Lonesome Town Part 10

"_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 pa.s.sing 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 role thrust upon her-would have preferred the thriller of lady-a.s.sailed-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 a.r.s.enal 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 h.e.l.lroaring 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 att.i.tude. 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.