpleasant consequences.”

“And maybe, Jane, the consequences ain’t going to
be so plumb unpleasant,” Pape contested her attention
with something the seriousness he had shown at the foot
of the Sturgis’ steps. “In a certain some one else’s little
matter of unfinished business that’s demanding my time
and attention right now, I have pressing need of one
assistant. Are you—do you feel—well, willing?”

“But, Why Not, why not *me*?” Irene prevented immediate
reply from her cousin; spurred her mount close
beside the obviously fastidious Polkadot; at last dropped
her battered-looking bunch of roses to clasp the Westerner’s
arm. “You *know* that I—And I *know* that you—Don’t
you, dar-rling—or do you? I am sure that I’m
not *ashamed* of—of—*You* know. That is, I ain’t if
you aren’t. Of course Jane is calmer than I, but who
wants to be calm nowadays? *I’m* the one that’s willing
and then some to tag along with you into difficulty
and danger and——”

Harford, heated of face and manner, interrupted.

“No one’s going to tag with him into any more difficulty
or danger. You girls are going to keep your
agreement, aren’t you? You’re both coming peacefully
along with me, now that I’ve let you wait long enough
to see that this person, rightly entitled ‘The Impossible,’
is safe.”

“Let us wait—*you* let us?” Irene flared. “A dozen
of you couldn’t have forced me to desert him, Millsy
Harford—not whilst I had *my* health and strength!”

Despite her ardor, Pape managed to free his arm
of her hold. With his eyes he re-asked the question put
to Jane. He could see that she was confused, annoyed,
justifiably suspicious of the youngster vamp’s proprietorship.

“Don’t you worry about any unfinished business of
Miss Lauderdale,” Harford added with augmented insolence.
“I think she will concede that I am more competent
and quite as willing as you to attend any and
all such. On my advice she has given up her search
for a mythical needle mythically buried in this park
haystack. Haven’t you, Jane? *Haven’t* you, dear?”

Pape, while listening to the man, looked to the woman;
gained her gaze, saw her lips form to an unvoiced
“No.” Fresh love for her and fresh hate for him—fresh
suspicion and the courage thereof possessed him.

“Meantime, I suppose, your hirelings are tumbling
up this park haystack according to the directions of that
cryptogram you took from Mrs. Sturgis’ wall-safe?”

“You damned blighter, you dare accuse me of theft?”

Pape laughed into the snarled demand. “And why
not accuse? I don’t like you and I don’t trust you.
Miss Lauderdale’s unfinished business is safer in my
hands than yours. You lie when you say that she has
transferred it to you. She knows who is the better
man. In case you’re not sure, I am ready to show.”

“No readier than I, you weak fish out of water.”
Harford’s voice shook into higher, harder notes. “You
couldn’t very well call me a thief and a liar without
showing. As I told you this morning you’ll have to
answer to me if you raise any more of a row around
Miss Lauderdale. When will you give me a chance
to——”

“Now?” Pape suggested.

“You don’t mean here, before the girls, in a public
place where the cops are likely——”

“*Why not*?”

So the Queer Questioner’s battle-cry!

Lightly though he laughed, he was heavy with hate,
again moved by that battleful mania which is the sanity
of love. To him specific insults did not matter so
much. The importance of the whys, wheres or whences
grew all at once negligible. To have it out with the
man who contested his claim to his woman—to bring
him down just on general principles—to wring him
and rend him and trample him, if need be, into acknowledgment
of his supreme impertinence—that was
his present task.

A thought-flash of the moment before had thrown
rays of suspicion several ways through Pape’s mind.
Mills Harford knew of the Montana Gusher swindle,
as indicated by his jibe of that morning about an “oil-stock
shark.” Being a real-estater of considerable success,
he might be a principal in that fraud. Certainly
he did not seem the man to have been a victim.

The idea that this “most prominent” suitor of Jane
might be the leader of the anti-Lauderdales was suggested
by his bold attempt to deter the girl from further
investigation. That she herself considered him a friend
was in itself significant. He could not better have
covered in perpetrating an inimical act toward her than
by first having won her confidence with flattery as
expertly administered as though he were indeed one of
those villainous “perfect lovers” with whom honest
heroes have to cope on stage and screen.

As an intimate of the household, Harford probably
was in position to know the worth of the late eccentric’s
buried “bone.” He might well have instigated
that “inside” safe job at the Sturgis’ and been responsible
for the trailing of the poke-bonnet lady to the
East Sixty-third Street hide-out, this last particularly
pointed by his later appearance there with his lawyer.
And here in the glen, just as the out-croppings showed
plain the way to treasure’s lead, he was ready to prevent
Jane by force from continuing her park prospecting
while the excavations were underway on the
heights. All the circumstantials were suspicious.

Why not now? In view of possibilities, it had not
taken one of Pape’s predisposition for action long to
decide that the then and there were none too soon for
adjustment of their relative status. He and his self-selected
could spare time, he guessed, for a bout that
would settle—well, what it would settle.

“Climb down. Let’s get it over before some ladylike
rule of this old-woman town of yours trips us up.”

Pape was in the act of dismounting, in accordance
with his own suggestion, when Harford executed a
surprise that nearly crowded him to a fall. The attack
was abetted by the inherent hostility of a thoroughbred
horse for cross-breeds of the range. As though trained
for just such participation, the blue-blood rammed into
the piebald, bringing his rider within tempting reach
of the enemy ear. A whack more dizzying than dangerous
followed the equine impact.

“So that’s—the game?” Pape gasped during his recovery.
“You’ve got—edge on me—with your—polo
punch. But swords or pistols! I’m ready for—any
old fight that’s fought—Harfy *dar*-*rling*.”

He threw back into the leather, where he felt as much
at home as any man and jabbed his right foot back into
its stirrup. Swinging his calico cayuse he pressed back
the horses astride which the two girls sat—Jane with
pale, set face, like a marble of avengement; Irene glitter-eyed
and high-hued from excitement. For a duel of
chevaliers this particular squared-circle hidden by Nature
must be cleared. When the fair audience was
crowded to one side in “reserved” quadruped standing
room, West whirled and bore down on East.

Fights of diverse sorts had place in the variegated
past of Peter Pape. Rough-and-tumbles, knock-down-and-drag-outs,
rim-fires or lightning-draws—all such
he had survived. But no past emergency had he battled
by fists on horseback. Once he had accepted the
challenge, however, the form of fight looked fairer
than at first blow, since it was unlikely that its instigator
had more experience in stirrup battling than he.
As for rules, he, for one, felt quite as hazy as he would
have in some tilting bout of lance-laden knight of old.
They would have to make up the rules as they went
along, he supposed.

“At ’em, Dot!” he wirelessed the frecked ear laid
back in rancor against a brushed-teeth nip of the over-groomed
enemy mount. Not a heel urge did the piebald need,
any more than a jerk of the rein which,
already, Pape had twisted about the saddle horn. With
a horse keen to knee pressure as was this cow-pony, he
had the advantage of both hands free for swing or jab.

Straight at the aristocrats went the rough pair.
Polkadot landed a shoulder impact that all but toppled
the spindle-legged black. The while, his man-mate’s
bruising left, accomplished contact with the Harford
nose. At the “claret” which oozed from a feature perfect
enough in outline to have been inherited from
classic Greek, Irene uttered a cry in which sounded fear
for the family friend and admiration of the person impossible.
Jane sat her horse, silent and outwardly composed,
except that the color had left even her lips.

In the break-away, the black kicked out viciously.
But the pinto, with skill acquired in growing-up days
when he had trained with an Arizona outlaw band,
flirted his vari-colored rump out of harm’s way. Already
the battle was bi-fold, the two men its instigators,
their mounts responsible for footwork.

On the second engagement, not counting that initial
surprise attack which had bordered on the foul, Harford
handled his thoroughbred into a position of such
advantage that he drove a right to Pape’s jaw. Rocked
from crown to toe, the Westerner saved himself a fall
by going into just such a clinch as he would have tried
had they been balanced each on his own two feet instead
of his horse’s four.

There was something superstitious in the look which
distorted Harford’s good looks, as he found himself
held helpless while his opponent rallied—a look which
suggested that he had put his all into that upper-cut
and was worse nerve-shocked than was its recipient
physically over failure to bring decision. There being
no referee to command a break, Pape came out of the
clinch when he was ready, with the “spinner” aid of a
horse that turned ends on signal—and all within the
space of a blanket.

The break-away, unexpected by the Eastern immaculate,
reduced him sartorially to a plane with the Westerner.
His stock and part of his striped silk shirt remained
in the Pape paws, torn from his neck and back
when Polkadot had capered. His dishevelment now
matched that which Pape had acquired in his struggle
against momentum upon the cliff.

The equine pair also seemed possessed of battling
madness. For a time they fox-trotted about, keeping
their riders beyond each other’s reach, while they
fought an instinctive duel of their own. The black
proved a fore-and-after—pawed out ladylike blows
with slender forefeet, then lofted his heels in a way
that jarred the human aboard him more than the wary
target. At a familiar knee signal, Polkadot suddenly
rose on his hindlegs as if for that bronco evolution
known as sunfishing.

“Look out—he’ll topple back and crush you!”

The outcry was forced from Jane.

As at once transpired, it proved unnecessary. The
piebald had no intention of falling back upon his man-pal.
Instead, he hopped forward on hind legs until he
had the black cornered, then flung down with all his
weight. The thoroughbred, crushed to his knees, escaped
by sheer agility the sharp-shod hoofs; wriggled
his fringe-bedecked neck and satin shoulders from out
the commoner’s clutch.

Dumbly infuriated by his failure and urged by an
imperative signal, Polkadot pressed such advantage as
was left him. By sparing the black no time to recover,
he gave Pape his opportunity. Head to tail the
horses met with terrific impact. For the second or so
in which both staggered, a stirrup each locked crushingly.

Followed two fist blows from Pape, so nearly simultaneous
that no on-looker could have been sure which
did the work. He himself knew that his right had led
by enough of a count to jolt his rival’s head into fair
position for his gnarled left. Far out from saddle he
leaned to put into that follow his last ounce of power.
The blow landed nicely under the Easterner’s cleft chin.
As the horses sprang apart, Harford toppled and fell.

