The Prince and Betty Part 30

"Do you know a sport of the name of Repetto?" enquired Smith.

"Jack Repetto? Sure."

"He belongs to the Three Points," said another intelligent officer, as one naming some fas.h.i.+onable club.

"When next you see him," said Smith, "I should be obliged if you would use your authority to make him buy me a new hat. I could do with another pair of trousers, too, but I will not press the trousers. A new hat is, however, essential. Mine has a six-inch hole in it."

"Shot at you, did they?" said one of the policemen, as who should say, "Tut, tut!"

"Shot at us!" burst out the ruffled Kid. "What do you think's been happening? Think an aeroplane ran into my ear and took half of it off?

Think the noise was somebody opening bottles of pop? Think those guys that sneaked off down the road was just training for a Marathon?"

"Comrade Brady," said Smith, "touches the spot. He--"

"Say, are you Kid Brady?" enquired one of the officers. For the first time the constabulary had begun to display real animation.

"Reckoned I'd seen you somewhere!" said another. "You licked Cyclone d.i.c.k all right, Kid, I hear."

"And who but a bone-head thought he wouldn't?" demanded the third warmly. "He could whip a dozen Cyclone d.i.c.ks in the same evening with his eyes shut."

"He's the next champeen," admitted the first speaker.

"If he juts it over Jimmy Garvin," argued the second.

"Jimmy Garvin!" cried the third. "He can whip twenty Jimmy Garvins with his feet tied. I tell you--"

"I am loath," observed Smith, "to interrupt this very impressive brain barbecue, but, trivial as it may seem to you, to me there is a certain interest in this other little matter of my ruined hat. I know that it may strike you as hypersensitive of us to protest against being riddled with bullets, but--"

"Well, what's been doin'?" inquired the Force. It was a nuisance, this perpetual harping on trifles when the deep question of the light-weight champions.h.i.+p of the world was under discussion, but the sooner it was attended to, the sooner it would be over.

John undertook to explain.

"The Three Points laid for us," he said. "This man, Jack Repetto, was bossing the crowd. The Kid put one over on to Jack Repetto's chin, and we were asking him a few questions when the rest came back, and started shooting. Then we got to cover quick, and you came up and they beat it."

"That," said Smith, nodding, "is a very fair _precis_ of the evening's events. We should like you, if you will be so good, to corral this Comrade Repetto, and see that he buys me a new hat."

"We'll round Jack up," said one of the policemen indulgently.

"Do it nicely," urged Smith. "Don't go hurting his feelings."

The second policeman gave it as his opinion that Jack was getting too gay. The third policeman conceded this. Jack, he said, had shown signs for some time past of asking for it in the neck. It was an error on Jack's part, he gave his hearers to understand, to a.s.sume that the lid was completely off the great city of New York.

"Too blamed fresh he's gettin'," the trio agreed. They seemed to think it was too bad of Jack.

"The wrath of the Law," said Smith, "is very terrible. We will leave the matter, then, in your hands. In the meantime, we should be glad if you would direct us to the nearest subway station. Just at the moment, the cheerful lights of the Great White Way are what I seem chiefly to need."

So ended the opening engagement of the campaign, in a satisfactory but far from decisive victory for the _Peaceful Moments_' army.

"The victory," said Smith, "was not bloodless. Comrade Brady's ear, my hat--these are not slight casualties. On the other hand, the elimination of Comrade Repetto is pleasant. I know few men whom I would not rather meet on a lonely road than Comrade Repetto. He is one of nature's black-jackers. Probably the thing crept upon him slowly. He started, possibly, in a merely tentative way by slugging one of the family circle. His aunt, let us say, or his small brother. But, once started, he is unable to resist the craving. The thing grips him like dram-drinking. He black-jacks now not because he really wants to, but because he cannot help himself. There's something singularly consoling in the thought that Comrade Repetto will no longer be among those present."

"There are others," said John.

"As you justly remark," said Smith, "there are others. I am glad we have secured Comrade Brady's services. We may need them."

CHAPTER XX

BETTY AT LARGE

It was not till Betty found herself many blocks distant from the office of _Peaceful Moments_ that she checked her headlong flight. She had run down the stairs and out into the street blindly, filled only with that pa.s.sion for escape which had swept her away from Mervo. Not till she had dived into the human river of Broadway and reached Times Square did she feel secure. Then, with less haste, she walked on to the park, and sat down on a bench, to think.

Inevitably she had placed her own construction on John's sudden appearance in New York and at the spot where only one person in any way connected with Mervo knew her to be. She did not know that Smith and he were friends, and did not, therefore, suspect that the former and not herself might be the object of his visit. Nor had any word reached her of what had happened at Mervo after her departure. She had taken it for granted that things had continued as she had left them; and the only possible explanation to her of John's presence in New York was that, acting under orders from Mr. Scobell, he had come to try and bring her back.

She shuddered as she conjured up the scene that must have taken place if Pugsy had not mentioned his name and she had gone on into the inner room. In itself the thought that, after what she had said that morning on the island, after she had forced on him, stripping it of the uttermost rag of disguise, the realization of how his position appeared to her, he should have come, under orders, to bring her back, was well-nigh unendurable. But to have met him, to have seen the man she loved plunging still deeper into shame, would have been pain beyond bearing. Better a thousand times than that this panic flight into the iron wilderness of New York.

It was cool and soothing in the park. The roar of the city was hushed.

It was pleasant to sit there and watch the squirrels playing on the green slopes or scampering up into the branches through which one could see the gleam of water. Her thoughts became less chaotic. The peace of the summer afternoon stole upon her.

It did not take her long to make up her mind that the door of _Peaceful Moments_ was closed to her. John, not finding her, might go away, but he would return. Reluctantly, she abandoned the paper. Her heart was heavy when she had formed the decision. She had been as happy at _Peaceful Moments_ as it was possible for her to be now. She would miss Smith and the leisurely work and the feeling of being one of a team, working in a good cause. And that, brought Broster Street back to her mind, and she thought of the children. No, she could not abandon them. She had started the tenement articles, and she would go on with them. But she must do it without ever venturing into the dangerous neighborhood of the office.

A squirrel ran up and sat begging for a nut. Betty searched in the gra.s.s in the hope of finding one, but came upon nothing but sh.e.l.ls. The squirrel bounded away, with a disdainful flick of the tail.

Betty laughed.

"You think of nothing but food. You ought to be ashamed to be so greedy."

And then it came to her suddenly that it was no trifle, this same problem of food.

The warm, green park seemed to grow chill and gray. Once again she must deal with life's material side.

Her case was at the same time better and worse than it had been on that other occasion when she had faced the future in the French train; better, because then New York had been to her something vague and terrifying, while now it was her city; worse, because she could no longer seek help from Mrs. Oakley.

That Mrs. Oakley had given John the information which had enabled him to discover her hiding-place, Betty felt certain. By what other possible means could he have found it? Why Mrs. Oakley, whom she had considered an ally, should have done so, she did not know. She attributed it to a change of mind, a reconsideration of the case when uninfluenced by sentiment. And yet it seemed strange. Perhaps John had gone to her and the sight of him had won the old lady over to his side.

It might be so. At any rate, it meant that the cottage on Staten Island, like the office of _Peaceful Moments_, was closed to her.

She must look elsewhere for help, or trust entirely to herself.

She sat on, thinking, with grave, troubled eyes, while the shadows lengthened and the birds rustled sleepily in the branches overhead.

Among the good qualities, none too numerous, of Mr. Bat Jarvis, of Groome Street in the Bowery, early rising was not included. It was his habit to retire to rest at an advanced hour, and to balance accounts by lying abed on the following morning. This idiosyncrasy of his was well known in the neighborhood and respected, and it was generally bold to be both bad taste and unsafe to visit Bat's shop until near the fas.h.i.+onable hour for luncheon, when the great one, s.h.i.+rt-sleeved and smoking a short pipe, would appear in the doorway, looking out upon the world and giving it to understand that he was now open to be approached by deserving acquaintances.

When, therefore, at ten o'clock in the morning his slumbers were cut short by a sharp rapping at the front door, his first impression was that he had been dreaming. When, after a brief interval, the noise was resumed, he rose in his might and, knuckling the sleep from his eyes, went down, tight-lipped, to interview this person.