Girl Alone Part 25

"Sure you would like it!" David laughed feebly, sinking back to his pillows. "Listen, Mr. Bybee: this is Eddie Cobb's home town. He was raised in the orphanage, like Sally. He'd get a great kick out of being a hero to the kids at the Home. He can go with you to get the suitcases, after you've sent for the police to go along with you.

"I'll lie low, Eddie can tell the story I've told you, and the cops will never be the wiser. I can give him a pretty good description of Steve. I had plenty of chances to study his face after I'd knocked him out. I imagine he's beat it in his car by this time, if he was able to drive; otherwise you'll find him in the road just as I told you. Of course he'd know it wasn't Eddie that fought with him, but the police wouldn't have any reason to doubt Eddie's word."

"But Nita may have told him about you and me!" Sally cried. "Oh, David, don't bother about me! Take your chance while you have it to be cleared of those terrible charges! I-I'll go back to the Home and-and wait for you. I could stand it-somehow-if I knew you were back in college, a-a hero, and working for both of us. Please, David! Think of yourself, not me!"

"No." David shook his head stubbornly. "This little thing I've done wouldn't get you out of trouble. They might clap you into the reformatory, as a juvenile delinquent. We can't take a chance on that!

Besides, you've had enough of the orphanage. We stick together, darling, and that's that! May I have another cup of coffee, if it isn't too much trouble?"

"You're both a pair of fools, so crazy in love with each other that you can't see straight!" Mrs. Bybee scolded, as she blew her nose violently.

"But I'd like to see Winfield Bybee try to do anything you don't want him to! Far as I'm concerned, you can have anything I've got and welcome to it!"

Of course there was nothing then for Pop Bybee to do but to adopt David's plan. The boy was transferred to a lower berth, where he was safely hidden until after the detectives had arrived and departed with Pop Bybee, Eddie and Gus, the barker.

Eddie, in his zeal for playing his part well, had torn his s.h.i.+rt, bruised his knuckles, sc.r.a.ped dirt on his arms, rolled in mud, and done everything else to make up for the part.

For the rest of the day Eddie strutted about in the limelight of publicity. Newspaper photographers and reporters arrived within a few minutes after the detectives had phoned headquarters that the suitcases filled with silver and bills had been found in the hayloft; and when Eddie returned with the showman and the barker, he was prevailed upon to pose bashfully for his pictures.

The newspaper reporters commented admirably on the "boy hero's"

admirable modesty and diffidence in the big front-page stories that they wrote about the carnival robbery, and Eddie's freckled face, grinning bashfully from the center of the pages, confirmed every word written about him.

His kewpie doll booth at the carnival that afternoon and evening was mobbed by his admirers, and before the day was ended Eddie almost believed that he _had_ routed two famous criminals and saved a small fortune for his employer.

Sally was permitted to stay with David during the afternoon, but Bybee apologetically asked her to go on for the evening performances, since a record-breaking crowd had turned out, drawn partly by the fine weather that followed the storm, but largely by the front page publicity which the robbery had won for the show.

CHAPTER XII

It was just before the ten o'clock show that Sally, slipping into the throne-like chair before the crystal, heard a familiar, mocking voice:

"It's not fair! You look as fresh as a daisy! And I've been frantic with anxiety all day, expecting to hear that Princess Lalla had sickened with pneumonia. I've come to collect thanks, your highness, for saving your life!"

Sally's sapphire eyes blazed at the man she knew only as "Van," but since they were veiled with a new sc.r.a.p of black lace to replace the one lost in the storm, the nonchalant New Yorker did not appear to be at all devastated by their fire.

"Thank you for saving my life," she said stiffly, but the man's mocking, admiring attention was fixed upon the deliciously young, sweet curves of her mouth, rather than upon the tone of her voice.

"I wonder if you know," he began confidentially, leaning lightly upon his inevitable cane, "that you have the most adorable mouth I have ever seen? Of course there are other adorable details in the picture of complete loveliness that you present, but really, your lips, like three rose petals-"

"Oh, stop!" Sally cried with childish anger, her small, red-sandaled foot stamping the platform. "Why are you always mocking me, making fun of me? I've begged you to let me alone-"

"Such ingrat.i.tude!" the man sighed, but his narrowed eyes smiled at her delightedly. "If you weren't even more delicious when you're angry, I should not be able to forgive you. But really, Sally Ford-" his voice dropped caressingly on the name, as if to remind her that he shared her secret with her-"the way you persist in misunderstanding me is very distressing.

"I'm not mocking _you_, my dear child! I'm mocking myself-if anyone. It recurs to me continually that this is an amazing adventure that Arthur Van Horne, of New York, Long Island and Newport is so sedulously engaged upon! To paraphrase your own delightful defense, I'm really 'not that kind of man.' I a.s.sure you I'm not in the habit of making love to show girls, no matter how adorable their mouths may be!" And he smiled at her out of his narrowed eyes and with his quirked, quizzical mouth, as if he expected her to share his amus.e.m.e.nt and amazement at himself.

"Then why don't you let me alone?" Sally cried, striking her little brown-painted hands together in futile rage.

"I wonder!" he mused. "I make up my mind that I'm a blighter and an a.s.s and that I shan't come near the carnival. I accept invitations enough to take up every minute of my last days in Capital City, and then-without in the least intending to do so-I find myself back in the Palace of Wonders, humbling myself before a pair of little red-sandaled feet that would like nothing better than to kick me for my impudence. Do you suppose, Sally Ford, that I'm falling in love with you? There's something about you, you know-"

"Please go away," Sally implored him. "It's almost time for my performance. Gus is ballyhooing Jan now and I come next."

"As I was saying, when you interrupted me," Van Horne reproved her mockingly, "there's something about you, you know. Last night when I had the honor of saving your life and seeing your adorable little face washed clean of the brown paint, I was surprised at myself. I really was, I give you my word!

"Do you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to swing you up into my arms, you amazingly tiny thing, and run away with you. If you hadn't looked so young and-pure, I believe the favorite word is-I'd have yielded to the impulse. I suppress so few of my unholy desires that I suppose this discipline is good for my soul-Now, what the devil are you looking at, instead of listening to the confessions of a young man?" he broke off with a genuine note of irritation in his charming voice.

"Who is that beautiful woman?" Sally asked in a low voice, her eyes still fixed upon the golden-haired woman whom Van Horne had called "Enid," and who had just entered the tent alone, her small body, clad in the green knitted silk sports suit, moving through the crowd with proud disdain.

"Again I am forced to forgive you," Van Horne sighed humorously. "I seem always to be forgiving you, Sally Ford! You are merely asking a question which is inevitably asked when Enid Barr first bursts upon a startled public.

"She is probably the most beautiful blond in New York society. Those industrious cold cream advertisers would pay her a fortune for the use of her picture and endors.e.m.e.nt, but it happens that she has two or three large fortunes of her own, as well as a disgustingly rich husband. Yes, unfortunately for her adorers, she is married, Courtney Barr-even out here you must have heard of Courtney Barr-being the lucky man."

"I wonder what she's doing here," Sally whispered, fright widening her eyes behind the black lace.

"Oh, I think Courtney's here on political business. The Barrs have always rather fancied themselves as leaders among the Wall Street makers of presidents. He's hobn.o.bbing with my cousin, the governor, and Enid is probably amusing herself by collecting Americana."

"She must be awfully good," Sally whispered, adoration making her voice lovely and wistful. "She brought all the orphanage children to the carnival yesterday, you know."

"Yes," Van Horne shrugged, arching his brows quizzically. "I confess I was rather stunned, for Enid doesn't go in for personal charity. Huge checks and all that sort of thing-she's endowed some sort of inst.i.tution for 'fallen girls,' by the way-but it has never seemed to amuse her to play Lady Bountiful in person. Of course she may be nursing a secret pa.s.sion for children, and took this means to gratify it where her crowd could not rag her about it."

"Hasn't she any children of her own?" Sally asked. "But I suppose she's too young-"

"Not at all," Van Horne laughed. "She's past thirty, certainly, though she would never forgive me for saying so. She's never had any children; been married about thirteen years, I think."

"Oh, that's too bad!" Sally's voice was tender and wistful. "She'd make such a lovely mother-"

Van Horne interrupted with his throaty, musical laugh, and was in turn interrupted by Gus the barker's stentorian roar:

"Right this way, la-dees and gen-tle-men! I want to introduce you to Princess Lalla, who sees all, knows all! Princess Lalla, world famous crystal-gazer, favorite-"

Sally straightened in her throne-like chair, her little brown hands cupping obediently about the "magic crystal" on the velvet-draped stand before her. Van Horne, with a last ironic chuckle, melted into the crowd, which had surged toward Sally's platform.

When Gus's spiel was finished, the rush began. At least a dozen hands shot upward, waving quarters and demanding the first opportunity to learn "past, present and future" from "Princess Lalla."

She worked hard, conscientiously and cautiously, for she was vividly conscious that both Van Horne and Enid Barr were somewhere in the tent, listening perhaps, whispering about her.

Most of her fear of Enid Barr, which had resulted from the connection of the golden-haired woman with the orphanage children the day before, had evaporated. It was absurd to think that a woman of such wealth and beauty, whose philanthropy had undoubtedly been a gesture of boredom, was seriously interested in one lone little girl who had run away from charity.

It did not even seem odd to Sally that Enid Barr should have paid a second visit to the carnival. Probably Capital City afforded scant amus.e.m.e.nt for a woman of her sophistication, and the carnival, crude and tawdry though it was, was better than nothing.

Since "Princess Lalla" was not a side-show all by herself, but only one of many attractions in the Palace of Wonders, Gus never made any attempt to cajole reluctant "rubes" into surrendering their quarters for a glimpse of "past, present and future," but always hustled his crowd on to the next platform-"Pitty Sing's"-as soon as the first flurry of interest had died down and the crowd had become restive.

By this method, those who were faintly or belligerently dissatisfied with Sally's crystal-gazing, at which she was becoming more adept with each performance, were quickly placated by the sight of new wonders, for which no extra charge was made.

Sally was straightening the black velvet drapery which covered the crystal stand, preparatory to returning to the dress tent for a rest between shows when a lovely, lilting voice, with a ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt in it, made her gasp with surprise and consternation.

"Am I too late to have my fortune told?" Enid Barr, gazing up at Sally with her golden head tilted provocatively to one side, was immediately below the startled crystal-gazer, one of her exquisite small hands swinging the silvery-green felt hat which Sally had so much admired the day before.