What would have been a clean knock-out of which
no fistic specialist need have been ashamed was spoiled
by a mishap. The falling man’s right foot did not
clear the trap-like stirrup of his English saddle. The behavior
of his thoroughbred too, was unfortunate. In
a frenzy of alarm the black sprang forward, then
dashed for the entrance of the glen, dragging his rider.
Probably the fact that Harford was clear out, his body
inert, saved him an immediate hoof wound, but there
was scarcely a chance of his survival if hauled over the
rocks of the entrance. His horse, however, did not
reach that barrier. Having his rival dragged to injury
or death was no more a part of Pape’s program than
was murder a component of his hate. Before the black
had covered two rods, Polkadot was after him, for
once dug by the spurs which he had every right to consider
worn for decorative purposes only. One hundred
yards of green, with the sharp teeth of the rock trap but
fifty farther on, brought the racing beasts neck and
neck—brought Pape to an equestrian exploit conceived
on the way.

He kicked his right foot free of the wooden stirrup;
encircled the saddle horn with his knee; throwing his
weight on the left stirrup, leaned low. To retrieve a
grounded hat or handkerchief from the saddle at gallop
pace he regarded as a simple form of exercise. To
seize and loft an unconscious man of Harford’s build
was difficulty multiplied by his dead weight of some
hundred-seventy pounds.

“Impossible!”

Pape’s jaw set with the thought-challenge which had
taken him over the top of so varied contretemps—the
word applied to him with such significance by the snob
whom he was about to save.

Why not achieve the impossible now as heretofore?
He put the demand on his tried muscles, risked two
bounds of the black in making sure that his grip upon
the collar of Harford’s coat was firm, then heaved upon
his burden. The initial inches of clearance were hardest—broke
his nails, tortured his fingers, almost
snapped the sinews in his arm. Not until his right hand
was able to join his left did he breathe again.

And just in time was his double hold secured.

So quickly did the black horse swerve that the calico
could not synchronize. For a moment Harford’s body
and the taut stirrup were a strained connecting link.
Then Polkadot edged nearer and Pape was able to lift
the unconscious figure to a position of partial support
across his mount’s forequarters.

But the stirrup still held, its iron shoe having been
forced into the leather of Harford’s boot and fastened
as in a vise. They might be coupled together until the
black ran down unless——

The stretch of strap gave Pape an idea. Quick almost
as the thought he drew his gun; took three shots;
severed the link. Turning, he rode the doubly burdened
piebald back in the direction of the two girls,
while the thoroughbred sought exclusiveness in the far
reaches of the glen. Probably because of the frequent
back-fire of motors and the blow-out of tires which at
times make Central Park suggest a West Virginia mining
town on fusillade day, the curiosity of no sparrow
cop had been excited by the gun reports.

Much more gently than he had gathered up his
enemy, Pape now lowered him to the turf and flung out
of saddle to a kneeling position. A cursory examination
showed Harford’s fine-featured face to be somewhat
marred by fist blows. But his body, so far as the
emergency first aid could determine, was intact. The
last fear of a possible skull fracture was dissipated
when the brown eyes quivered open and the flaccid lips
began to move.

“He’s trying to speak, Why Not,” exclaimed Irene,
a moment ahead of Jane in dismounting. “Listen, *do*!
In the novels I’ve read they always say the most *important*
things when they’re coming out of—of a hiatus or
whatever you call it.”

Pape leaned close enough to grasp part of the effortful
mumble.

“Didn’t steal—anything. Sorry called you—names.
Irene loves——”

That was as far as Harford got at the moment.
And it was well, as the perquisitory miss demanded the
context of his utterances.

Now, the telling of lies was abhorrent to Peter Pape.
Seldom did he consider recourse to the slightest misrepresentation
even when straight-out talk made complexities.
But he found himself tempted by an inspiration
as to how he might repay both enemy man and
enemy girl for the trouble they had caused him with the
same slight elaboration of the truth.

“It is your name on his lips,” he informed the romantic
miss. “‘Irene’—*you* were his first thought.
You’re the one he wants, my child, the one he calls for.”

“Oh! *Oh*!” she murmured, her dark eyes expanding.
“Then I haven’t been wrong—Harfy *has* cared
for me in secret all along?”

She knelt down beside the fallen family friend;
hovered over him in an egoistic ecstasy.

“Poor dar-rling—*how* you must have loved me to
have hidden it so well! And all the time I thought that
you—Oh, it is *thrilling* that you should have pretended
to regard another, when in reality your *grande
passione* was for me alone! If you’d been killed, I
*never* could have forgiven myself—that is, I couldn’t
if I had found out afterwards. When I think what you
must have *suffered*, I wonder how I ever can repay——”

“You’ve got a darn’ good chance right here and
now,” interrupted Pape, as a finishing touch to his ruse
for punishing them and cutting-out Jane from the
“bunch.” “He’s coming around fast—ain’t in any
physical danger if his heart is cheered up. ’Tis better
far for him that you two shouldest be alone when he
comes clean to. You stay here and nurse him—you
owe him at least that much. When he’s able to ride
make for the bridle path and home. The black is quieting
down. You can catch him without trouble. And
don’t be afraid of pouring out your love and affection
upon the poor man. It is your bounden duty as a
woman and a vamp. Love may save his life.”

“But you, Why Not?”

A sudden fear lest she lose the old in the new acquirement
strained her face.

“I’ll bear up some way. I, too, still have my health
and strength.” He tried to mask his triumph in a dark,
desperate frown. “Come, Jane. You and I are no
longer needed here.”

He forestalled protest by remounting; gave the older
girl a half-humorous, wholly-apologetic look; led the
way toward the heights.

Five minutes later they dropped rein in a clump of
warty-ridged hackberry bushes and started on afoot.
On the way he made succinct report of his discovery
during the pursuit of the red. At that, he had not prepared
her—indeed, was far from prepared himself—for
what they soon saw from cover at the edge of the
mesa.

The stage was set as on his dash across it in pursuit
of the run-amuck. But the actors—half a dozen in
number, inclusive of Swinton Welch, and none in laborer’s
garb—were now grouped about one of the supply
carts. Attention centered upon a man who sat the
tail of this cart—one who had not been about during
Pape’s preview. His pudgy hands held open before
him a sheet of paper from which he was reading aloud.

The pair in the bush stared at this man in amazement
too breath-taking for speech. Then their glances met,
as if to read substantiation, each in the other’s eyes.

So, then, it was true! The *generalissimo* issuing instructions
was the long-time friend and family counselor,
ex-Judge Samuel Allen.

CHAPTER XXIV—LOST YET WON
=========================

With the stealth of a Blackfoot brave, Peter Pape
approached the powder cart in temporary use
as a rostrum. Jane he had left where her safety no
longer troubled him. His entire attention reached forward.
Having gained the cover of a venerable cottonwood
whose drooping catkins fringed the shafts of the
lowering sun he stopped and deliberately listened, excused
by the necessity of discovering just what was
underway.

The slow, accented perusal of the apple-cheeked little
big man of law was holding the attention of his assortment
of thugs to a degree favorable for a surprise
assault.

   | “Eighteen and twelve will show
   | The spot. Begin below.
   | Above the crock
   | A block will rock,
   | As rocks wrong’s overthrow.”

To the last word the verse carried to Pape’s ears,
metered to match the two lines recited to him by Jane
from her memory of the mysterious, stolen cryptogram.
There seemed no reason to doubt that Allen was reading
the rhymed instructions of the late Lauderdale eccentric.

Swinton Welch was first to offer thin-voiced complaint
against the poem’s ambiguity.

“That third verse strikes me as the hardest yet,
judge. What do you reckon them figures mean? I
don’t see as there’s any way to decide whether they
stand for rods or yards or feet. Eighteen from what?
Twelve to which? Or do you suppose, now, it means
that the spot is eighteen-by-twelve?”

With a wave of one chubby hand the lawyer dismissed
these demands. “When quite a young man I
knew the writer of this rhyme. It is characteristic that
he should have put everything as vaguely as possible.
He’d have made a wonderful detective, he was such a
genius at involving instead of solving things. I’m
relying quite a bit on my own gumption in the selection
of this place. But I feel sure that I am right at
last. We’re on a height, surrounded by the requisite
number of poplars, aren’t we? The noises we hear
from the city, spread about on every hand, might be
called by poetic license any kind of a roar. And the
whole place is shelved with rock. Since we can’t seem
to solve those figures, let’s blow off the entire top if
necessary and trust to the integrity of the ‘crock.’ You
arranged for the acetylene lights, Duffy?”

“They’ll be here before dusk.”

Pape could not see the speaker from his cover point,
but recognized the voice of him of the vegetable ears
recently bested in combat.

“Have you thought about the crowd the flare’s going
to attract, Mr. Allen?” the pugilist wanted to know.

“I’ve arranged for the police to stand guard over
us.”

The complacency with which the lawyer made this
assertion had a nerving effect upon Pape. His frame
straightened with a jerk. His muscles tightened. His
thoughts sped up. If the police were enlisted with the
enemy through political “pull” of the ex-judge, it behooved
him to decide at once upon the exact nature of
such changes as he, personally, might be able to effect
in the afternoon’s program. Perhaps too close upon
decision, he acted.

“I have permits from the commissioner to cover
every emergency,” the lawyer continued. “I can promise
you that there’ll be no interference this time,
even——”

“*Except* from me!”

The correction issued from behind the cottonwood
and was followed immediately by the appearance of
Peter Pape.

Samuel Allen’s assurance gurgled in his throat and
the apple-red faded from his cheeks as he slid from his
seat on the cart-tail to face the unfriendly, blue-black
eye of a Colt.

“The—the impossible person!” he stammered.

“The *possible* person, don’t you mean, judge? It’s
time you got the general little scheme of me, even
though I do look mussed up this crowded afternoon.”

Pape’s jocularity was a surface effect. The serious
coöperation of his every thought and muscle would be
needed if he won against such odds. With his gun he
waved back two of the crew who, evidently more accustomed
to the glance of the unfriendly eye than was the
jurist, were edging nearer. Still grinning with pseudo-pleasantry,
he tried to guard against attack from behind
by backing toward the second of the ark-bedded
carts.

“This morning, Allen, you got me out of limbo
through your drag with the law,” he continued. “Didn’t
hope for a so-soon opportunity to refund that debt.
But don’t think I ain’t ready with the interest.”

“The only way to keep you out of new trouble is to
leave you in the old,” snorted the small big man. “If
this gun-play is for my amusement, I’ll say that your
methods are as perverted as your sense of humor.
You’re about as practical as a Bolshevist. Pray desist.
Also—pardon my frankness—get out while you can—out
of trouble that doesn’t concern you in the
slightest.”

“Pardon *my* frankness—” Pape, too, could feign
politeness—“but this trouble does concern me in the
greatest. I hate being in your debt. I feel I should
take this chance to pay and save you!”

“Save me—from what?”

Although the Colt still held his gaze, the jurist put
the question with manifest relief. Argument was his
stock in profession—perhaps he hoped from that.

Pape couldn’t restrain an out-loud chuckle, so near
did he seem to the consummation of his promises to
Jane. “Just you hand over Granddad Lauderdale’s
crypt and those *carte*-blank permits and I’ll save you
from being your own lawyer defending a charge of
before-and-after burglary. Urge ’em upon me, judge,
then call off your crew and vamoose pronto—which is
roof-of-America for get out quick yourself.”

Allen sent a glance of appeal among his hirelings, but
elicited no response. To them there was, in truth, a
stronger appeal in the careless way the Westerner
handled his “hardware.” They looked to be gunmen
themselves, but of the metropolitan sort that shoot
singly from behind or in concert before. Certain was
it that some one would get punctured did the revolver
speak and each was concerned lest he be the ill-fated
human “tire.”

Allen seemed left to his own devices. Crumpling the
cryptic sheet in one hand, he started slowly forward.
Pape lifted his foot for a stride along the cart-side.
But some time elapsed before the sole of his boot again
met mother earth. With the suddenness of most successful
attacks on a rear guarded over-confidently, the
one leg which, for the moment, supported his weight
was jerked from under with a violence that pitched him
face forward.

As he fell his revolver exclaimed, but only an indignant
monosyllable. A veritable avalanche of humanity
descended upon him, hard in effect as the rocky ground
in their attack with gun butts and fists. For a second
time he had miscalculated odds; seemed at last to have
met defeat. In the act, as it were, of seizing the Sturgis’
loot, he was put out by a blow from a leather black-jack
brought down upon his defenseless head by an
expert hand.

Some minutes must have passed before his brain
again functioned. In the interim he had been “hogtied,”
despite the fact that, literally, the knots were not
tied according to the Hoyle of the range. The first
thing he noticed on opening his eyes was that Judge
Allen had been stripped of his coat and the left sleeves
of his outer and under shirts cut away to give place to
a bandage. Evidently his instinctive pull on the trigger
had sent a bullet into his preferred target, although lack
of aim had made it a wing shot.

That the moment was one in which he would best
“play Injun” was Pape’s first cautionary thought. Not
even to ease his painfully cramped limbs did he attempt
to move a muscle. After his first roving look,
his eyes fixed, with an acquisitive gleam at variance
with his helplessness, upon something protruding from
the inside pocket of a coat that lay upon the ground
near his hurting head.

The something, or one very like it, he had seen before—a
folded document engraved in brown ink. The
coat also he recognized as that torn off the wounded
lawyer.

He next discovered that his ears, as well as eyes,
could function. Without moving, he allowed them to
be filled with sound notes upon the disaster which had
overtaken him.

The ex-judge: “—and I congratulate you, Duffy,
on as neat a turn-table as I’ve ever seen.”

Even more than to the unctuousness of the voice did
Pape object to the jurist’s punctuation by boot upon
that section of his own anatomy within easiest reach.
His indignation, however, was diverted by the assurance
that it was his enemy of the cauliflower ear who
had brought about his fall.

“Easier than throwing a seven with your own bones,
your honor,” Duffy answered. “Wild-and-woolly here
was too tickled with himself to notice me under the cart
tightening of a bolt. All I had to do was lunge out
and grab an ankle.”

“Hadn’t you better go and let some doctor look at
that arm, judge?” The concerned voice was Swinton
Welch’s. “I’ll direct operations until——”

“You think I’m going right on taking chances on
your weakness, Welch?” Allen’s counter-demand
snapped with disapproval. “I’ll see this thing through,
no matter how it hurts. Send for a surgeon if you
know one who don’t insist on reporting gun-shot patients.
Come, let’s get this animated interruption
stowed away before the police arrive. Questions never
asked are easiest answered.”

“Leave us throw him in with the powder,” suggested
a scar-faced bruiser new in the cast, so far as Pape
recalled.

And so they might have disposed of him had not
Duffy advanced a better proposition. Nearby was a
sort of cave where he had “hidden out” on a former
emergency, he declared. It was dark and dribbly as a
tomb—an ideal safe-deposit for excess baggage.

“To the tomb with the scorpion, then!”

Beneath his pudginess, the little lawyer seemed hard
as the rocks he was so anxious to blast. With a gesture,
he ordered one of the crew to help him on with
his coat.

Pape relaxed the more as three of them laid hold
and carried him across the flat. Duffy acted as guide
and the lawyer, who assuredly was taking no chances,
went along to satisfy himself as to the security of the
hide-away. Several yards inside the narrow mouth of
Duffy’s “sort of” cave they dropped him upon the rock
floor; left him without further concern over when, if
at all, he should return to consciousness.

For reasons which had filled him with such elation
as nearly to expose his ’possum part, Pape approved
their selection of the cave. Now the hope of victory
out of defeat came to him with an admission of Allen
from the entrance:

“I do feel some weakened by this wound. Guess I’d
better rest here a little while. You fellows go back and
start turning rocks. Try the tilty ones first and use
powder, when necessary, just as if I owned the park.
Remember, I’ve got the permits.”

For five minutes or more Pape waited without any
effort to free himself except from the puddle of drippings
in which they had chanced to deposit him. Since
all seemed quiet, he made sibilant venture.

“Jane ... *Jane*!”

The shadowy figure which at once appeared from
out the darker recesses assured him that luck had not
entirely deserted him—that the safe-deposit vault selected
for him was the same in which he had honor-bound
the girl to watch and wait his summons. On
entrance of his pallbearers, she had retreated into the
depths of the “tomb,” quite as he had hoped she would.
And now—in just a minute—he’d show them how alive
was the dead man they had buried.

She knelt beside him; was bending over him.

“Oh, Peter—it is you, then? Are you hurt—wounded?”
Her whisper was guarded as his own had
been.

“Yes—wounded sore but only in my feelings—over
being outwitted.”

“It’s just as well I didn’t know you in the gloom.
I’d have thought you dead and died myself. I was
near-dead of nervousness already. Knowing you were
armed, I feared when I heard the gun report that you
had shot some one and been captured. I couldn’t have
stayed here doing nothing much longer, despite my
promise. Don’t know just what I’d have done,
but——”

“But that’s been decided for you,” he supplied, in an
ecstasy over the confession back of her words. “You
are here to un-hog-tie me. The key-knot is pressing the
small of my back, or I don’t know the feel of one. See
what you can do.”

She leaned over him, her hands clasped over his helpless
ones. “Only if you promise me,” she bargained
with a vague, tender smile which he just could see,
“that you won’t go back at them again. Otherwise
you’re much safer tied—hog or human.”

“I’ll promise anything if you’ll just lower those lips
one half an inch. I think I can reach the rest of the
way.”

But she evidently decided to free him without the
promise and trust to his discretion. Helping him turn
over, she busied herself with his bonds. Long and
strong as were her fingers, however, they made no impression
upon this particular key-knot, tied to stay tied
with some sailor-taught knack.

“Feel in my coat pocket,” he suggested. “If they’ve
left me a couple of matches——”

She did. And they had. A stroke across his boot
top lit one. The odor of burning hemp did not offend
their nostrils; rather, was more grateful than the most
subtle incense from the freedom promised in its fumes.
After the fourth and last Lucifer had been burned to a
char, the girl was able to fray and sunder the rest of
the rope. The “key” turned, Pape made short work of
the other knots, shook off his bonds and gained his
feet. His first act of freedom was to seize and kiss the
two taper-tipped, nail-broken, burnt-finger hands which
had liberated him.

“Sweet pardner!... Precious pal!”

Pape always remembered his “grave” and the ensuing
silence within its dank dark as the most cheerful
place and the livest moment of his life.

Only the moment, however, did he allow himself.

“I’ve got to reward you by leaving you again, but not
for long. Don’t bother promising this time. Just wait
until I bring the real tenant of this tomb.”

Samuel Allen, while seated upon a bowlder of trap-rock
that divided the opening, watching the start of
the delayed excavation, felt himself seized without
warning from behind. Before he had time to utter
more than a gasp he was dragged back into the cave.
Perhaps pain from his injured shoulder made him
speechless. Possibly surprise at the assault of the
“scorpion,” just now unconscious and soundly trussed,
had something to do with his inefficiency. He still
seemed incapable of protest when the captive-turned-captor
searched his coat pockets and extracted their
contents.

Jane, the while, had taken advantage of her absolution
from oath to follow guardedly; with automatic
ready now appeared from darkness into the light of the
entrance.

“If he so much as whines, shoot him—and shoot to
kill this time!” Pape directed. “He deserves punishment
and on two counts, I think. Just a minute. I
want to make sure.”

Stepping nearer the opening, he began to run through
the letters and documents taken from the jurist’s coat.

“Jane Lauderdale! Can it really be you, my child?”
At last Allen drew upon his font of sebaceousness. “I
hope that you, too, are not in the power of this impossible——”

“She isn’t. I’m in hers.”

Pape had overheard; now wheeled around. A glance
had satisfied him that the cryptogram at last was in
hand. The brown engravings, the familiar look of
which had held his eyes when he lay trussed in the
open, had confirmed his first suspicion of them. Folded
with the crinkly parchment was other detailed proof.

“You’re under arrest, judge!” he snapped.

“How so? You’re no officer and I—You can’t——”

“Oh yes, I can. Some few of the impossibilities
that are my pet pastime ought to be accredited to the
deputy sheriff of Snowshoe County, Montana. Out
with those dimpled wrists!”

With one length of the rope so recently misused on
himself, Pape improvised handcuffs; with another
hoppled the ankles of the jurist.

Unnerved by his helplessness, the little great man began
to whimper. “You tried to murder me out there.
Now you—you—arrest me for what?”

“Ask the man behind the Montana Gusher oil fraud—your
dishonorable self. We’re going to give you
opportunity—a little time alone with the crook.”

The accusation left Pape’s lips with the assurance
of a theorem. The legal tricks played in Western
courts against his earlier fight to protect his good name
long ago had convinced him that some legal mind was
master of the plot. The jurist’s morning skill at court
jugglery had brought its flash of suspicion. But not
until he had discovered Allen as the Lauderdale enemy
had there recurred to him Jane’s exclamation, clipped
by her father, that some one they knew might be the
promoter of the oil fraud. Later had come the first
sight of tell-tale stock certificates in the small culprit’s
pocket, their worth as clinching proof assured by his
recent examination at the mouth of the cave.

For the moment Allen seemed staggered by the
charge. He looked as though he should find himself
exceeding poor company.

Pape turned to Jane. “Once more may I borrow
your gun, dear? Some one of his plug-uglies seems to
have appropriated mine own. Come.”

“Don’t leave me, child. Don’t go with the wild-man,”
Allen urged the girl. “He’ll only lead you into
more trouble. He can’t escape my men once I start
them searching for him and the price he’ll pay for
trussing me up like this——”

“It’s worth a goodly price to show you how a truss-up
feels,” Pape interrupted. “Of course I can’t hope
you’ll stay caved much longer than I, once the gang
misses you. But I won’t have trouble re-pinching you,
not while I hold these certificates of your guilt. To
think, Jane, that my trail’s-end should run into yours
this way! It looks—don’t get scared, now—but it does
look a whole lot like Fate.”

She regarded him, serious-eyed, yet with faintly
smiling lips. “It looked a whole lot like that to me the
day you told dad and me about your search for——”

The suggestion of a smile vanished as she turned directly
toward the wretched-looking little big man.
“Wasn’t ‘Montana Gusher’ the name of that oil stock
you stopped Aunt Helene’s buying, Judge Allen? Ah,
I thought so!”

With a glance of contempt for the obviously guilty
“family friend,” she followed Pape out of the cave.
From the shadow of the wall they looked out over the
flat.

“We can’t continue Western style,” he observed with
manifest regret. “See the mounties? They’re here
under instructions to report to his Honor the Judge
and do his bidding. There’s a limit, as I learned
awhile back, to what one can tackle in Gotham single-handed—that
is to say, with hope of success. We’ll
need an injunction to stop that stunt. Let’s go get it!”

Almost were they across the open space which they
must cover to reach their horses when a shouted command
to halt told that Allen’s gang had sighted them.
Instead of obeying, Pape snatched Jane’s hand and
urged her into a run.

They gained a moment in the one lost to the enemy
while Swinton Welch explained to the police lieutenant
the necessity of capturing them. They reached their
mounts, climbed their saddles and were on their way
before the pursuit started from the far side of the flat.
A second time that afternoon the consecrated precinct
of Gotham’s pleasure place staged a race—this one
quite official, with former pursuers turned quarry.

CHAPTER XXV—HUNTERS HUNTED
==========================

Really surprising was the detailed topographical
knowledge which the western trail-blazer had
acquired during recent adventures. He picked their
way through the tumbled terrain of the park heights as
if from a map. That he knew the up-and-down maze
better than the officers now after them was demonstrated
when they gained the path that represents the
ultimate democracy of horsemanship by a scramble
down a rocky slope with none of the pack in sight.

His immediate objective he confided to Jane in case
accident should separate them. A moment of straight
riding would take them through the Womens Gate into
West Seventy-second Street. There he would slip into
the Hotel Majestic and a telephone booth to enlist legal
reënforcements.

Both overlooked, however, an important factor in
Central Park’s equipment—the net-work of wires
spread over its length and breadth for facility of the
authorities in imminent cases more or less like that of
the moment. Only when a man and woman riding
ahead of them were stopped and questioned by the police
guard at the gate did Pape suspect that an alarm
had been telephoned ahead of them. His plan was
abruptly altered. Turning the horses, as if to continue
an objectless canter, they started back over the path
gained with such difficulty, trotting until beyond official
view, thereafter breaking into the gallop of a pair
of “renters” anxious to get the most possible out of
their five-dollar hour in the saddle.

Cañon after cañon gaped in the apartment-house
mountain range on their left, marking streets passed.
Their hope grew that, unmolested, they could pass out
Pioneers Gate at the northwest corner of the park.

But that hope, too, was outsped. Hoof-hammering
behind caused both to glance over-shoulder at a bend.
Three of the city’s mounted came pounding after them.

Pape looked about to make sure of their location.
The bridle path spilled into a pool of shadows at the
bottom of a gorge; granite walls rolled back from trail-side.
Recognition of the region which he had been
exploring with Polkadot on his first clash with law and
order aided in what was of necessity a lightning-changed
decision.

“Can’t make Pioneers Gate.” He signaled Jane to
draw rein. “We’ll take to—bush—turn the cayuses
loose—hide-out until they’ve given us—up.”

He swung from saddle with the last panted period,
expecting the girl to follow his example. When, on
her delay, he hurried to her assistance, he saw that she
was leaning upon the nose of her saddle, her lips pale
as her cheeks. Bodily he lifted her to the ground and
found her a temporary rest against a path-side stump.
After turning the horses about, he looped their reins
and, with a back-to-stable slap upon Polkadot’s
splotched rump, started them down-park.

White-circle death sentences painted upon withering
elms, poplars and birches pointed the course over which
he half-carried the “sweet pardner” exhausted by excitement
too long sustained. When they came upon a
brush-fringed depression, which at home he would have
called an elk bed, he bade her take to cover; himself
crawled back to spy out the movements of the pursuit.

At the top of the last rise in the bridlepath, the
police riders met the empty saddlers. They sounded
greatly disturbed. From such scraps of loud-pitched
conversation as carried, Pape pieced together their assumption
that the fugitives had abandoned their
mounts for a short-cut to the west wall. He saw two
of the trio dismount and begin combing the brush in
that direction, while the third remained on guard over
the five horses.

All of this was fortuitous in that it promised time
for them to reach a definite objective which he had in
mind—a place where the spent girl might rest and
both hide until darkness draped the park for their
escape. His sense of semi-security weakened, however,
on noticing that a police dog was of the party;
that the “mounty” on hostler duty was sending the
animal up the brushy hill on the east—their side of the
path. Slithering back into the depression, he awaited
for several long-drawn minutes the alarm-bay of the
canine officer, dreading the worst, yet not wishing to
share that dread unnecessarily.

Jane first felt the spell of the two brown eyes focused
upon them through a patterned veil of brush.
Nervously she caught his arm; pointed. Soon a long,
black-tipped nose rent the veil, sniffing through a fountain
spray of vine abloom with pale blue, bell-shaped
flowers.

The police dog had located them. But why the delay
of his bayed alarm? A moment more and he answered
for himself. With suppressed whines and insinuating
wriggles there broke from the clutch of the
vine none other than Kicko of the Sheepfold, his sense
of duty evidently overcome by delight at the reunion.

Pape’s joy transcended the Belgian’s. Never had he
bestowed a more fervid embrace than that which encircled
the ruffed neck. Jane, too, patted their four-footed
friend and bedecked his collar with a spray of
the flowering vine which had been torn down by his
impetuous entrance.

“Pin one of those blues roses on me,” Pape asked;
when she had done so, added: “Out home we call that
‘matrimony vine.’ I wonder whether its use here as a
decoration is any sort of sign that——”

“I wonder,” Jane interrupted more crisply than he
would have thought possible in her wilted state,
“whether Kicko will lie low like a good dog instead of
a police officer while you explain about those papers
you took from the judge?”

Because he believed absolutely in signs—hadn’t a
sign pointed his way to her?—Pape was willing to wait
for the answer to his question. Indeed, he had not
earned her answer until after the Granddad Lauderdale
riddle had been solved. With a shrug and a sigh he
took from his pocket the sheaf of brown engravings.

“These, as you may have surmised, are certificates
for stock in the Montana Gusher Oil Company. See.”
He opened and handed her one. “They are signed with
names of dummy officers, as were the others. But they
are blank as to owner and number of shares—right
strong evidence that the honorable Samuel is the man
behind the fraud—that his fat little neck is the one I
came East to wring.”

Jane nodded. “I was waiting to see Aunt Helene
and make sure before I told you what I suspected. You
see, it was a good while ago when a salesman interested
her in the stock. She was about to invest when Judge
Allen interfered. Rather, he told her that he knew the
stock wasn’t worth the paper on which it was engraved.
Except that my time has been—well, a bit full since
yesterday afternoon, I’d have got the facts at once and
given them to you for what they were worth. In predicaments
like ours, the rule of *noblesse oblige* should
hold.”

“Do *we* need rules to hold?”

Illustratively Pape seized with one hand the slim,
ringless fingers still caressing the spray of matrimony
vine—his other had a firm grip on Kicko’s collar. His
touch, voice and eyes were full of appreciation for her
good intentions. It was hard to have such a good—or
bad—memory about the absolute justness of one’s desserts;
hard to crush those blue bells within her pink
palms and not entirely forget—She was so appealing
in her languor and dependency that there seemed ample
excuse for his asking the right to protect and sustain
her. Looking at the matter in this tempting light of
the underbrush, he might be expected to owe her an
explanation of that kiss in the cab—to tell her that to
him it was their betrothal.

And yet——

Although Why-Not Pape rarely questioned opportunity,
there were some times and some women and
some hopes—Rather roughly he dropped her hands;
next offered her a memorandum which he had found
folded inside the sheaf of stock-certificates—a list of
names, with figures set down opposite.

“The writing is his beyond doubt—Judge Allen’s,”
she declared after a moment’s scrutiny.

“Clinches the proof of his guilt in the oil deal. It is
a ‘sucker list’—the names of stock biters and the price
per bite. It is—” In his pause Pape gave the girl a
look that was at once exultant for himself and regretful
for her. “It is your family friend’s ticket to the
Atlanta pen.”

To distract the very natural distress which he saw
in her face, he forced cheer to lighten the murmur of
their exchange.

“But let’s get to the famous cryptogram, lost and at
last regained. Now we can read it as a whole.”

Allowing the jealous Belgian to wedge himself between
them, Pape spread out the wrinkled sheet upon
the hairy back; in guarded tones read:

   | List to the Nubian roar
   | And whisper of poplars four.
   | They tell of bed-rock
   | Where rests a crock
   | Brimful of Fortune’s store.
   |
   | ’Tis on a height
   | The vault you’ll sight
   | Of buried might.
   | ’Twill lead you right,
   | Bring delight,
   | Win the fight.
   |
   | Eighteen and twelve will show
   | The spot. Begin below.
   | Above the crock
   | A block will rock,
   | As rocks wrong’s overthrow.
   |
   | List, then, the Nubian roar.
   | List whisper of poplars four.
   | Climb, then, the height.
   | Read signs aright.
   | Count eighteen—twelve.
   | Take heart and delve.
   | Obey. You’ll want no more.

For moments the three of them—counting Kicko—pondered
in silence. Two, at least, were considering
the crypt’s applicability to the height of Judge Allen’s
selection. It seemed a possible place, except for slight
discrepancies, such as the absence of any particular
“roar,” an uncertain number of poplars among the
pines and the lack of a “vault,” except for the rock-tomb
of Pape’s untimely—proved so—burial. In both
the hope grew that, should they make good their escape
with the incriminating evidence against the little lawyer-leader,
the gang’s work on the flat would be suspended
until after recovery of the documents. Even
should Allen force the search, on being freed, they
were well ammunitioned for rebuttal in court.

One by one—in silence this time—Pape again
scanned the enigmatic lines.

“I’m here to say,” he made comment, “that granddad
went in for inexpensive verse. I’d say free, except
that it rhymes.”

“Free? We’ve paid a greater price than you imagine,
Peter Pape. And if all we are to gain is the unmasking
of Sam Allen——”

“We’re going to gain everything—more than you
can imagine from the little you love me yet,” he reassured
her, not to mention himself. Then, again, he
took himself in hand. “I, for one, am getting in something
of a hurry,” he tacitly apologized. “If you’ll
hold to our side-kick here, I’ll take another scout.”

As before, he wriggled over the rim of their hideout;
was gone ten minutes or so; on his stealthy return
made report:

“They’ve driven off our nags, but left a horse-cop
on patrol. A pair of patrolmen are snooping along the
west wall and the northwest gate is doubly guarded.
The Allen pull sure has pulled fast and many, this early
evening. There is nothing to it but to lie low here until
night. Mighty sorry for you, precious pal. I know
you’re about all in. But they ain’t going to pinch Miss
Jane Lauderdale, of *the* Lauderdales, twice in the same
twenty-four hours—not in my extant company.”

“I’m afraid they’re going to have a chance.” The
girl caught at his arm. “The dog—didn’t he join
you?”

“Kick? No. How did he get away?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! He wrenched himself from me.
I thought—I *hoped* he only wanted to follow you.
Didn’t dare call out for fear——”

“Another false friend, eh? Looks like this is our
day for uncovering ’em. The pup had a flea-bite of
conscience, I reckon.”

Jane disagreed. “Not intentionally—*please*, not
Kicko! Don’t make me doubt everybody. It’s only
that he likes a ‘party.’ The more the merrier is his
motto, if he has one.”

“And he’s gone for the more?”—Pape, rather
grimly. “Well, they mustn’t find us here, that police
‘party’ of his, whatever the motive back of his invitation.
The sooner we move on the safer. As a matter
of fact, I’m headed for another place—a perfect hide-out.
If you feel able let’s be stepping lively. If you
don’t, I’ll enjoy stepping for you—that is to say, toting
you.”

They started up the hillside, keeping in the brush
wherever such grew, skulking low-backed across the
open spaces. Although the girl scrambled after him,
evidently determined not to be a drag upon the hand to
which she desperately clung with her two, she lost her
footing on the rock when near the top and fell face
forward. Her urgent little moan that he go on without
her was denied strongly by the pair of arms that
gathered her up, and clasped her like a woman, not a
baby, against a heart hard-hammering from more than
the violent exercise. Thus did he step for her—“tote”
her to sortie’s end.

She felt herself deposited upon a wooden step.
Looking up, she recognized the stone block-house literally
“perched” upon the top of the precipitous granite
hump up which they had come.

In the inspirational light of a refuge of to-day Pape
had remembered that olden fortress which he had been
surveying when detected by the “quail” cop, Pudge
O’Shay.

Straightening to the sheet-iron door, he tried the
knob, then the comparative strength of his shoulder.
But the protection so generously accorded park rovers
of earlier wars seemed denied them. Investigating
through one of the oblong loopholes, he saw that the
door was fastened with a spring lock which could be
opened without a key from inside. Straightway he
gave his consideration to the fifteen-foot stone wall.

Never had the Westerner aspired to plaudits as a
human fly, yet no Hellroaring cliff had been sheer
enough to forbid his ascent. Pulling off his boots, he
essayed the latest in difficulties stocking-footed; after
several slip-backs, went over the top. The door thrown
wide, he gathered Jane up and stumbled with her over
a slab-like doorsill that wobbled under their weight.

“Odd,” murmured the girl looking about, “that I
should be hiding from the law in this favorite relic of
Grandfather Lauderdale! One of his foibles as a
Grand Army veteran was to come here at sunrise on
victory anniversaries and run up a flag on that staff.
Some sentimental park commissioner gave him a key
and he never missed an occasion.”

“Might have left some furniture scattered about—a
few *chaises longues* and easy chairs,” Pape complained.
“Still, you ought to rest easy on the fact that those get-’em
specialists will never think to look for us in here.”

After making sure that the door had latched itself,
he doffed his coat and spread it for her to sit on, with
her back to a cleaner-than-most section of the wall.
Although only the cuff of one out-flung sleeve formed
his seat, he felt more comfortable, by contrast with recent
rigors, than in all the long stretch of his past—or
so he claimed to Jane.

The hour was the veribest of the whole twenty-four
group, he reminded her. Wouldn’t she enjoy it?
Evening was lowering shadows into the park. Didn’t
she feel sifting into the roofless block-house the
atmosphere of rest-time and peace? Outside the trees
were full of birds, as busy about going to bed as the
families of any flat-house in the city. Couldn’t she
imagine with him that the dulled clatter rising from the
streets was the rush of some great waterfall of the
wild or of winds through a forest or of hoofed herds
pounding over a distant plain?

Soothing was Pape’s illusion that he was back in
his limitless West, but rudely was it broken. Slowly,
soundlessly he got to his feet; approached the sheet-iron
door; with every sense alert, listened. A sharp
knock had sounded from without. No illusion was
this. Jane, too, had heard. She had straightened
against the stone wall, in her wide eyes and tightened
lips the reflex of his thought.

Peace, safety, rest-time? Evidently, not for them!

Had some member of The Finest outwitted them?
Was the block-house to prove, not a refuge, but a
trap?

CHAPTER XXVI—HOUSE OF BLOCKS
============================

For a moment silence tortured. Then sounded an
imperative tapping against the locked door.

Pape, standing within arm-reach of the handle, felt
something hard and cold slipped into his grasp; realized
that Jane had re-armed him; appreciated her
mute suggestion that it would be better, were they
known to be blocked within, to take his chance of overcoming
a single enemy than to wait until reënforcements
arrived.

A second he considered the automatic, before placing
it in his pocket ready for emergency in case his arms
and fists could not decide the issue. To throw open
the door and drag inside the disturber would be the
best beginning to fight’s finish. He waved the girl
toward the far wall; soundlessly turned the latch; flung
back with a jerk to admit——

Their pursuer was official, yes, although not so much
so as they had feared. With a bound he entered just
below Pape’s ready fists—and on four feet instead of
two.

“Kicko—you scoundrel!”—Pape, sternly.

“Precious pup!”—Jane, caressingly, from the floor
seat into which she had collapsed from very weakness
of her relief.

Pape mounted the wobbly doorstep and peered outside.
No accompanying officers loomed through the
fast-falling shadows. Either the dog had outsped them
or had deserted them temporarily for some reason
canine and less comprehensible. On relatching the
door and facing about, he saw that reason.

The Belgian, his tail waving like a feather fan,
trotted toward the girl, swinging from his mouth a
shiny object which explained why he had bumped
against and scratched at the door, instead of barking
for admittance. In Jane’s lap he deposited the tin lunch
pail, to carry which to his master at noon-time was his
dearest duty and privilege.

More than curiosity as to its contents—an animal
eagerness almost as unrestrained as the dog’s, returned
Pape to his former seat upon the cuff of his coat and
hurried his removal of the lid. Three hovered gratefully
over the removed contents of that pail. Certainly
two were ready to believe that the errand of the
third had been as innocent as it now looked. They
gave the quondam deserter benefit of every doubt, if
only the dog’s share of the benefits he had brought.

“You’ve vindicated yourself, Towser,” remarked
Pape. “The lady in this case was right. She looks to
me like one of the perfect kind that always is—right,
you know. *She* said, old side-Kick, that you’d gone to
bring a party. And you sure have brought one—some
party, this! From the depths of the heart of my inner
man, I crave your pardon.”

The Belgian’s grant of grace was as prompt as moist.
His anxiety centered upon a less subtle exchange.

“Oh, I am *so* hungry—that’s mostly what made me
collapse!” Jane sighed. “You see, I’ve formed the bad
habit of eating once in a while. I’d quarrel over a crust
of stale rye bread. But boiled-tongue-and-mustard
sandwiches, potato salad, apple pie—Peter, let’s
*begin*!”

It did not take the three of them long to demonstrate
that there was one luncheon of which Shepherd Tom
never should get a crumb. Between bites Pape remembered
aloud the herdsman’s rather dubious admission
of Kicko’s propensity at times to present the precious
pail to the “wrong” person. In this case, however, even
he must have admitted that the wrong was the right.
As the edge of their hunger was dulled they deducted
the possibilities. Either the police dog had missed his
master at the noon hour or allowed himself to be distracted
by some canine caprice. Happening into the
excitement of the posse, he had relinquished the pail to
join the chase. Afterward, having found preferred
friends rather than enemies to be the quarry, he had
remembered duty neglected and broken away to retrieve
his pail.

The three-from-one meal ended, the girl took off her
hat and settled back against the stone wall with a smile
the more æsthetic for its physical content. The dog,
although fuller of good-fellowship than of food, emulated
her smile in spirit if not in expression, stretched
out across their feet, gaped his mouth and flopped his
tail. The man was able to delight the more in that
rare smile on Jane’s reposeful features because released
from crasser cravings. He leaned low toward her in
the dusk, as though to be under its downshed radiance.

Her beauty seemed to intensify—to be taking the
light and making the darkness. Small wonder, he
thought, that blind eyes ached again to behold that face,
pure as marble alive, tender of line, yet strong—eyes
the purple of a royal mystery, lips the color of life, hair
a black, lustrous veil draped to reveal, rather than conceal.

“You look,” said he, “like the spirit of evening—the
spirit that lures a fellow away from the rest of the
world and contents him with one warm hearth-fire, one
steady light, one complete companionship. Every man
who battles through his day hopes for that spirit at
his eventide. I have battled a bit to-day, Jane, and I—I
can’t help hoping——”

“You believe in spirits, then?” she asked as if to
cover, even in that sympathetic light, the suggestion of
his broken words.

He nodded. “Assorted kinds—liquid, ghosts—and
you.”

“Then maybe you won’t laugh at my fancy—” her
voice lowered superstitiously—“that Grandfather
Lauderdale’s spirit is hovering around inside this block-house—*now*.”

He did laugh, but softly. “Aren’t you going to introduce
us?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t like any such formality! I can
just see him sizing you up for himself with one glance
of those blue, cliff-browed eyes of his. He used to
tell me my inmost little-girl secrets before I could confide
them to him, he was so second-sighted. The first
time he brought me here was at one of his flag-raising
dawns. I was very small, but I’ll never forget him, my
tall, strong old fire-eater whom everybody but me
thought queer, with his magnificent head of thick,
white, curling hair. A sort of glory lit in his face
from the rising sun and the tears staggered through
the furrows of his cheeks when the flag caught the
breeze—spread out its full assurance of the freedom
he had fought to win.”

“Never mind that introduction. Already you have
presented him to me. Howdy, old-timer! Right glad
to meet you.”

Pape, his grin gone, reached forward and grasped
and shook the empty air.

“As I grew older,” Jane continued, “I came with him
often. One time was when they planted a bronze tablet
in the outer wall as a tribute to the outpost service
which this house rendered in the War of 1812.”

“They did, eh? A tablet—for the War of——”
More than before Pape looked interested. “Maybe it
ain’t granddad’s spirit, after all—maybe only the ghost
of association.”

“No, I’m sure it is he. Wait. Perhaps he has a
message for us.” Still with that vague smile on her
lips, Jane closed her eyes and spoke dreamily: “He *has*
a message. It is for me. He wants me to give you
what I’ve wanted to give you all along, my entire confidence—to
tell you that I’ve trusted you from first
glance, no matter how I’ve acted—to tell you just what
is the improbable-sounding treasure that we’ve been
hunting so desperately, lest our enemies find and destroy
it—to tell you how and why the possession of it
will clear my father’s name and restore us to that ‘fortune
forevermore’ promised in his cryptogram. You’ll
be incredulous at first, Peter Pape, but all will work
out once we have possession of—Listen, closely, now.
That crock of the first verse holds——”

Pape, despite her allegedly mystic instructions, interrupted:
“Don’t want you to tell me! Won’t hear it!”

“Why-Not Pape,” her eyes flashed open, “you’re a—At
least, you *might* be said to be mulish, the way you
stick to a point.”

“Did granddad’s spirit dictate that?” he enquired
mildly.

“No. That’s thrown in on my own account. It is
ridiculous for you to be risking life and limb, reputation,
money and comfort, for something whose very
nature you don’t know.”

“But I do know for what I’m risking all those little
things.”

“For what, then?”

“For you.”

The pause that ensued may be utilized for the admission
that Pape was not as superior to curiosity as his
stand would suggest. Indeed, he had speculated, so far
as his intelligence and knowledge would take him, over
the exact nature of the hidden hoard. He had heard
of gold and jewels buried by eccentrics of little faith
in modern banks and presumed that something such was
deposited in the missing crock. Once Jane had said
that the buried treasure was “bigger than Central Park
itself.” Just now she had declared the desperation of
their hunt due to fear lest their enemies “destroy” it.
Destroy what was bigger than Central Park itself?
She had added a new and confusing touch to the
mystery.

“I set out to give you the common or garden variety
of service,” he explained his stand. “That’s a kind that
don’t need to understand, that digs ditches and wages
wars and wins women. Don’t load me down with
knowledge now. Let me go all the way to trail’s-end—the
crock—just trusting that it will lead me to you.”

He bent that she should not miss his promising
smile—twilight was mixing with starlight by now.

“Isn’t faith best proved without words, dear?” he
asked her. “If you have any in me, this would seem a
right good time to prove it. Cease worrying. Trust
me. Rest. Isn’t everything snug and *au fait*? You
have most everything you need—even a chaperone.”

“Meaning Kicko or that hoot-owl?”

“Meaning granddad’s spirit.”

“Oh ... all right ... I’ll try.”

After a time——

“Jane, tell the truth and shame the devil—don’t you
prefer me to that wall?”

“Why—why——”

“Please prefer me.”

Perhaps his arm did more than his words to persuade
her. At any rate, with her head resting against
his shoulder, she made admission.

“I do—prefer you to a stone wall, you know.”

“And aren’t you going to prefer me to everybody
and everything? I don’t wish to seem to be making
love to you, Miss Lauderdale—not just yet. You must
admit that I have been very slow and steady.”

“Slow and steady—*you*?”

“But it would help to get that settled now. Aren’t
you going to prefer me, Jane?”

“I am. That is, I do now—did in fact from that
first night when I picked you out of a grand-tier of
faces as the one man who——”

“Wait a minute! You say *you* selected *me*?”

He took her by both shoulders; held her away from
him; peered, startled, into her eyes.

“Of course. But it was more instinct than reason
that made me——”

“Well, if *you* selected *me*—” and he replaced that
head of hers, veiled in soft, fragrant black, against the
spot preferred to the wall—“*I’m* helpless.”

“But not hopeless, I hope?”

“Hopeless, when I’ve kissed you once and have hopes
that—? Say, I want to be slow and steady, to give you
time to realize without being told that you’re going to
marry me. But if you self-selected me, Jane Lauderdale,
maybe you’ll notify me as to the soonest possible
moment when I’m due to kiss you again.”

She drew far enough away to peer into his eyes.
Faint-smiling, yet wholly serious, she considered.
Then——

“Peter Pape, why not now?” she asked him.

Pape had other reasons than the girl’s weariness for
persuading her to try for a snatch of the sleep she
might need against possible strain on her nerve and
endurance ahead. He wished to weigh—well, several
interesting observations.

For long after she had accepted his knee as a pillow,
the rock floor as a bed, a live-fur rug for her feet and
his coat for her coverlet, he pulled on his pipe; returned
the dark scowl of the down-drooping night; thought.
The while, out-loud observations which had seemed to
soothe Polkadot on that previous trip to the block-house
recurred to him. More or less monotonously he crooned
them over her like a lullaby.

“Don’t you hear the dog-wood yapping, dear?...
Can’t you just imagine those old-fashioned pop-guns
popping?... Nothing to break the silences save the
shriek of ten thousand auto sirens.... No one
around but people—millions of ’em! Don’t it make
you think of a little old home in my great new West,
where we’re to go one day—so like and yet so different?...
And Friend Equus is to go along, my heart, all
the more appreciative after his clash with the tame....
Yes, and you too, Police Pup—if Shepherd Tom
can be persuaded to let you resign from the Force.
He just may be willing after to-day’s mis-delivered
lunch.

“Then list to the Nubian roar—much more like a
lion it sounds than the rumble of city streets.... List
the whisper of poplars four—there would be four, except
that two have been white-circled into stumps....
Count eighteen—twelve.... Take heart and delve....
Above the crock the block will rock.... That
block did rock—did rock—and rock——”

He leaned low; listened. Jane’s gentle, even breathing
reported her asleep. He was more pleased than by
any of the wonderful things she had done while awake—even
than by that voluntary kiss, so precious as compared
with her involuntary first. She did really trust
him and rest in his protectorate, else could she never
have been lulled by his murmurings into unconsciousness.
She must indeed have been spent, when the
growls and spasmodic foot work of the live fur rug
did not disturb her. Kicko, evidently, had lapsed into
dog dreams of chases and fights.

The moon must be rising. Into the block-house was
shed a weird, indirect light. Then more and more
direct it grew until, over the top of one wall, appeared
a large, round inverted bowl of a candle-power that
dimmed the kilowatt signs along the Gay Way.

Earlier in the evening, when he had spoken of waiting
for darkness, under cover of which to attempt an
escape afoot, Pape might have complained at the illumination
of the sky. Now he beamed back at the
moon. And his complacency waxed with her light,
although he realized that bold young Dawn would be
up to flirt with the pale night queen long before her
departure; that any attempt to escape from the park
would not be blanketed that night.

Let Luna reach the steps of her throne, he bade himself
in thought, that each corner of the old refuge house
might be lighted. Let Jane have out her sleep—happy
he to guard her gracious rest. Let the Nubian roar of
power that was not leonine grow faint and die. Let
the city and the city’s Finest go off guard.

Time enough, then, to test application of the eccentric’s
cryptogram, copper-plated line by line, to a locality
unsuspected by their enemies and chosen by themselves
quite through chance. Not a doubt shadowed his
mind as he awaited the zero hour. The lines fitted,
every one.

“List’ to the Nubian roar”—to the night noises of
the surrounding metropolitan monster, uncaged in Zoo,
never-sleeping, ever-pacing.

“And whisper of poplars four”—the branches of
two staunch old rustlers among the pines made silver
lace of the moonlight just outside the wall. Doubtless
the two that had been sentenced to death had been very
much alive at the time of the cryptogram’s composition.

“’Tis on a height”—where was one so high to the
hoary-headed veteran as this on which he delighted to
raise his country’s flag?

“Eighteen and twelve will show”—Jane had named
these very figures as the date on the memorial tablet
placed in the wall without. Not rods, not yards, not
feet did they stand for, but a date.

“Begin below”—and below was a block that rocked
“as rocks wrong’s overthrow!”

Not until the inverted bowl of the moon was a central
ceiling light did Why Not Pape move to answer
the queer questions in his mind. Gently he then lifted
the coat-coverlet off the woman below; wrapped it into
a roll; with it replaced the pillow of his knee. A low
command he gave the police dog to lie still. Swiftly
he crossed to the threshold stone, tilted it far enough
to one side to assure himself it was a thin slab and
muttered in a sort of ecstacy:

   | “Count eighteen—twelve,
   | Take heart and delve.”

His maximum of strength was required to turn the
stone upon its back on the floor of the block-house.
Across the earth upon which it so long had lain scurried
the crawling things that thrive in under-rock
dampness. Down on his knees dropped Pape and, with
a slate-like fragment of rock which had broken off in
the fall, began to remove the soft soil. Soon the emergency
implement met obstruction. No longer needing
advice to “take heart,” he cast aside the slate and began
scooping out the earth around this object with bare
hands.

A heavy touch upon his arm shocked him into an
over-shoulder glance. The Belgian stood bristling just
behind him; had tapped him with a paw insistent for a
share in the digging job. Willingly enough Pape accepted
his efficient aid down to the top of an earthen
pot of the Boston bean variety. More excited than in
past hunts for seldom-found gold pockets of his early
prospecting days, the Westerner pushed aside the dog;
worked his two nail-torn hands down and down the
smooth-curved sides. With a slow tug, he lifted what
he could no longer doubt was the crock of the crypt.
Reverently as though he were an acolyte bearing some
holy vessel to an altar, he carried it across the room and
placed it at the feet of the low-seated high-priestess
drawn up against the wall.

“Am I dreaming?” she wondered aloud.

“Am I?” he answered by asking. “Or do I see a
tall, strong old man, with a shock of white hair and a
laugh on his lips, raising a flag on yonder pole?”

He removed the lid and she the contents of that
crock of “fortune forevermore.”

And thus was fulfilled one of the wild Westerner’s
wishes—that he should not know until he had found
the object of his search. Thus, through deeds and not
words, he learned the nature of Granddad Lauderdale’s
buried hoard.

No helping of “a thousand on a plate,” as doughboy
might have expected, did Jane serve from the pot. No
stream of gold fell through her fingers, to puddle between
them on the stone-flagged floor. No packets of
bank-notes crinkled in her grasp. No king’s-ransom
jewels blinked in the night-light after their long interment.
Yet was the girl’s prediction proved true that
he scarcely could believe at first the nature of their
find. Stupidly he stared. Only slowly could his mind,
face its surprise and its enormity.

CHAPTER XXVII—“FORTUNE FOREVERMORE”
===================================

At ten o’clock next morning a taxicab carrying
three fares drew out of the Fifth Avenue “pass”
and stopped before the Sturgis house. A woman and
one of the men alighted. The second remained seated,
his waiting rôle evidently prearranged, as the pair did
not so much as nod back at him. Ascending the stone
flight, they rang the front bell, as strangers might. In
due time the door swung open.

“Miss Jane—thank Heaven you’re alive and back
again!” Jasper’s exclamation was fervent beyond all
rules of butlership. “Mr. Pape, good morning, sir.
Your arrival is timely, too. They have been telephoning
in all directions to locate you. Such excitement,
Miss Jane, as we’ve been suffering!”

“*They*, Jasper?” The girl faced about in the vestibule.

“The madame, Mrs. Sturgis, and Judge Allen. He
has had a fall and broken his shoulder, we fear. Mr.
Harford, also, was in some sort of accident. An automobile
struck him, I believe.”

“Accidents all round, eh?” Pape enquired. “Ain’t
that odd?”

“Indeed, yes, sir—odd and unfortunate.”

Distressed as he looked, Jasper might have joined
in the exchanged smile of the younger pair, had he
known how fortuitous, if odd, was this gathering of
those persons concerned in the pending crock’s-bottom
settlement. Indeed, since the lid had been lifted from
the bean pot of fabulous store, circumstances had
worked with them.

Their exit from the block-house and the park had
been shared with that of the many young couples driven
from Eden at the strokes of midnight. With the crock
between them wrapped in Pape’s coat, they had sauntered
out Pioneers Gate unmolested by the law so lately
hot at their heels. Straight to the yellow brick on
East Sixty-third they had whirred themselves and their
find; had seen triumph complete in a pair of outward-blinded
eyes which could reflect glad sights from
within.

Only an hour off after breakfast did Pape ask for
the rescue of his equine pal from the granite-spiked
corral that flanks the mid-park stables. This was effected
by a ransom payment insignificant as compared
with the paint-pony’s joy. He was then ready for the
business of this first day of real togethership with his
self-selected—she who admittedly herself had selected
him.

Of the quartette in the luxurious living-room upstairs,
Irene Sturgis was the first to exclaim their unannounced
entry.

“Jane—and still with *him*—the impossible person!”

The histrionic horror in her voice brought Mills
Harford to his feet; contrary-wise, sank Mrs. Sturgis
into the depths of a wing-chair; broke up the council
of war under way beside the couch on which lay the
wounded little judge.

“Good morning, one and all!”

The cheer of Jane’s greeting was not reflected in the
faces of those addressed.

“We hardly hoped to find you bunched up and waiting
for us like this,” Pape added with something of a
flourish. “Saves sending for you.”

The matron straightened on the edge of her chair
and, with a precise expression, inspected first him, then
her niece. “You two spent the night together, I assume?”

“Most of it, auntie, at a spiritualistic seance in Central
Park.”

Pape chuckled. “The most inspiring I ever attended.”

“*Jane*—and you the girl I counted on as so reliable!
My Irene is steady by contrast. You pretend to go
visiting friends and only let us know your whereabouts
when you get arrested. One night in a police station-house
and the next—I presume—at least, I *hope*, for
all our sakes, that you thought to marry this—this
young man before bringing him here.”

“Marry, mother—that *brute*?” Irene slithered from
her seat on the arm of the chair recently vacated by
the handsome real-estater. Throwing herself upon her
cousin’s neck with a freshet of real tears, she wailed:
“Oh, my poor dar-rling—our *poor* old Janie! No matter
what your mistakes, you are more to be pitied than
punished. Don’t lay your neck on the altar of matrimony
for this outlaw. I am sure there’s a good man
and true somewhere in the world for you, even though
he does seem a long time showing up. Don’t be overcome
by this Wild West stuff. *I* know full well that
he has his fatal fascinations. *I* was once but a bird
held in his snake-like spell, until my Harfy saved me
from the high seas of his tyranny and the burning
blast of his——”

“Enough, Rene. Loose me. You’ll drown me with
brine if you don’t smother me first,” begged the object
of her anxiety.

The more Jane struggled, however, the tighter did
the bob-haired cousin cling.

“But, you poor thing, I know he’ll turn on you one
day and beat you up! You saw how he treated my
Harfy—a man and his superior in every way—how he
rained blow after blow on his priceless pate. What
*wouldn’t* he do to a weak woman in his power? Don’t
you go and get desperate just because—Luck in love
always seems to run my way, don’t you think so—or
do you? Harfy was so nice-nice when he was coming
to and so suppressed. I *dote* on suppression. Do you—or
don’t you? He just gazed at me with all his *soul*
when I asked the question I knew he was too used up
to ask me. And we’re going to have the biggest church
wedding of any girl in my set, with all the trimmings,
just as soon as mother can manage it. Aren’t we,
dar-rling?”

“It seems—that we are.”

In the admission, her challenged fiancé looked
neither into the black eyes of his perquisitory young
lady of to-day nor the blue ones of her upon whom he
had pressed his heart and hand on every available occasion
in their near past. His expression was that of one
who acknowledges himself vanquished—and by a victor
fairer than the fight.

“Since, madame, you approve and even urge my suit
for your niece’s hand”—and Pape frowned deeply before
the disdainful matron—“I’ll go one better than
Harfy by admitting without being told to that I have
assented. Although we aren’t married yet-yet, Irene,
we’re going to be right soon-soon. That was as unalterable
from the first as the laws of gravity—or of
levity. By way of trimmings, we have a score or two
to settle first with three of you folks, which is why we
came.”

“Ah!”

The pudgy jurist had risen painfully on one elbow
and now sent the warning word in company with a
look—same sort—Mrs. Sturgis’ way.

“Thank God we are not too late, Helen,” he added
after a throat-clearance, “to save dear Jane from this
schemer. As I hoped, the formalities of our marriage
law have not been complied with. This leaves you
free to act as the foolish girl’s nearest of kin. It will
be easy to secure an order from one of my friends at
court restraining her further activities by committing
her into your care.”

“It will take more than an order from such friends
at court as you will have after to-day to restrain Jane,”
Pape suggested pleasantly.

“Clearly she has acted under undue influence from
you so far, young man,” Allen continued with impressment.
“Were you half as clever as conspicuous you’d
have got the ceremony over before coming here to
threaten her family. As the husband of an orphaned
young woman you might have had something to say,
but——”

“Orphaned?”

With the interruption Pape crossed to one of the
Fifth Avenue windows and there busied himself with
a quite unnecessary readjustment of the shade.

The lady of the house was apparently too disturbed
to resent this new impertinence.

“You know how I dread the courts, Samuel. Let
me first try suasion.” In emotionful appeal she turned
to Jane. “For sake of the dear, dead sister who was
your mother, I beg you, as one who has tried to take
a mother’s place, to give up this ill-timed attack of
folly and this impossible man. Perhaps you inherited
the tendency, for she also made a sad mistake in
choosing her mate.”

“She did?” the “orphan” asked quietly, her eyes on
the velvet hangings of the hall door.

“In marrying a Lauderdale—practically a pauper
despite the family obsession of their claim to vast
estates in the Borough of the Bronx—she ruined her
life. She, too, became obsessed through his power
to control her thoughts. Her life, as well as his, was
one long nightmare of crown-grants, wills, deeds, what-nots.
She died of it, dear, just as your father afterwards
went down under disgrace and gloom. Now
you, child, stain your white hands with this black magic.
Excited by the craze for adventure of this person, you
let yourself be led into indiscretions that bid fair to
ruin you. Why not give him up now—this morning?
I’ll stand by you no matter what is said.”

“Me, too, dar-rling,” chimed in Irene. “I’ll soon be
a matron, you know, and I’ll find you some adequate
male, up-to-date though honest, whom we’ll persuade
to forget and forgive.”

Aunt Helene, her breath regained, pleaded further:
“Listen to this before you leap, my child. Despite
what your grandfather left in the way of puzzle-charts,
Judge Allen and I, acting in your interest, have at last
satisfied ourselves that there is nothing—quite nothing
of the slightest material value to you buried in Central
Park. We didn’t intend to tell you so soon, but all
last night the judge had a crew of men working at a
spot indicated in the cryptogram.”

“And how did he get the instructions of the cryptogram?”
Jane enquired. “No one saw it before it was
stolen but me.”

“*Jane*, that you should speak to me in that suspicious
tone! Had I been given opportunity, I should have
told you that yesterday the contents of your antique
snuff-box were secretly exchanged for the large reward
which I offered in your name, presumedly by the thief
who stole it from my safe.”

“You don’t say, ma’am? So! It was, eh?” The
Westerner was rather explosive from acute interest.

The matron ignored him. “The judge, Jane, followed
directions and discovered a crock—large and
open topped, like the sort dill pickles are made in. But,
alas, it contained nothing but a half-witted old man’s
keepsakes—scraps of his unutterable poetry, ribbon-tied
parcels of yellowed love-letters, pressed flowers and
a wisp of some woman’s hair. Were your father alive,
I’d feel I should take some of my own fortune and
make restitution of his frauds upon the collateral heirs.
But since he’s dead and gone, I don’t exactly feel——”

“Not altogether gone, Helene, yet not in need of
your restitution!”

At the voice, Mrs. Sturgis smothered a scream;
turned; stared.

Through the portières that closed off the hall stepped
Curtis Lauderdale, led from the taxi by the driver
thereof in answer to Pape’s signal from the window.

Verily an apparition did he look to the four who had
accepted the report of his death. Mrs. Sturgis, with
hands grasping behind her, was backing as though from
a ghost. The little jurist did not move, but all the
apple color had departed his cheeks. Irene’s red-rouged
lips could not pale, but at least her mouth was agape.
Harford stiffened, as though preparing for attack.

One on either side, Jane and Pape crossed to the latecomer
and lined up the triumvirate. Accurately the
blind eyes fixed on Allen. In direct address the long
unheard lips began to speak.

“We meet again, Sam, my trusted counsellor and
cherished friend. With your mask torn off, you look
more changed to me than I possibly can to you. Oh,
don’t waste time with denials! I’d need to be blinder
than mustard gas could make me not to see you as you
are. For years you traded upon the gullibility of my
father. You persuaded him that fortune would build
bigger and faster if he withheld proof of title to our
Bronx estates and let the Guarantee Investors develop
a property that has belonged to the Lauderdales since
the grant of King James. You overcame his needs and
his children’s needs with false promises of rich reward
when he eventually would claim the improved acreage.
And after letting him die in half-crazed poverty, with
his mysterious instructions unfound and our title
proofs buried with them, you advised me to raise money
from the collateral heirs and institute a court fight to
establish our rights. And it was you, I feel sure, who
brought these heirs before the Grand Jury that indicted
me for fraud just after I had sailed for Somewhere in
France.”

A moment Lauderdale paused in the controlled fury
of his accusation, brushed a hand across his eye-lids and
moistened his lips.

“But the crookedest lane has its end, Sam Allen. My
chief treasure you could not take from me—a glorious
girl child born to retribution. To her aid came this
real-man sample from out the West. Working together
they have recovered every necessary document,
even to my parent’s last will and testament. We are
ready and able now to right the most grievous wrong
ever perpetrated in the medium of New York real estate—to
force your company to turn over a thousand acres
in the heart of the Bronx and to make restitution, under
your guarantee, to innocent purchasers, even if it breaks
you as you would have broken——”

He was stopped by the grasp which Pape had put
on his arm.

“Don’t dump all the onus on the judge, Mr. Lauderdale,”
he advised. “We mustn’t forget that he is a
lawyer, hence full of wriggles. Best leave his punishment
to me and that more easily proved charge of the
Montana Gusher oil-stock fraud. There is one among
those present, to approach the subject guardedly, who
is more directly responsible for the Bronx realty steal
than His Honor.”

Even Jane, close as she had been to the queer questioner
throughout recent developments, was startled
by his statement. What sort of a lone hand was he
playing?

Allen’s pudgy palms clasped. Aunt Helene eyed one,
then another of the group, as though bewildered.

Only Pape’s gaze did not wander. It turned from
the blind man’s face to fix upon that of Mills Harford.
At the silent accusation, Irene sprang toward him, no
longer a kitten, but a flare-eyed mother-cat in defense
of her own.

“Don’t you dare accuse my Harfy, you cave-brute!”
she cried. “Just because he makes *money* out of real-estate
isn’t any reason to jump at the *conclusion* that
he——”

“Right, Rene.” Pape had a sympathetic grin for
her vehemence. “I was only considering your Harfy as
a possible witness to the truth. Cross my heart, I ain’t
got a thing against him personally, now that he has
consented to take you instead of——”

“You horrid, hateful thing!” she screamed. “What
do you *mean* by ‘consented to’——”

“Stand corrected, miss, soon to be madame. Now
that you have consented to take him instead of aspiring
to me.”

“Beast! However could I have thought you nice-nice?”

“Can’t say, unless it is that I am—sometimes.”

Jane broke up their sprightly exchange with the serious
demand: “But the some one more directly responsible?”

“Be done with innuendo, young man!” Mrs. Sturgis
rose to her feet, with every inch of her scant height
counting. “A gentleman—one of whom we say ‘to
the manner born’—makes no accusation without proof.”

“I don’t need to make accusation or present proof to
you, madam.”

“You’re not trying to insinuate——”

Many lights had Pape seen in women’s eyes, but
never one as startled, angry and afraid as that flashed
him by Aunt Helene. Next moment she attempted
a light laugh that ended with a nervous crescendo.

“You, too, must be mad.”

“At least that,” he admitted cheerfully. “You’ve
known why for several minutes past. You acknowledge
the judge here as your advisor, don’t you?”

“I certainly do.”

“Better ask his advice, then, without further delay.
I’ve an idea he’ll tell you to come across clean—admit
that you are The Guarantee Investors, Incorporated,
who have been trying to grab off the Lauderdales’
Bronx ranch and put Jane here out of the heiress class.
Come, madam! Any woman who can rob her own
safe and give the alarm and play-act the grief of a
whole wake afterwards certainly ought to get a great
deal out of a confession scene. Suppose you take your
family-friend tool and your in-law-to-be into the library
for a conference. Just possibly I—the outlaw-that-was—can
show Mr. and Miss Lauderdale reasons why
they should listen to a plea for mercy.”

Before Pape had finished, the small jurist was on
his feet in acceptance of the suggestion. The wilt of
guilt drooped the matron into the arms of her child.
As one woman they were supported toward the door
by Mills Harford.

“It was all my poor husband’s idea, not my own,”
Aunt Helene was heard to defend to an interlude of
sobs. “And with him, as with me, it was all because
we did so want our poor Irene to have the fortune
her beauty deserves. We knew how impractical the
Lauderdales were. He didn’t believe they ever could
make good their claim to the Bronx estate. We both
thought it would be better for our own dear child to
have it than some outsider. When he realized that he
couldn’t live to see the plan through he charged me to
carry it out. Of course I meant to make proper provision
for Jane if——”

The door closed behind them.

When the triumvirate stood alone, low-voiced and
happier exchanges passed.

“How did you know, son?”

“Didn’t know. Aunt Helene seemed too good to be
true, so I just stayed on a busted flush and finished
a winner. Why not?”

“Why not, indeed?” Jane showed sufficient knowledge
of the game to pay over what was due the taker
of the pot.

“Welcomed at last to Lonesome Town—welcomed
with open arms!” exulted he who so recently had had
to welcome himself.

----

And that very night Broadway saw new reason to
believe in its signs. Out over Times Cañon winked a
re-lettered electric message that lit the imagination as
does every such happy ending and happier start:

.. class:: center

   | CONGRATULATIONS
   | MR. AND MRS. WHY-NOT PAPE

.. class:: center

   |
   |
   | THE END
   
|
|
|
|
|

.. _pg_end_line:

\*\*\* END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONESOME TOWN \*\*\*

.. backmatter::

.. toc-entry::
   :depth: 0

.. _pg-footer:

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