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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Cross Girl
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Commentator: Gouverneur Morris
+
+Posting Date: November 6, 2008 [EBook #1733]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED CROSS GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+The Novels And Stories Of Richard Harding Davis
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+With An Introduction By Gouverneur Morris
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     Introduction by Gouverneur Morris
+
+     1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+     2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+     3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+     4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+     5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+     6. THE MIND READER
+
+     7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+     8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+     9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                         R. H. D.
+
+     "And they rise to their feet as he passes, gentlemen
+     unafraid."
+
+He was almost too good to be true. In addition, the gods loved him, and
+so he had to die young. Some people think that a man of fifty-two is
+middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never
+have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other
+brother was Peter Pan.
+
+Within the year we have played at pirates together, at the taking of
+sperm whales; and we have ransacked the Westchester Hills for gunsites
+against the Mexican invasion. And we have made lists of guns, and
+medicines, and tinned things, in case we should ever happen to go
+elephant shooting in Africa. But we weren't going to hurt the elephants.
+Once R. H. D. shot a hippopotamus and he was always ashamed and sorry. I
+think he never killed anything else. He wasn't that kind of a sportsman.
+Of hunting, as of many other things, he has said the last word. Do you
+remember the Happy Hunting Ground in "The Bar Sinister"?--"Where nobody
+hunts us, and there is nothing to hunt."
+
+Experienced persons tell us that a man-hunt is the most exciting of all
+sports. R. H. D. hunted men in Cuba. He hunted for wounded men who were
+out in front of the trenches and still under fire, and found some of
+them and brought them in. The Rough Riders didn't make him an honorary
+member of their regiment just because he was charming and a faithful
+friend, but largely because they were a lot of daredevils and he was
+another.
+
+To hear him talk you wouldn't have thought that he had ever done a brave
+thing in his life. He talked a great deal, and he talked even better
+than he wrote (at his best he wrote like an angel), but I have dusted
+every corner of my memory and cannot recall any story of his in which he
+played a heroic or successful part. Always he was running at top speed,
+or hiding behind a tree, or lying face down in a foot of water (for
+hours!) so as not to be seen. Always he was getting the worst of it. But
+about the other fellows he told the whole truth with lightning flashes
+of wit and character building and admiration or contempt. Until the
+invention of moving pictures the world had nothing in the least like his
+talk. His eye had photographed, his mind had developed and prepared the
+slides, his words sent the light through them, and lo and behold, they
+were reproduced on the screen of your own mind, exact in drawing and
+color. With the written word or the spoken word he was the greatest
+recorder and reporter of things that he had seen of any man, perhaps,
+that ever lived. The history of the last thirty years, its manners
+and customs and its leading events and inventions, cannot be written
+truthfully without reference to the records which he has left, to
+his special articles and to his letters. Read over again the Queen's
+Jubilee, the Czar's Coronation, the March of the Germans through
+Brussels, and see for yourself if I speak too zealously, even for a
+friend, to whom, now that R. H. D. is dead, the world can never be the
+same again.
+
+But I did not set out to estimate his genius. That matter will come in
+due time before the unerring tribunal of posterity.
+
+One secret of Mr. Roosevelt's hold upon those who come into contact
+with him is his energy. Retaining enough for his own use (he uses a
+good deal, because every day he does the work of five or six men), he
+distributes the inexhaustible remainder among those who most need it.
+Men go to him tired and discouraged, he sends them away glad to be
+alive, still gladder that he is alive, and ready to fight the devil
+himself in a good cause. Upon his friends R. H. D. had the same effect.
+And it was not only in proximity that he could distribute energy, but
+from afar, by letter and cable. He had some intuitive way of
+knowing just when you were slipping into a slough of laziness and
+discouragement. And at such times he either appeared suddenly upon the
+scene, or there came a boy on a bicycle, with a yellow envelope and a
+book to sign, or the postman in his buggy, or the telephone rang and
+from the receiver there poured into you affection and encouragement.
+
+But the great times, of course, were when he came in person, and the
+temperature of the house, which a moment before had been too hot or
+too cold, became just right, and a sense of cheerfulness and well-being
+invaded the hearts of the master and the mistress and of the servants
+in the house and in the yard. And the older daughter ran to him, and
+the baby, who had been fretting because nobody would give her a
+double-barrelled shotgun, climbed upon his knee and forgot all about the
+disappointments of this uncompromising world.
+
+He was touchingly sweet with children. I think he was a little afraid
+of them. He was afraid perhaps that they wouldn't find out how much
+he loved them. But when they showed him that they trusted him, and,
+unsolicited, climbed upon him and laid their cheeks against his, then
+the loveliest expression came over his face, and you knew that the great
+heart, which the other day ceased to beat, throbbed with an exquisite
+bliss, akin to anguish.
+
+One of the happiest days I remember was when I and mine received a
+telegram saying that he had a baby of his own. And I thank God that
+little Miss Hope is too young to know what an appalling loss she has
+suffered....
+
+Perhaps he stayed to dine. Then perhaps the older daughter was allowed
+to sit up an extra half-hour so that she could wait on the table (and
+though I say it, that shouldn't, she could do this beautifully, with
+dignity and without giggling), and perhaps the dinner was good, or R. H.
+D. thought it was, and in that event he must abandon his place and storm
+the kitchen to tell the cook all about it. Perhaps the gardener was
+taking life easy on the kitchen porch. He, too, came in for praise. R.
+H. D. had never seen our Japanese iris so beautiful; as for his, they
+wouldn't grow at all. It wasn't the iris, it was the man behind the
+iris. And then back he would come to us, with a wonderful story of his
+adventures in the pantry on his way to the kitchen, and leaving behind
+him a cook to whom there had been issued a new lease of life, and a
+gardener who blushed and smiled in the darkness under the Actinidia
+vines.
+
+It was in our little house at Aiken, in South Carolina, that he was
+with us most and we learned to know him best, and that he and I became
+dependent upon each other in many ways.
+
+Events, into which I shall not go, had made his life very difficult and
+complicated. And he who had given so much friendship to so many people
+needed a little friendship in return, and perhaps, too, he needed for a
+time to live in a house whose master and mistress loved each other, and
+where there were children. Before he came that first year our house had
+no name. Now it is called "Let's Pretend."
+
+Now the chimney in the living-room draws, but in those first days of the
+built-over house it didn't. At least, it didn't draw all the time, but
+we pretended that it did, and with much pretense came faith. From the
+fireplace that smoked to the serious things of life we extended our
+pretendings, until real troubles went down before them--down and out.
+
+It was one of Aiken's very best winters, and the earliest spring I ever
+lived anywhere. R. H. D. came shortly after Christmas. The spireas were
+in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a sweet violet or
+two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of deep pink against
+gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees were in bloom. It
+never rained. At night it was cold enough for fires. In the middle of
+the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and every morning we had a four
+for tennis and every afternoon we rode in the woods. And every night we
+sat in front of the fire (that didn't smoke because of pretending) and
+talked until the next morning.
+
+He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
+not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
+moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
+knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
+Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M. and perceived the
+Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
+sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
+there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
+attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
+with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
+loud and joyous singing of ballads.
+
+At fifty R. H. D. might have posed to some Praxiteles and, copied in
+marble, gone down the ages as "statue of a young athlete." He stood
+six feet and over, straight as a Sioux chief, a noble and leonine
+head carried by a splendid torso. His skin was as fine and clean as a
+child's. He weighed nearly two hundred pounds and had no fat on him. He
+was the weight-throwing rather than the running type of athlete, but so
+tenaciously had he clung to the suppleness of his adolescent days that
+he could stand stiff-legged and lay his hands flat upon the floor.
+
+The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his door
+you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard at
+work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
+stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had written
+and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and admire in
+that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and pleasure
+to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would send
+you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had drawn
+a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a half
+column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find time to
+praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from his room
+at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and hungry, and
+whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of excessive energy, and
+carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and letters and telegrams.
+
+Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
+dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
+in each other's society. With him it was the time when the mind is,
+or ought to be, at its best, the body at its freshest and hungriest.
+Discussions of the latest plays and novels, the doings and undoings of
+statesmen, laughter and sentiment--to him, at breakfast, these things
+were as important as sausages and thick cream.
+
+Breakfast over, there was no dawdling and putting off of the day's
+work (else how, at eleven sharp, could tennis be played with a free
+conscience?). Loving, as he did, everything connected with a newspaper,
+he would now pass by those on the hall-table with never so much as a
+wistful glance, and hurry to his workroom.
+
+He wrote sitting down. He wrote standing up. And, almost you may say, he
+wrote walking up and down. Some people, accustomed to the delicious ease
+and clarity of his style, imagine that he wrote very easily. He did and
+he didn't. Letters, easy, clear, to the point, and gorgeously
+human, flowed from him without let or hindrance. That masterpiece of
+corresponding, "The German March Through Brussels," was probably written
+almost as fast as he could talk (next to Phillips Brooks, he was the
+fastest talker I ever heard), but when it came to fiction he had no
+facility at all. Perhaps I should say that he held in contempt any
+facility that he may have had. It was owing to his incomparable energy
+and Joblike patience that he ever gave us any fiction at all. Every
+phrase in his fiction was, of all the myriad phrases he could think of,
+the fittest in his relentless judgment to survive. Phrases, paragraphs,
+pages, whole stories even, were written over and over again. He worked
+upon a principle of elimination. If he wished to describe an automobile
+turning in at a gate, he made first a long and elaborate description
+from which there was omitted no detail, which the most observant pair
+of eyes in Christendom had ever noted with reference to just such a
+turning. Thereupon he would begin a process of omitting one by one
+those details which he had been at such pains to recall; and after each
+omission he would ask himself: "Does the picture remain?" If it did not,
+he restored the detail which he had just omitted, and experimented with
+the sacrifice of some other, and so on, and so on, until after Herculean
+labor there remained for the reader one of those swiftly flashed,
+ice-clear pictures (complete in every detail) with which his tales and
+romances are so delightfully and continuously adorned.
+
+But it is quarter to eleven, and, this being a time of holiday, R. H. D.
+emerges from his workroom happy to think that he has placed one hundred
+and seven words between himself and the wolf who hangs about every
+writer's door. He isn't satisfied with those hundred and seven words. He
+never was in the least satisfied with anything that he wrote, but he
+has searched his mind and his conscience and he believes that under the
+circumstances they are the very best that he can do. Anyway, they can
+stand in their present order until--after lunch.
+
+A sign of his youth was the fact that to the day of his death he had
+denied himself the luxury and slothfulness of habits. I have never seen
+him smoke automatically as most men do. He had too much respect for his
+own powers of enjoyment and for the sensibilities, perhaps, of the best
+Havana tobacco. At a time of his own deliberate choosing, often after
+many hours of hankering and renunciation, he smoked his cigar. He smoked
+it with delight, with a sense of being rewarded, and he used all the
+smoke there was in it.
+
+He dearly loved the best food, the best champagne, and the best Scotch
+whiskey. But these things were friends to him, and not enemies. He had
+toward food and drink the Continental attitude; namely, that quality is
+far more important than quantity; and he got his exhilaration from the
+fact that he was drinking champagne and not from the champagne. Perhaps
+I shall do well to say that on questions of right and wrong he had a
+will of iron. All his life he moved resolutely in whichever direction
+his conscience pointed; and, although that ever present and never
+obtrusive conscience of his made mistakes of judgment now and then, as
+must all consciences, I think it can never once have tricked him into
+any action that was impure or unclean. Some critics maintain that the
+heroes and heroines of his books are impossibly pure and innocent young
+people. R. H. D. never called upon his characters for any trait of
+virtue, or renunciation, or self-mastery of which his own life could not
+furnish examples.
+
+Fortunately, he did not have for his friends the same conscience that he
+had for himself. His great gift of eyesight and observation failed him
+in his judgments upon his friends. If only you loved him, you could get
+your biggest failures of conduct somewhat more than forgiven, without
+any trouble at all. And of your mole-hill virtues he made splendid
+mountains. He only interfered with you when he was afraid that you were
+going to hurt some one else whom he also loved. Once I had a telegram
+from him which urged me for heaven's sake not to forget that the next
+day was my wife's birthday. Whether I had forgotten it or not is my
+own private affair. And when I declared that I had read a story which I
+liked very, very much and was going to write to the author to tell him
+so, he always kept at me till the letter was written.
+
+Have I said that he had no habits? Every day, when he was away from her,
+he wrote a letter to his mother, and no swift scrawl at that, for, no
+matter how crowded and eventful the day, he wrote her the best letter
+that he could write. That was the only habit he had. He was a slave to
+it.
+
+Once I saw R. H. D. greet his old mother after an absence. They threw
+their arms about each other and rocked to and fro for a long time. And
+it hadn't been a long absence at that. No ocean had been between them;
+her heart had not been in her mouth with the thought that he was under
+fire, or about to become a victim of jungle fever. He had only been away
+upon a little expedition, a mere matter of digging for buried treasure.
+We had found the treasure, part of it a chipmunk's skull and a broken
+arrow-head, and R. H. D. had been absent from his mother for nearly two
+hours and a half.
+
+I set about this article with the knowledge that I must fail to give
+more than a few hints of what he was like. There isn't much more space
+at my command, and there were so many sides to him that to touch
+upon them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
+Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from
+which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers;
+those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those
+quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous
+exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
+He was a quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning
+to think tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time
+looked yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue
+is owing in some measure to him.
+
+R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
+peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
+infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught this
+country to see the matter in the same way.
+
+I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface
+of my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which
+was inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
+"personal interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
+important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
+which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a
+fifteen-dollar-a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week brain."
+
+There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No two
+men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from other
+men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his work?
+And that question I can answer offhand, without taking thought, and be
+sure that I am right.
+
+An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
+Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
+brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer
+are subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his
+powers of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate,
+too; and that characteristic is cleanliness.
+
+The biggest force for cleanliness that was in the world has gone out of
+the world--gone to that Happy Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and
+there is nothing to hunt."
+
+GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1. THE RED CROSS GIRL
+
+When Spencer Flagg laid the foundation-stone for the new million-dollar
+wing he was adding to the Flagg Home for Convalescents, on the hills
+above Greenwich, the New York REPUBLIC sent Sam Ward to cover the story,
+and with him Redding to take photographs. It was a crisp, beautiful day
+in October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the great
+lawn in front of the Home you could see half over Connecticut and across
+the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.
+
+Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted. When, the
+night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked, and he
+was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New York
+from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
+already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
+
+"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the
+speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns."
+
+"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect type-written
+speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's there
+any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a silver
+trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men
+in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
+story in that?"
+
+"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to
+get a day in the country."
+
+"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd
+wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
+every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."
+
+"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York except
+cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never see the
+sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in the middle
+of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in New York except
+on the women's hats. We never see the women except in cages in the
+elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and down elevator shafts
+in department stores, in apartment houses, in office buildings. And we
+never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women
+who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a
+Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!"
+
+"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street and
+made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say. Especially
+are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in elevators, but
+they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they shine upon
+you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the tops of buses;
+they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across restaurant tables
+under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in the subway. They
+are the only thing in New York that gives me any trouble."
+
+The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed. "However,
+to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be
+few women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in
+convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent."
+
+Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females and
+overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling his
+assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there to see
+him give away a million dollars.
+
+"Aren't you going to get his speech?", asked Redding, the staff
+photographer.
+
+"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over the grounds
+to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm waiting to
+hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint for the
+first train back to the centre of civilization."
+
+"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and reporters are
+expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were."
+
+Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his
+armpit and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his
+clothes and always treated them with courtesy.
+
+"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
+minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather have
+a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner in New
+Rochelle."
+
+He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron
+gates; but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble
+barred his way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform
+of a nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar
+turned down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet.
+A bow of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had
+hair like golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such
+health and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
+
+She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as swiftly
+as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.
+
+Reporters become star reporters because they observe things that
+other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
+observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
+that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
+"That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that." And so
+warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
+indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
+not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
+screaming headlines.
+
+Other men, on being suddenly confronted by Sister Anne, which was the
+official title of the nursing sister, would have fallen backward, or
+swooned, or gazed at her with soulful, worshipping eyes; or, were they
+that sort of beast, would have ogled her with impertinent approval. Now
+Sam, because he was a star reporter, observed that the lady before him
+was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen; but no one would
+have guessed that he observed that--least of all Sister Anne. He stood
+in her way and lifted his hat, and even looked into the eyes of blue as
+impersonally and as calmly as though she were his great-aunt--as though
+his heart was not beating so fast that it choked him.
+
+"I am from the REPUBLIC," he said. "Everybody is so busy here to-day
+that I'm not able to get what I need about the Home. It seems a pity,"
+he added disappointedly, "because it's so well done that people ought
+to know about it." He frowned at the big hospital buildings. It was
+apparent that the ignorance of the public concerning their excellence
+greatly annoyed him.
+
+When again he looked at Sister Anne she was regarding him in
+alarm--obviously she was upon the point of instant flight.
+
+"You are a reporter?" she said.
+
+Some people like to place themselves in the hands of a reporter because
+they hope he will print their names in black letters; a few others--only
+reporters know how few--would as soon place themselves in the hands of a
+dentist.
+
+"A reporter from the REPUBLIC," repeated Sam.
+
+"But why ask ME?" demanded Sister Anne.
+
+Sam could see no reason for her question; in extenuation and explanation
+he glanced at her uniform.
+
+"I thought you were at work here," he said simply. "I beg your pardon."
+
+He stepped aside as though he meant to leave her. In giving that
+impression he was distinctly dishonest.
+
+"There was no other reason," persisted Sister Anne. "I mean for speaking
+to me?"
+
+The reason for speaking to her was so obvious that Sam wondered whether
+this could be the height of innocence or the most banal coquetry. The
+hostile look in the eyes of the lady proved it could not be coquetry.
+
+"I am sorry," said Sam. "I mistook you for one of the nurses here; and,
+as you didn't seem busy, I thought you might give me some statistics
+about the Home not really statistics, you know, but local color."
+
+Sister Anne returned his look with one as steady as his own. Apparently
+she was weighing his statement. She seemed to disbelieve it. Inwardly
+he was asking himself what could be the dark secret in the past of this
+young woman that at the mere approach of a reporter--even of such a
+nice-looking reporter as himself--she should shake and shudder. "If
+that's what you really want to know," said Sister Anne doubtfully, "I'll
+try and help you; but," she added, looking at him as one who issues an
+ultimatum, "you must not say anything about me!"
+
+Sam knew that a woman of the self-advertising, club-organizing class
+will always say that to a reporter at the time she gives him her card so
+that he can spell her name correctly; but Sam recognized that this young
+woman meant it. Besides, what was there that he could write about her?
+Much as he might like to do so, he could not begin his story with: "The
+Flagg Home for Convalescents is also the home of the most beautiful
+of all living women." No copy editor would let that get by him. So, as
+there was nothing to say that he would be allowed to say, he promised to
+say nothing. Sister Anne smiled; and it seemed to Sam that she smiled,
+not because his promise had set her mind at ease, but because the
+promise amused her. Sam wondered why.
+
+Sister Anne fell into step beside him and led him through the wards of
+the hospital. He found that it existed for and revolved entirely about
+one person. He found that a million dollars and some acres of buildings,
+containing sun-rooms and hundreds of rigid white beds, had been donated
+by Spencer Flagg only to provide a background for Sister Anne--only
+to exhibit the depth of her charity, the kindness of her heart, the
+unselfishness of her nature.
+
+"Do you really scrub the floors?" he demanded--"I mean you
+yourself--down on your knees, with a pail and water and scrubbing
+brush?"
+
+Sister Anne raised her beautiful eyebrows and laughed at him.
+
+"We do that when we first come here," she said--"when we are
+probationers. Is there a newer way of scrubbing floors?"
+
+"And these awful patients," demanded Sam--"do you wait on them? Do you
+have to submit to their complaints and whinings and ingratitude?" He
+glared at the unhappy convalescents as though by that glance he would
+annihilate them. "It's not fair!" exclaimed Sam. "It's ridiculous. I'd
+like to choke them!"
+
+"That's not exactly the object of a home for convalescents," said Sister
+Anne.
+
+"You know perfectly well what I mean," said Sam. "Here are you--if
+you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young
+person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures,
+and cripples."
+
+"Nor is that quite the way we look at," said Sister Anne.
+
+"We?" demanded Sam.
+
+Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse
+
+"I'm not the only nurse here," she said "There are over forty."
+
+"You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's Just what
+I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the
+ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody
+else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are
+different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and
+sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds."
+
+Sister Anne laughed with delight.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Sam stiffly.
+
+"No--pardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the duties of a
+nurse are so quaint."
+
+"No matter what the duties are," declared Sam; "You should not be here!"
+
+Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as
+delicate as the pinions of a bird.
+
+"One must live," said Sister Anne.
+
+They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows
+of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine. Below them
+stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors. Sister Anne seated
+herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the
+flashing waters of the Sound.
+
+"Yes; that's it," she repeated softly--"one must live."
+
+Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult,
+looked hurriedly away. He admitted to himself that it was one of those
+occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was
+heightened by the fact that "the woman was very fair." He conceded
+that. He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced
+by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his
+feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the
+gentlest and most gracious of all professions. He was honestly disturbed
+that this young girl should devote her life to the service of selfish
+sick people.
+
+"If you do it because you must live, then it can easily be arranged; for
+there are other ways of earning a living."
+
+The girl looked at him quickly, but he was quite sincere--and again she
+smiled.
+
+"Now what would you suggest?" she asked. "You see," she said, "I have no
+one to advise me--no man of my own age. I have no brothers to go to.
+I have a father, but it was his idea that I should come here; and so
+I doubt if he would approve of my changing to any other work. Your own
+work must make you acquainted with many women who earn their own living.
+Maybe you could advise me?"
+
+Sam did not at once answer. He was calculating hastily how far his
+salary would go toward supporting a wife. He was trying to remember
+which of the men in the office were married, and whether they were
+those whose salaries were smaller than his own. Collins, one of the copy
+editors, he knew, was very ill-paid; but Sam also knew that Collins was
+married, because his wife used to wait for him in the office to take
+her to the theatre, and often Sam had thought she was extremely well
+dressed. Of course Sister Anne was so beautiful that what she might wear
+would be a matter of indifference; but then women did not always look
+at it that way. Sam was so long considering offering Sister Anne a life
+position that his silence had become significant; and to cover his real
+thoughts he said hurriedly:
+
+"Take type-writing, for instance. That pays very well. The hours are not
+difficult."
+
+"And manicuring?" suggested Sister Anne.
+
+Sam exclaimed in horror.
+
+"You!" he cried roughly. "For you! Quite impossible!"
+
+"Why for me?" said the girl.
+
+In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel
+walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not
+see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
+
+"You?" protested Sam. "You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who
+are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!" His vehemence
+was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the
+gravel walk, his profile toward her--and, unobserved, she could study
+his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally
+good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city
+editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes
+full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. "How much do they give you
+a month?" "Forty dollars," answered Sister Anne. "This is what hurts me
+about it," said Sam.
+
+"It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there
+are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to
+work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However,
+probably you know that better than I do."
+
+"No; I don't know that," said Sister Anne.
+
+Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this
+statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of
+relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a
+complete stranger--even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but,
+though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
+
+"I think you are working too hard," he said, smiling happily. "I think
+you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever
+give you a day off?"
+
+"Next Saturday," said Sister Anne. "Why?"
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "if you won't think it too presumptuous, I was
+going to prescribe a day off for you--a day entirely away from iodoform
+and white enamelled cots. It is what you need, a day in the city and a
+lunch where they have music; and a matinee, where you can laugh--or cry,
+if you like that better--and then, maybe, some fresh air in the park in
+a taxi; and after that dinner and more theatre, and then I'll see you
+safe on the train for Greenwich. Before you answer," he added hurriedly,
+"I want to explain that I contemplate taking a day off myself and doing
+all these things with you, and that if you want to bring any of the
+other forty nurses along as a chaperon, I hope you will. Only, honestly,
+I hope you won't!"
+
+The proposal apparently gave Sister Anne much pleasure. She did not
+say so, but her eyes shone and when she looked at Sam she was almost
+laughing with happiness.
+
+"I think that would be quite delightful," said Sister Anne,"--quite
+delightful! Only it would be frightfully expensive; even if I don't
+bring another girl, which I certainly would not, it would cost a great
+deal of money. I think we might cut out the taxicab--and walk in the
+park and feed the squirrels."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sam in disappointment,--"then you know Central Park?"
+
+Sister Anne's eyes grew quite expressionless.
+
+"I once lived near there," she said.
+
+"In Harlem?"
+
+"Not exactly in Harlem, but near it. I was quite young," said Sister
+Anne. "Since then I have always lived in the country or in--other
+places."
+
+Sam's heart was singing with pleasure.
+
+"It's so kind of you to consent," he cried. "Indeed, you are the kindest
+person in all the world. I thought so when I saw you bending over these
+sick people, and, now I know."
+
+"It is you who are kind," protested Sister Anne, "to take pity on me."
+
+"Pity on you!" laughed Sam. "You can't pity a person who can do more
+with a smile than old man Flagg can do with all his millions. Now," he
+demanded in happy anticipation, "where are we to meet?"
+
+"That's it," said Sister Anne. "Where are we to meet?"
+
+"Let it be at the Grand Central Station. The day can't begin too soon,"
+said Sam; "and before then telephone me what theatre and restaurants you
+want and I'll reserve seats and tables. Oh," exclaimed Sam joyfully, "it
+will be a wonderful day--a wonderful day!"
+
+Sister Anne looked at him curiously and, so, it seemed, a little
+wistfully. She held out her hand.
+
+"I must go back to my duties," she said. "Good-by."
+
+"Not good-by," said Sam heartily, "only until Saturday--and my name's
+Sam Ward and my address is the city room of the REPUBLIC. What's your
+name?"
+
+"Sister Anne," said the girl. "In the nursing order to which I belong we
+have no last names."
+
+"So," asked Sam, "I'll call you Sister Anne?"
+
+"No; just Sister," said the girl.
+
+"Sister!" repeated Sam, "Sister!" He breathed the word rather than spoke
+it; and the way he said it and the way he looked when he said it made
+it carry almost the touch of a caress. It was as if he had said
+"Sweetheart!" or "Beloved!" "I'll not forget," said Sam.
+
+Sister Anne gave an impatient, annoyed laugh.
+
+"Nor I," she said.
+
+Sam returned to New York in the smoking-car, puffing feverishly at his
+cigar and glaring dreamily at the smoke. He was living the day over
+again and, in anticipation, the day off, still to come. He rehearsed
+their next meeting at the station; he considered whether or not he would
+meet her with a huge bunch of violets or would have it brought to her
+when they were at luncheon by the head waiter. He decided the latter way
+would be more of a pleasant surprise. He planned the luncheon. It was to
+be the most marvellous repast he could evolve; and, lest there should be
+the slightest error, he would have it prepared in advance--and it should
+cost half his week's salary.
+
+The place where they were to dine he would leave to her, because he
+had observed that women had strange ideas about clothes--some of them
+thinking that certain clothes must go with certain restaurants. Some
+of them seemed to believe that, instead of their conferring distinction
+upon the restaurant, the restaurant conferred distinction upon them. He
+was sure Sister Anne would not be so foolish, but it might be that she
+must always wear her nurse's uniform and that she would prefer not to be
+conspicuous; so he decided that the choice of where they would dine he
+would leave to her. He calculated that the whole day ought to cost about
+eighty dollars, which, as star reporter, was what he was then earning
+each week. That was little enough to give for a day that would be the
+birthday of his life! No, he contradicted--the day he had first met her
+must always be the birthday of his life; for never had he met one
+like her and he was sure there never would be one like her. She was
+so entirely superior to all the others, so fine, so difficult--in her
+manner there was something that rendered her unapproachable. Even her
+simple nurse's gown was worn with a difference. She might have been a
+princess in fancy dress. And yet, how humble she had been when he begged
+her to let him for one day personally conduct her over the great city!
+"You are so kind to take pity on me," she had said. He thought of many
+clever, pretty speeches he might have made. He was so annoyed he had
+not thought of them at the time that he kicked violently at the seat in
+front of him.
+
+He wondered what her history might be; he was sure it was full of
+beautiful courage and self-sacrifice. It certainly was outrageous
+that one so glorious must work for her living, and for such a paltry
+living--forty dollars a month! It was worth that merely to have her
+sit in the flat where one could look at her; for already he had decided
+that, when they were married, they would live in a flat--probably in
+one overlooking Central Park, on Central Park West. He knew of several
+attractive suites there at thirty-five dollars a week--or, if she
+preferred the suburbs, he would forsake his beloved New York and return
+to the country. In his gratitude to her for being what she was, he
+conceded even that sacrifice.
+
+When he reached New York, from the speculators he bought front-row seats
+at five dollars for the two most popular plays in town. He put them away
+carefully in his waistcoat pocket. Possession of them made him feel that
+already he had obtained an option on six hours of complete happiness.
+
+After she left Sam, Sister Anne passed hurriedly through the hospital to
+the matron's room and, wrapping herself in a raccoon coat, made her way
+to a waiting motor car and said, "Home!" to the chauffeur. He drove
+her to the Flagg family vault, as Flagg's envious millionaire neighbors
+called the pile of white marble that topped the highest hill above
+Greenwich, and which for years had served as a landfall to mariners on
+the Sound.
+
+There were a number of people at tea when she arrived and they greeted
+her noisily.
+
+"I have had a most splendid adventure!" said Sister Anne. "There were
+six of us, you know, dressed up as Red Cross nurses, and we gave away
+programmes. Well, one of the New York reporters thought I was a real
+nurse and interviewed me about the Home. Of course I knew enough about
+it to keep it up, and I kept it up so well that he was terribly sorry
+for me; and...."
+
+One of the tea drinkers was little Hollis Holworthy, who prided himself
+on knowing who's who in New York. He had met Sam Ward at first nights
+and prize fights. He laughed scornfully.
+
+"Don't you believe it!" he interrupted. "That man who was talking to you
+was Sam Ward. He's the smartest newspaper man in New York; he was
+just leading you on. Do you suppose there's a reporter in America who
+wouldn't know you in the dark? Wait until you see the Sunday paper."
+
+Sister Anne exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"He did not know me!" she protested. "It quite upset him that I should
+be wasting my life measuring out medicines and making beds."
+
+There was a shriek of disbelief and laughter.
+
+"I told him," continued Sister Anne, "that I got forty dollars a month,
+and he said I could make more as a typewriter; and I said I preferred to
+be a manicurist."
+
+"Oh, Anita!" protested the admiring chorus.
+
+"And he was most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
+manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
+me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
+drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
+park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
+We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
+He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'"
+
+"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.
+
+Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
+American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
+Anita Flagg, was amused.
+
+"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you going to do
+about it?"
+
+"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me
+ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
+And," she added, "that's all there is to that!"
+
+That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
+Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: "I want to hear
+you call me Sister."
+
+"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he
+whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"
+
+"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister
+once. Say it as though you meant it."
+
+"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said already what
+I...."
+
+"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I've heard
+that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."
+
+His lordship frowned in embarrassment.
+
+"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.
+
+Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
+though she were cold.
+
+"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."
+
+Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
+to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
+window looking out toward the great city to the south.
+
+When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
+young woman to shriek with amazement.
+
+"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
+cry?"
+
+It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
+turned upon the tactless intruder.
+
+"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty
+dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
+and worked for your living, and still said your smile was worth more
+than all of old man Flagg's millions, not knowing they were YOUR
+millions. Suppose he didn't ask any money of you, but just to take care
+of you, to slave for you--only wanted to keep your pretty hands from
+working, and your pretty eyes from seeing sickness and pain. Suppose you
+met that man among this rotten lot, what would you do? What wouldn't you
+do?"
+
+"Why, Anita!" exclaimed Miss Page.
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Anita Flagg. "This is what you'd do: You'd
+go down on your knees to that man and say: 'Take me away! Take me away
+from them, and pity me, and be sorry for me, and love me--and love
+me--and love me!"
+
+"And why don't you?" cried Helen Page.
+
+"Because I'm as rotten as the rest of them!" cried Anita Flagg. "Because
+I'm a coward. And that's why I'm crying. Haven't I the right to cry?"
+
+At the exact moment Miss Flagg was proclaiming herself a moral coward,
+in the local room of the REPUBLIC Collins, the copy editor, was editing
+Sam's story' of the laying of the corner-stone. The copy editor's cigar
+was tilted near his left eyebrow; his blue pencil, like a guillotine
+ready to fall upon the guilty word or paragraph, was suspended in
+mid-air; and continually, like a hawk preparing to strike, the blue
+pencil swooped and circled. But page after page fell softly to the desk
+and the blue pencil remained inactive. As he read, the voice of Collins
+rose in muttered ejaculations; and, as he continued to read, these
+explosions grew louder and more amazed. At last he could endure no
+more and, swinging swiftly in his revolving chair, his glance swept the
+office. "In the name of Mike!" he shouted. "What IS this?"
+
+The reporters nearest him, busy with pencil and typewriters, frowned in
+impatient protest. Sam Ward, swinging his legs from the top of a table,
+was gazing at the ceiling, wrapped in dreams and tobacco smoke. Upon his
+clever, clean-cut features the expression was far-away and beatific. He
+came back to earth.
+
+"What's what?" Sam demanded.
+
+At that moment Elliott, the managing editor, was passing through the
+room his hands filled with freshly pulled proofs. He swung toward
+Collins quickly and snatched up Sam's copy. The story already was
+late--and it was important.
+
+"What's wrong?" he demanded. Over the room there fell a sudden hush.
+
+"Read the opening paragraph," protested Collins. "It's like that for a
+column! It's all about a girl--about a Red Cross nurse. Not a word about
+Flagg or Lord Deptford. No speeches! No news! It's not a news story at
+all. It's an editorial, and an essay, and a spring poem. I don't know
+what it is. And, what's worse," wailed the copy editor defiantly and
+to the amazement of all, "it's so darned good that you can't touch it.
+You've got to let it go or kill it."
+
+The eyes of the managing editor, masked by his green paper shade,
+were racing over Sam's written words. He thrust the first page back at
+Collins.
+
+"Is it all like that?"
+
+"There's a column like that!"
+
+"Run it just as it is," commanded the managing editor. "Use it for your
+introduction and get your story from the flimsy. And, in your head, cut
+out Flagg entirely. Call it 'The Red Cross Girl.' And play it up strong
+with pictures." He turned on Sam and eyed him curiously.
+
+"What's the idea, Ward?" he said. "This is a newspaper--not a magazine!"
+
+The click of the typewriters was silent, the hectic rush of the pencils
+had ceased, and the staff, expectant, smiled cynically upon the star
+reporter. Sam shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and also
+smiled, but unhappily.
+
+"I know it's not news, Sir," he said; "but that's the way I saw the
+story--outside on the lawn, the band playing, and the governor and the
+governor's staff and the clergy burning incense to Flagg; and inside,
+this girl right on the job--taking care of the sick and wounded. It
+seemed to me that a million from a man that won't miss a million didn't
+stack up against what this girl was doing for these sick folks! What I
+wanted to say," continued Sam stoutly "was that the moving spirit of the
+hospital was not in the man who signed the checks, but in these women
+who do the work--the nurses, like the one I wrote about; the one you
+called 'The Red Cross Girl.'"
+
+Collins, strong through many years of faithful service, backed by the
+traditions of the profession, snorted scornfully.
+
+"But it's not news!"
+
+"It's not news," said Elliott doubtfully; "but it's the kind of story
+that made Frank O'Malley famous. It's the kind of story that drives
+men out of this business into the arms of what Kipling calls 'the
+illegitimate sister.'"
+
+It seldom is granted to a man on the same day to give his whole heart to
+a girl and to be patted on the back by his managing editor; and it was
+this combination, and not the drinks he dispensed to the staff in return
+for its congratulations, that sent Sam home walking on air. He loved his
+business, he was proud of his business; but never before had it
+served him so well. It had enabled him to tell the woman he loved, and
+incidentally a million other people, how deeply he honored her; how
+clearly he appreciated her power for good. No one would know he meant
+Sister Anne, save two people--Sister Anne and himself; but for her and
+for him that was as many as should know. In his story he had used real
+incidents of the day; he had described her as she passed through the
+wards of the hospital, cheering and sympathetic; he had told of the
+little acts of consideration that endeared her to the sick people.
+
+The next morning she would know that it was she of whom he had written;
+and between the lines she would read that the man who wrote them loved
+her. So he fell asleep, impatient for the morning. In the hotel at which
+he lived the REPUBLIC was always placed promptly outside his door; and,
+after many excursions into the hall, he at last found it. On the
+front page was his story, "The Red Cross Girl." It had the place of
+honor--right-hand column; but more conspicuous than the headlines of his
+own story was one of Redding's, photographs. It was the one he had taken
+of Sister Anne when first she had approached them, in her uniform of
+mercy, advancing across the lawn, walking straight into the focus of
+the camera. There was no mistaking her for any other living woman;
+but beneath the picture, in bold, staring, uncompromising type, was a
+strange and grotesque legend.
+
+"Daughter of Millionaire Flagg," it read, "in a New Role, Miss Anita
+Flagg as The Red Cross Girl."
+
+For a long time Sam looked at the picture, and then, folding the paper
+so that the picture was hidden, he walked to the open window. From
+below, Broadway sent up a tumultuous greeting--cable cars jangled, taxis
+hooted; and, on the sidewalks, on their way to work, processions of
+shop-girls stepped out briskly. It was the street and the city and the
+life he had found fascinating, but now it jarred and affronted him. A
+girl he knew had died, had passed out of his life forever--worse than
+that had never existed; and yet the city went or just as though that
+made no difference, or just as little difference as it would have made
+had Sister Anne really lived and really died.
+
+At the same early hour, an hour far too early for the rest of the house
+party, Anita Flagg and Helen Page, booted and riding-habited, sat alone
+at the breakfast table, their tea before them; and in the hands of Anita
+Flagg was the DAILY REPUBLIC. Miss Page had brought the paper to the
+table and, with affected indignation at the impertinence of the press,
+had pointed at the front-page photograph; but Miss Flagg was not looking
+at the photograph, or drinking her tea, or showing in her immediate
+surroundings any interest whatsoever. Instead, her lovely eyes were
+fastened with fascination upon the column under the heading "The Red
+Cross Girl"; and, as she read, the lovely eyes lost all trace of recent
+slumber, her lovely lips parted breathlessly, and on her lovely cheeks
+the color flowed and faded and glowed and bloomed. When she had read
+as far as a paragraph beginning, "When Sister Anne walked between them
+those who suffered raised their eyes to hers as flowers lift their faces
+to the rain," she dropped the paper and started for telephone.
+
+"Any man," cried she, to the mutual discomfort of Helen Page and the
+servants, "who thinks I'm like that mustn't get away! I'm not like that
+and I know it; but if he thinks so that's all I want. And maybe I might
+be like that--if any man would help."
+
+She gave her attention to the telephone and "Information." She demanded
+to be instantly put into communication with the DAILY REPUBLIC and Mr.
+Sam Ward. She turned again upon Helen Page.
+
+"I'm tired of being called a good sport," she protested, "by men who
+aren't half so good sports as I am. I'm tired of being talked to about
+money--as though I were a stock-broker. This man's got a head on
+his shoulders, and he's got the shoulders too; and he's got a darned
+good-looking head; and he thinks I'm a ministering angel and a saint;
+and he put me up on a pedestal and made me dizzy--and I like being made
+dizzy; and I'm for him! And I'm going after him!"
+
+
+"Be still!" implored Helen Page. "Any one might think you meant it!" She
+nodded violently at the discreet backs of the men-servants.
+
+"Ye gods, Parker!" cried Anita Flagg. "Does it take three of you to pour
+a cup of tea? Get out of here, and tell everybody that you all three
+caught me in the act of proposing to an American gentleman over the
+telephone and that the betting is even that I'll make him marry me!"
+
+The faithful and sorely tried domestics fled toward the door. "And
+what's more," Anita hurled after them, "get your bets down quick, for
+after I meet him the odds will be a hundred to one!"
+
+Had the REPUBLIC been an afternoon paper, Sam might have been at the
+office and might have gone to the telephone, and things might have
+happened differently; but, as the REPUBLIC was a morning paper, the
+only person in the office was the lady who scrubbed the floors and she
+refused to go near the telephone. So Anita Flagg said, "I'll call him up
+later," and went happily on her ride, with her heart warm with love for
+all the beautiful world; but later it was too late.
+
+To keep himself fit, Sam Ward always walked to the office. On this
+particular morning Hollis Holworthy was walking uptown and they met
+opposite the cathedral.
+
+"You're the very man I want," said Hollworthy joyously--"you've got to
+decide a bet."
+
+He turned and fell into step with Sam.
+
+"It's one I made last night with Anita Flagg. She thinks you didn't know
+who she was yesterday, and I said that was ridiculous. Of course you
+knew. I bet her a theatre party."
+
+To Sam it seemed hardly fair that so soon, before his fresh wound had
+even been dressed, it should be torn open by impertinent fingers; but he
+had no right to take offense. How could the man, or any one else, know
+what Sister Anne had meant to him?
+
+"I'm afraid you lose," he said. He halted to give Holworthy the hint to
+leave him, but Holworthy had no such intention.
+
+"You don't say so!" exclaimed that young man. "Fancy one of you chaps
+being taken in like that. I thought you were taking her in--getting up
+a story for the Sunday supplement."
+
+Sam shook his head, nodded, and again moved on; but he was not yet
+to escape. "And, instead of your fooling her," exclaimed Holworthy
+incredulously, "she was having fun, with you!"
+
+With difficulty Sam smiled.
+
+"So it would seem," he said.
+
+"She certainly made an awfully funny story of it!" exclaimed Holworthy
+admiringly. "I thought she was making it up--she must have made some of
+it up. She said you asked her to take a day off in New York. That isn't
+so is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"By Jove!" cried Holworthy--"and that you invited her to see the
+moving-picture shows?"
+
+Sam, conscious of the dearly bought front row seats in his pocket,
+smiled pleasantly.
+
+"Did she say I said that--or you?" he asked
+
+"She did."
+
+"Well, then, I must have said it."
+
+Holworthy roared with amusement.
+
+"And that you invited her to feed peanuts to the monkeys at the Zoo?"
+
+Sam avoided the little man's prying eyes.
+
+"Yes; I said that too."
+
+"And I thought she was making it up!" exclaimed Holworthy. "We did
+laugh. You must see the fun of it yourself."
+
+Lest Sam should fail to do so he proceeded to elaborate.
+
+"You must see the fun in a man trying to make a date with Anita
+Flagg--just as if she were nobody!"
+
+"I don't think," said Sam, "that was my idea." He waved his stick at a
+passing taxi. "I'm late," he said. He abandoned Hollis on the sidewalk,
+chuckling and grinning with delight, and unconscious of the mischief he
+had made.
+
+An hour later at the office, when Sam was waiting for an assignment, the
+telephone boy hurried to him, his eyes lit with excitement.
+
+"You're wanted on the 'phone," he commanded. His voice dropped to an
+awed whisper. "Miss Anita Flagg wants to speak to you!"
+
+The blood ran leaping to Sam's heart and face. Then he remembered that
+this was not Sister Anne who wanted to speak to him, but a woman he had
+never met.
+
+"Say you can't find me," he directed. The boy gasped, fled, and returned
+precipitately.
+
+"The lady says she wants your telephone number--says she must have it."
+
+"Tell her you don't know it; tell her it's against the rules--and hang
+up."
+
+Ten minutes later the telephone boy, in the strictest confidence, had
+informed every member of the local staff that Anita Flagg--the rich,
+the beautiful, the daring, the original of the Red Cross story of that
+morning--had twice called up Sam Ward and by that young man had been
+thrown down--and thrown hard!
+
+That night Elliott, the managing editor, sent for Sam; and when Sam
+entered his office he found also there Walsh, the foreign editor, with
+whom he was acquainted only by sight.
+
+Elliott introduced them and told Sam to be seated.
+
+"Ward," he began abruptly, "I'm sorry to lose you, but you've got to go.
+It's on account of that story of this morning."
+
+Sam made no sign, but he was deeply hurt. From a paper he had served
+so loyally this seemed scurvy treatment. It struck him also that,
+considering the spirit in which the story had been written, it was
+causing him more kinds of trouble than was quite fair. The loss of
+position did not disturb him. In the last month too many managing
+editors had tried to steal him from the REPUBLIC for him to feel anxious
+as to the future. So he accepted his dismissal calmly, and could say
+without resentment:
+
+"Last night I thought you liked the story, sir?
+
+"I did," returned Elliott; "I liked it so much that I'm sending you to
+a bigger place, where you can get bigger stories. We want you to act as
+our special correspondent in London. Mr. Walsh will explain the work;
+and if you'll go you'll sail next Wednesday."
+
+After his talk with the foreign editor Sam again walked home on air.
+He could not believe it was real--that it was actually to him it had
+happened; for hereafter he was to witness the march of great events,
+to come in contact with men of international interests. Instead of
+reporting what was of concern only from the Battery to Forty-seventh
+Street, he would now tell New York what was of interest in Europe and
+the British Empire, and so to the whole world. There was one drawback
+only to his happiness--there was no one with whom he might divide it.
+He wanted to celebrate his good fortune; he wanted to share it with
+some one who would understand how much it meant to him, who would really
+care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would
+have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to
+accept them--begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and
+terrifying capital of the world, and start the new life together.
+
+Among all the women he knew, there was none to take her place. Certainly
+Anita Flagg could not take her place. Not because she was rich, not
+because she had jeered at him and made him a laughing-stock, not because
+his admiration--and he blushed when he remembered how openly, how
+ingenuously he had shown it to her--meant nothing; but because the girl
+he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to
+marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered,
+ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous
+when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a
+hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could
+not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself
+had inspired that girl and for a day given her existence.
+
+Had he known it, the Anita Flagg of his imagining was just as unlike and
+as unfair to the real girl as it was possible for two people to be.
+His Anita Flagg he had created out of the things he had read of her in
+impertinent Sunday supplements and from the impression he had been given
+of her by the little ass, Holworthy. She was not at all like that.
+Ever since she had come of age she had been beset by sycophants and
+flatterers, both old and young, both men and girls, and by men who
+wanted her money and by men who wanted her. And it was because she got
+the motives of the latter two confused that she was so often hurt and
+said sharp, bitter things that made her appear hard and heartless.
+
+As a matter of fact, in approaching her in the belief that he was
+addressing an entirely different person, Sam had got nearer to the real
+Anita Flagg than had any other man. And so--when on arriving at the
+office the next morning, which was a Friday, he received a telegram
+reading, "Arriving to-morrow nine-thirty from Greenwich; the day cannot
+begin too soon; don't forget you promised to meet me. Anita Flagg "--he
+was able to reply: "Extremely sorry; but promise made to a different
+person, who unfortunately has since died!"'
+
+When Anita Flagg read this telegram there leaped to her lovely eyes
+tears that sprang from self-pity and wounded feelings. She turned
+miserably, appealingly to Helen Page.
+
+"But why does he do it to me?" Her tone was that of the bewildered child
+who has struck her head against the table, and from the naughty table,
+without cause or provocation, has received the devil of a bump.
+
+Before Miss Page could venture upon an explanation, Anita Flagg had
+changed into a very angry young woman.
+
+"And what's more," she announced, "he can't do it to me!"
+
+She sent her telegram back again as it was, word for word, but this time
+it was signed, "Sister Anne."
+
+In an hour the answer came: "Sister Anne is the person to whom I refer.
+She is dead."
+
+Sam was not altogether at ease at the outcome of his adventure. It was
+not in his nature to be rude--certainly not to a woman, especially not
+to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. For, whether her name
+was Anita or Anne, about her beauty there could be no argument; but he
+assured himself that he had acted within his rights. A girl who could
+see in a well-meant offer to be kind only a subject for ridicule was
+of no interest to him. Nor did her telegrams insisting upon continuing
+their acquaintance flatter him. As he read them, they showed only that
+she looked upon him as one entirely out of her world--as one with whom
+she could do an unconventional thing and make a good story about it
+later, knowing that it would be accepted as one of her amusing caprices.
+
+He was determined he would not lend himself to any such performance.
+And, besides, he no longer was a foot-loose, happy-go-lucky reporter. He
+no longer need seek for experiences and material to turn into copy.
+He was now a man with a responsible position--one who soon would be
+conferring with cabinet ministers and putting ambassadors At their ease.
+He wondered if a beautiful heiress, whose hand was sought in marriage
+by the nobility of England, would understand the importance of a London
+correspondent. He hoped someone would tell her. He liked to think of her
+as being considerably impressed and a little unhappy.
+
+Saturday night he went to the theatre for which he had purchased
+tickets. And he went alone, for the place that Sister Anne was to have
+occupied could not be filled by any other person. It would have been
+sacrilege. At least, so it pleased him to pretend. And all through
+dinner, which he ate alone at the same restaurant to which he had
+intended taking her, he continued, to pretend she was with him. And
+at the theatre, where there was going forward the most popular of all
+musical comedies, the seat next to him, which to the audience, appeared
+wastefully empty, was to him filled with her gracious presence. That
+Sister Anne was not there--that the pretty romance he had woven about
+her had ended in disaster--filled, him with real regret. He was glad he
+was leaving New York. He was glad he was going, where nothing would
+remind him of her. And then he glanced up--and looked straight into her
+eyes!
+
+He was seated in the front row, directly on the aisle. The seat Sister
+Anne was supposed to be occupying was on his right, and a few seats
+farther to his right rose the stage box and in the stage box, and in the
+stage box, almost upon the stage, and with the glow of the foot-lights
+full in her face, was Anita Flagg, smiling delightedly down on him.
+There were others with her. He had a confused impression of bulging
+shirt-fronts, and shining silks, and diamonds, and drooping plumes upon
+enormous hats. He thought he recognized Lord Deptford and Holworthy; but
+the only person he distinguished clearly was Anita Flagg. The girl was
+all in black velvet, which was drawn to her figure like a wet bathing
+suit; round her throat was a single string of pearls, and on her hair of
+golden-rod was a great hat of black velvet, shaped like a bell, with the
+curving lips of a lily. And from beneath its brim Anita Flagg, sitting
+rigidly erect with her white-gloved hands resting lightly on her knee,
+was gazing down at him, smiling with pleasure, with surprise, with
+excitement.
+
+When she saw that, in spite of her altered appearance, he recognized
+her, she bowed so violently and bent her head so eagerly that above her
+the ostrich plumes dipped and courtesied like wheat in a storm. But Sam
+neither bowed nor courtesied. Instead, he turned his head slowly over
+his left shoulder, as though he thought she was speaking not to him but
+some one beyond him, across the aisle. And then his eyes returned to the
+stage and did not again look toward her. It was not the cut direct, but
+it was a cut that hurt; and in their turn the eyes of Miss Flagg quickly
+sought the stage. At the moment, the people in the audience happened to
+be laughing; and she forced a smile and then laughed with them.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye Sam could not help seeing her profile
+exposed pitilessly in the glow of the foot-lights; saw her lips tremble
+like those of a child about to cry; and then saw the forced, hard
+smile--and heard her laugh lightly and mechanically.
+
+"That's all she cares." he told himself.
+
+It seemed to him that in all he heard of her, in everything she did,
+she kept robbing him still further of all that was dear to him in Sister
+Anne.
+
+For five minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained
+upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly
+and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the'
+darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage
+by a barrier of women's hats.
+
+"Your friend Mr. Ward," she began abruptly, in a whisper, "is the
+rudest, most ill-bred person I ever met. When I talked to him the
+other day I thought he was nice. He was nice, But he has behaved
+abominably--like a boor--like a sulky child. Has he no sense of humor?
+Because I played a joke on him, is that any reason why he should hurt
+me?"
+
+"Hurt you?" exclaimed little Holworthy in amazement. "Don't be
+ridiculous! How could he hurt you? Why should you care how rude he is?
+Ward's a clever fellow, but he fancies himself. He's conceited. He's too
+good-looking; and a lot of silly women have made such a fuss over him.
+So when one of them laughs at him he can't understand it. That's the
+trouble. I could see that when I was telling him."
+
+"Telling him!" repeated Miss Flagg--"Telling him what?"
+
+"About what a funny story you made of it," explained Holworthy. "About
+his having the nerve to ask you to feed the monkeys and to lunch with
+him."
+
+Miss Flagg interrupted with a gasping intake of her breath.
+
+"Oh!" she said softly. "So-so you told him that, did you? And--what else
+did you tell him?"
+
+"Only what you told us--that he said 'the day could not begin too soon';
+that he said he wouldn't let you be a manicure and wash the hands of men
+who weren't fit to wash the streets you walked on."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Did I tell you he said that?" breathed Anita Flagg.
+
+"You know you did," said Holworthy.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"I must have been mad!" said the girl.
+
+There was a longer pause and Holworthy shifted uneasily.
+
+"I'm afraid you are angry," he ventured.
+
+"Angry!" exclaimed Miss Flagg. "I should say I was angry, but not with
+you. I'm very much pleased with you. At the end of the act I'm going to
+let you take me out into the lobby."
+
+With his arms tightly folded, Sam sat staring unhappily at the stage
+and seeing nothing. He was sorry for himself because Anita Flagg had
+destroyed his ideal of a sweet and noble woman--and he was sorry for
+Miss Flagg because a man had been rude to her. That he happened to be
+that man did not make his sorrow and indignation the less intense; and,
+indeed, so miserable was he and so miserable were his looks, that his
+friends on the stage considered sending him a note, offering, if he
+would take himself out of the front row, to give him back his money at
+the box office. Sam certainly wished to take himself away; but he did
+not want to admit that he was miserable, that he had behaved ill, that
+the presence of Anita Flagg could spoil his evening--could, in the
+slightest degree affect him. So he sat, completely wretched, feeling
+that he was in a false position; that if he were it was his own fault;
+that he had acted like an ass and a brute. It was not a cheerful
+feeling.
+
+When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the
+second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance
+running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude
+to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary
+Sister Anne as of the actual box party on his near right, who were
+laughing and chattering volubly. He wondered whether they laughed at
+him--whether Miss Flagg were again entertaining them at his expense;
+again making his advances appear ridiculous. He was so sure of it that
+he flushed indignantly. He was glad he had been rude.
+
+And then, at his elbow, there was the rustle of silk; and a beautiful
+figure, all in black velvet, towered above him, then crowded past
+him, and sank into the empty seat at his side. He was too startled to
+speak--and Miss Anita Flagg seemed to understand that and to wish to
+give him time; for, without regarding him in the least, and as though
+to establish the fact that she had come to stay, she began calmly and
+deliberately to remove the bell-like hat. This accomplished, she bent
+toward him, her eyes looking straight into his, her smile reproaching
+him. In the familiar tone of an old and dear friend she said to him
+gently:
+
+"This is the day you planned for me. Don't you think you've wasted quite
+enough of it?"
+
+Sam looked back into the eyes, and saw in them no trace of laughter or
+of mockery, but, instead, gentle reproof and appeal--and something else
+that, in turn, begged of him to be gentle.
+
+For a moment, too disturbed to speak, he looked at her, miserably,
+remorsefully.
+
+"It's not Anita Flagg at all," he said. "It's Sister Anne come back to
+life again!" The girl shook her head.
+
+"No; it's Anita Flagg. I'm not a bit like the girl you thought you met
+and I did say all the things Holworthy told you I said; but that
+was before I understood--before I read what you wrote about Sister
+Anne--about the kind of me you thought you'd met. When I read that I
+knew what sort of a man you were. I knew you had been really kind and
+gentle, and I knew you had dug out something that I did not know was
+there--that no one else had found. And I remembered how you called me
+Sister. I mean the way you said it. And I wanted to hear it again. I
+wanted you to say it."
+
+She lifted her face to his. She was very near him--so near that her
+shoulder brushed against his arm. In the box above them her friends,
+scandalized and amused, were watching her with the greatest interest.
+Half of the people in the now half-empty house were watching them with
+the greatest interest. To them, between reading advertisements on the
+programme and watching Anita Flagg making desperate love to a lucky
+youth in the front row, there was no question of which to choose.
+
+The young people in the front row did not know they were observed.
+They were alone--as much alone as though they were seated in a biplane,
+sweeping above the clouds.
+
+"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."
+
+"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he
+whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and
+the finest woman who has ever lived!"
+
+Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared
+at the bass drum in the orchestra.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds just as good."
+
+When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her
+box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper;
+but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.
+
+"We can see this act," she said, "or--my car's in front of the
+theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which
+would you prefer?"
+
+"Don't make me laugh!" said Sam.
+
+As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but
+paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.
+
+"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me unhappy;
+and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am
+leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next
+Wednesday."
+
+"My business is to gather news," said Sam, "but in all my life I never
+gathered such good news as that."
+
+"Good news!" exclaimed Anita.
+
+"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, America--am spending the winter
+in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that
+is not what makes me unhappy."
+
+"Tell me," begged Anita.
+
+"Some day," said Sam.
+
+The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they
+leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.
+
+"This is my unhappiness," said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the
+passenger list. It was: "The Earl of Deptford, and valet." "And because
+he is on board!"
+
+Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.
+
+"He is not on board," she said. "He changed to another boat."
+
+Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his
+soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.
+
+"Why did he change?" he begged.
+
+Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused
+despair.
+
+"Is that all that is worrying you?" she said.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT
+
+Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pass their
+examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This
+may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pass hurriedly on. But
+whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior
+year came up for those final examinations which, should he pass them
+even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have
+been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It
+was the professors who cheated.
+
+At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you
+can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief
+history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has
+attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for
+the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where
+he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest
+they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.
+Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.
+
+The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects
+in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an
+average of ninety, you are passed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you
+pass "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pass." It is not unlike
+the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The
+whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be
+lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined
+that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would
+see that he passed his examinations. And they constituted the jury of
+awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much,
+but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his
+dignified title the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who
+dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater,
+who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting
+Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his
+official resignation.
+
+Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college
+president. If he did not actually run after money he went where
+money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who
+possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through
+a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose
+to that institution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool,
+or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to
+it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious
+instructor.
+
+He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June
+examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would
+inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.
+
+"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.
+"Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride,
+and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let
+us hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been
+pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.
+They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of
+him forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew
+that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle
+would hold the blank cartridge.
+
+The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at
+Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of
+those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and
+Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had
+been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman
+Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back,
+the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and
+worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always
+possessed a contemporary and news interest.
+
+"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always referred to
+it as "the" history--"that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT."
+
+In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it
+was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.
+
+The members of his class who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and
+who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the
+"Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the.... Fall." The history began when
+Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to
+Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds
+with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since
+Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.
+When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish
+Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume
+that would cover the last three centuries.
+
+"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the chancellor, "I
+think the Russian-Turkish War should be included."
+
+Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in
+mild reproach. "The war in the Crimea!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was alive
+at the time. I know about it. That is not history."
+
+Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century
+knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'
+trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus
+Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history
+certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his
+examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which
+he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with
+malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked "five."
+
+Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.
+In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but
+they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single
+point higher than was necessary to pass him. But Doctor Gilman's five
+completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter
+was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only
+son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private
+college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the
+new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and
+the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim
+hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own
+disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-glass window cast upon his
+nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter
+wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won,
+but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to
+be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that
+followed made Stillwater history.
+
+"My son is not an ass!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to
+Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him
+the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.
+And I'll send my money where I send Peter."
+
+In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the
+son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had
+failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say
+that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college
+president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a
+conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+"There has been contemptible work here," he whispered--"spite and a mean
+spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I
+find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our
+college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman.
+Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary." This did
+not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford
+to be too particular.
+
+"I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you have the
+explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his
+mark. In causing us temporary embarrassment he has brought about his own
+downfall. I have already asked for his resignation."
+
+Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this
+particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem
+humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than
+that his son was an idiot.
+
+"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just because Peter is
+lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he
+sacrificed my Peter in order to get even...."
+
+"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly what he did!
+Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all
+over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an
+increase in salary it was really you who refused it--and he struck at
+you through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with
+indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself
+shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly
+not your brilliant son--look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club
+and foot-ball tour--is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman
+went too far. And he has been justly punished!"
+
+What Hallowell senior was willing to believe of what the chancellor
+told him, and his opinion of the matter as expressed to Peter, differed
+materially.
+
+"They tell me," he concluded, "that in the fall they will give you
+another examination, and if you pass then, you will get your degree. No
+one will know you've got it. They'll slip it to you out of the side-door
+like a cold potato to a tramp. The only thing people will know is that
+when your classmates stood up and got their parchments--the thing they'd
+been working for four years, the only reason for their going to college
+at all--YOU were not among those present. That's your fault; but if you
+don't get your degree next fall that will be my fault. I've supported
+you through college and you've failed to deliver the goods. Now you
+deliver them next fall, or you can support yourself."
+
+"That will be all right," said Peter humbly; "I'll pass next fall."
+
+"I'm going to make sure of that," said Hallowell senior. "To-morrow you
+will take those history books that you did not open, especially Gilman's
+'Rise and Fall,' which it seems you have not even purchased, and you
+will travel for the entire summer with a private tutor...."
+
+Peter, who had personally conducted the foot-ball and base-ball teams
+over half of the Middle States and daily bullied and browbeat them,
+protested with indignation. "WON'T travel with a private tutor!"
+
+"If I say so," returned Hallowell senior grimly, "you'll travel with
+a governess and a trained nurse, and wear a strait jacket. And you'll
+continue to wear it until you can recite the history of Turkey backward.
+And in order that you may know it backward--and forward you will spend
+this summer in Turkey--in Constantinople--until I send you permission to
+come home."
+
+"Constantinople!" yelled Peter. "In August! Are you serious?"
+
+"Do I look it?" asked Peter's father. He did.
+
+"In Constantinople," explained Mr. Hallowell senior, "there will be
+nothing to distract you from your studies, and in spite of yourself
+every minute you will be imbibing history and local color."
+
+"I'll be imbibing fever,", returned Peter, "and sunstroke and sudden
+death. If you want to get rid of me, why don't you send me to the island
+where they sent Dreyfus? It's quicker. You don't have to go to Turkey to
+study about Turkey."
+
+"You do!" said his father.
+
+Peter did not wait for the festivities of commencement week. All day he
+hid in his room, packing his belongings or giving them away to the members
+of his class, who came to tell him what a rotten shame it was, and to
+bid him good-by. They loved Peter for himself alone, and at losing him
+were loyally enraged. They sired publicly to express their sentiments,
+and to that end they planned a mock trial of the "Rise and Fall," at
+which a packed jury would sentence it to cremation. They planned also to
+hang Doctor Gilman in effigy. The effigy with a rope round its neck was
+even then awaiting mob violence. It was complete to the silver-white
+beard and the gold spectacles. But Peter squashed both demonstrations.
+He did not know Doctor Gilman had been forced to resign, but he
+protested that the horse-play of his friends would make him appear a
+bad loser. "It would look, boys," he said, "as though I couldn't take my
+medicine. Looks like kicking against the umpire's decision. Old Gilman
+fought fair. He gave me just what was coming to me. I think a darn sight
+more of him than do of that bunch of boot-lickers that had the colossal
+nerve to pretend I scored fifty!"
+
+Doctor Gilman sat in his cottage that stood the edge of the campus,
+gazing at a plaster bust of Socrates which he did not see. Since that
+morning he had ceased to sit in the chair of history at Stillwater
+College. They were retrenching, the chancellor had told him curtly,
+cutting down unnecessary expenses, for even in his anger Doctor Black
+was too intelligent to hint at his real motive, and the professor was
+far too innocent of evil, far too detached from college politics to
+suspect. He would remain a professor emeritus on half pay, but he no
+longer would teach. The college he had served for thirty years-since
+it consisted of two brick buildings and a faculty of ten young men--no
+longer needed him. Even his ivy-covered cottage, in which his wife and
+he had lived for twenty years, in which their one child had died, would
+at the beginning of the next term be required of him. But the college
+would allow him those six months in which to "look round." So, just
+outside the circle of light from his student lamp, he sat in his study,
+and stared with unseeing eyes at the bust of Socrates. He was not
+considering ways and means. They must be faced later. He was considering
+how he could possibly break the blow to his wife. What eviction from
+that house would mean to her no one but he understood. Since the day
+their little girl had died, nothing in the room that had been her
+playroom, bedroom, and nursery had been altered, nothing had been
+touched. To his wife, somewhere in the house that wonderful, God-given
+child was still with them. Not as a memory but as a real and living
+presence. When at night the professor and his wife sat at either end
+of the study table, reading by the same lamp, he would see her suddenly
+lift her head, alert and eager, as though from the nursery floor a step
+had sounded, as though from the darkness a sleepy voice had called her.
+And when they would be forced to move to lodgings in the town, to some
+students' boarding-house, though they could take with them their books,
+their furniture, their mutual love and comradeship, they must leave
+behind them the haunting presence of the child, the colored pictures she
+had cut from the Christmas numbers and plastered over the nursery walls,
+the rambler roses that with her own hands she had planted and that now
+climbed to her window and each summer peered into her empty room.
+
+Outside Doctor Gilman's cottage, among the trees of the campus, paper
+lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front
+of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest
+elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer
+succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the
+heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had
+flunked especially for one man who had flunked. But for that man who
+for thirty years in the class room had served the college there were
+no cheers. No one remembered him, except the one student who had best
+reason to remember him. But this recollection Peter had no rancor or
+bitterness and, still anxious lest he should be considered a bad loser,
+he wished Doctor Gilman a every one else to know that. So when the
+celebration was at its height and just before train was due to carry
+him from Stillwater, ran across the campus to the Gilman cottage
+say good-by. But he did not enter the cottage He went so far only as
+half-way up the garden walk. In the window of the study which opened
+upon the veranda he saw through frame of honeysuckles the professor and
+wife standing beside the study table. They were clinging to each other,
+the woman weep silently with her cheek on his shoulder, thin, delicate,
+well-bred hands clasping arms, while the man comforted her awkward
+unhappily, with hopeless, futile caresses.
+
+Peter, shocked and miserable at what he had seen, backed steadily away.
+What disaster had befallen the old couple he could not imagine. The
+idea that he himself might in any way connected with their grief never
+entered mind. He was certain only that, whatever the trouble was, it was
+something so intimate and personal that no mere outsider might dare to
+offer his sympathy. So on tiptoe he retreated down the garden walk and,
+avoiding the celebration at the bonfire, returned to his rooms. An hour
+later the entire college escorted him to the railroad station, and
+with "He's a jolly good fellow" and "He's off to Philippopolis in the
+morn--ing" ringing in his ears, he sank back his seat in the smoking-car
+and gazed at the lights of Stillwater disappearing out of his life.
+And he was surprised to find that what lingered his mind was not the
+students, dancing like Indians round the bonfire, or at the steps of the
+smoking-car fighting to shake his hand, but the man and woman alone in
+the cottage stricken with sudden sorrow, standing like two children
+lost in the streets, who cling to each other for comfort and at the same
+moment whisper words of courage.
+
+Two months Later, at Constantinople, Peter, was suffering from remorse
+over neglected opportunities, from prickly heat, and from fleas. And it
+not been for the moving-picture man, and the poker and baccarat at the
+Cercle Oriental, he would have flung himself into the Bosphorus. In
+the mornings with the tutor he read ancient history, which he promptly
+forgot; and for the rest of the hot, dreary day with the moving-picture
+man through the bazaars and along the water-front he stalked suspects
+for the camera.
+
+The name of the moving-picture man was Harry Stetson. He had been a
+newspaper reporter, a press-agent, and an actor in vaudeville and in
+a moving-picture company. Now on his own account he was preparing an
+illustrated lecture on the East, adapted to churches and Sunday-schools.
+Peter and he wrote it in collaboration, and in the evenings rehearsed
+it with lantern slides before an audience of the hotel clerk, the tutor,
+and the German soldier of fortune who was trying to sell the young Turks
+very old battleships. Every other foreigner had fled the city, and the
+entire diplomatic corps had removed itself to the summer capital at
+Therapia.
+
+There Stimson, the first secretary of the embassy and, in the absence
+of the ambassador, CHARGE D'AFFAIRES, invited Peter to become his guest.
+Stimson was most anxious to be polite to Peter, for Hallowell senior was
+a power in the party then in office, and a word from him at Washington
+in favor of a rising young diplomat would do no harm. But Peter was
+afraid his father would consider Therapia "out of bounds."
+
+
+"He sent me to Constantinople," explained Peter, "and if he thinks I'm
+not playing the game the Lord only knows where he might send me next-and
+he might cut off my allowance."
+
+In the matter of allowance Peter's father had been most generous. This
+was fortunate, for poker, as the pashas and princes played it at
+he Cercle, was no game for cripples or children. But, owing to his
+letter-of-credit and his illspent life, Peter was able to hold his own
+against men three times his age and of fortunes nearly equal to that of
+his father. Only they disposed of their wealth differently. On many hot
+evening Peter saw as much of their money scattered over the green table
+as his father had spent over the Hallowell athletic field.
+
+In this fashion Peter spent his first month of exile--in the morning
+trying to fill his brain with names of great men who had been a long
+time dead, and in his leisure hours with local color. To a youth of his
+active spirit it was a full life without joy or recompense. A Letter
+from Charley Hines, a classmate who lived at Stillwater, which arrived
+after Peter had endured six weeks of Constantinople, released him from
+boredom and gave life a real interest. It was a letter full of gossip
+intended to amuse. One paragraph failed of its purpose. It read:
+"Old man Gilman has got the sack. The chancellor offered him up as a
+sacrifice to your father, and because he was unwise enough to flunk you.
+He is to move out in September. I ran across them last week when I was
+looking for rooms for a Freshman cousin. They were reserving one in the
+same boarding-house. It's a shame, and I know you'll agree. They are a
+fine old couple, and I don't like to think of them herding with Freshmen
+in a shine boardinghouse. