Lonesome Town Part 27

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 Sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.s 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.

Pus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.ton 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 pa.s.sport, 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."