The Window-Gazer Part 20

"But he is not in Vancouver."

"There--or thereabouts. When we get there we can ask the policeman, or," with a grim twinkle, "we can enquire at the asylums. You forget that my nephew is a celebrated man even if he is a fool."

The doctor gave in. He hadn't had a chance from the beginning, for Aunt Caroline could answer objections far faster than he could make them.

They arrived at the terminus just four days after the expeditionary party had left for Friendly Bay.

If Aunt Caroline were surprised at finding more than one policeman in Vancouver, she did not admit it. Neither did the general atmosphere of ignorance as to Benis daunt her in the least. She adhered firmly to her campaign of question asking and found it fully justified when inquiry at the post-office revealed that all letters for Professor Benis H.

Spence were to be delivered to the care of the Union Steams.h.i.+p Company.

From the Union Steams.h.i.+p Company to the professor's place of refuge was an easy step. But Dr. Rogers, to whom this last inquiry had been intrusted, returned to the hotel with a careful jauntiness of manner which ill accorded with a disturbed mind.

"Well, we've found him," he announced cheerfully. "And now, if we are wise, I think we'll leave him alone. He is camping up the coast at a place called Friendly Bay--no hotels, no accommodation for ladies--he is evidently perfectly well and attending to business. You know he came out here partly to get material for his book? Well, that's what he's doing. Must be, because there are only Indians up there."

"Indians? What do you mean--Indians? Wild ones?"

"Fairly wild."

Aunt Caroline snorted. She is one of the few ladies left who possess this Victorian, accomplishment. "And you advise my leaving my sister's child in his present precarious state of mind alone among fairly wild Indians?"

"Well--er--that's just it, you see. He isn't alone--not exactly."

"What do you mean--not exactly?"

"I mean that his--er--secretary is with him. He has to have a secretary on account of never being sure whether receive is 'ie' or 'ei.' They are quite all right, though. The captain of the boat says so. And naturally on a trip of that kind, research you know, a man doesn't like to be interrupted."

Aunt Caroline arose. "When does the next boat leave?" She asked calmly.

"But--dash it all! We're not invited. We can't b.u.t.t in. I--I won't go."

Aunt Caroline, admirable woman, knew when she was defeated. She had a formula for it, a formula which seldom failed to turn defeat into victory. When all else failed, Aunt Caroline collapsed. She collapsed now. She had borne a great deal, she had not complained, but to be told that her presence would be a "b.u.t.ting in" upon the only living child of her only dead sister was more than even her fort.i.tude could endure! No, she wouldn't take a gla.s.s of water, water would choke her. No, she wouldn't lie down. No, she wouldn't lower her voice. What did hotel people matter to her? What did anything matter? She had come to the end. Accustomed to ingrat.i.tude as she was, hardened to injustice and desertion, there were still limits--

There were. The doctor had reached his. Hastily he explained that she had mistaken his meaning. And, to prove it, engaged pa.s.sage at once, for the next upcoast trip, on the same little steamer which a few days earlier had carried Mr. and Mrs. Benis H. Spence.

It was a heavenly day. The mountains lifted them-selves out of veils of tinted mist, the islands lay like jewels--but Aunt Caroline, impervious to mere scenery, turned her thought severely inward.

"I suppose," she said to her now subdued escort, "that we shall have to pay the secretary a month's salary. Benis will scarcely wish to take him back east with us."

The doctor attempted to answer but seemed to have some trouble with his throat.

"It's the damp air," said Aunt Caroline. "Have a troche. If Benis really needs a secretary I think I can arrange to get one for him. Do you remember Mary Davis? Her mother was an Ashton--a very good family.

But unfortunate. The girls have had to look out for themselves rather.

Mary took a course. She could be a secretary, I'm sure. Benis could always correct things afterward. And she is not too young. Just about the right age, I should think. They used to know each other. But you know what Benis is. He simply doesn't--your cold is quite distressing, Doctor. Do take a troche."

The doctor took one.

"Of course Benis may object to a lady secretary--"

"By Jove," said Rogers as if struck with a brilliant idea. "Perhaps his secretary is a lady!"

"How do you mean--a lady! Don't be absurd, Doctor. You said yourself there was no proper hotel. Benis is discreet. I'll say that for him."

The doctor's brilliance deserted him. He twiddled his thumbs. But although Aunt Caroline's repudiation of his suggestion had been unhesitating there was a gleam of new uneasiness in her eye. She said no more. It was indeed quite half an hour before she remarked explosively.

"Unless it were an Indian!"

Her companion turned from the scenery in pained surprise.

"An Indian what?" he asked blankly.

"An Indian secretary--a female one."

"Nonsense. Indians aren't secretaries."

But Aunt Caroline had "had a feeling." "It was your-self who suggested that she might be a girl," she declared stubbornly, "and if she is a girl, she must be an Indian. Indians are different--look at Pullman porters."

The doctor gasped.

"Even I don't mind a Pullman porter," finished Aunt Caroline grandly.

"That's very nice," the doctor struggled to adjust him-self. "But Pullman porters are not Indians, and even if they were I can't quite see how it affects Benis and his lady secretary."

"The principle," said Aunt Caroline, "is the same."

Rogers wondered if his brain were going. At any rate he felt that he needed a smoke. Aunt Caroline did not like smoke, so comparative privacy was a.s.sured. Also, a good smoke might show him a way out of his difficulty.

It didn't. At the end of the second cigar the cold fact, imparted by the clerk in the steams.h.i.+p office, that Professor Spence and wife had preceded them upon this very boat, was still a cold fact and nothing more. The long letter from the bridegroom which would have made things plain had pa.s.sed him on his trip across the continent and was even now lying, with other unopened mail, in his Bainbridge office.

If Benis were married, then the bride could be no other than the nurse-secretary he had written about in that one inconsequent letter to which he, Rogers, had replied with unmistakable warning. But the thing seemed scarcely credible. If it were a fact, then it might very easily be a tragedy also. Marriage in such haste and under such circ.u.mstances could scarcely be other than a mistake, and considering the quality of Benis Spence, a most serious one.

John Rogers was very fond of his eccentric friend and the threatened disaster loomed almost personal. He felt himself to blame too, for the advice which had thrown Spence directly from the frying-pan of Aunt Caroline into the fire of a sterner fate. Add to all this a keen feeling of unwarranted intrusion and we have some idea of the state of mind with which Dr. John Rogers saw the white tents of the campers as the steamer put in at Friendly Bay.

"There are two tents," said Aunt Caroline lowering her lorgnette. "I shall be quite comfortable."

The doctor did not smile. His sense of humor was suffering from temporary exhaustion and his strongest consciousness was a feeling of relief that neither Benis nor anyone else appeared to notice their arrival. Even the unique spectacle of a middle-aged lady in elastic-sided boots proceeding on tiptoe, and with all the tactics of a scouting party, toward the evidently deserted tents provoked no demonstration from anyone.

"They're not here!" called the scouting party in a carrying whisper.

"Obviously not." The doctor wiped his heated fore-head. "Probably they've gone for the night. Then you'll have to marry me to save my reputation."

"Jokes upon serious subjects are in very bad taste, young man," said Aunt Caroline. But her rebuke was half-hearted. She looked uneasy.

"John," she added with sudden suspicion, "you don't suppose they could have known we were coming?"

"How could they possibly?"

"If she is an Indian, they might. I've heard of such things. I--oh, John! Look!"

"Snake?" asked John callously. Nevertheless he followed Aunt Caroline's horrified gaze and saw, with a thrill of more normal interest, a pair of dainty moccasins whose beaded toes protruded from the flap of one of the tents.

"Indian!" gasped Aunt Caroline. "Oh John!"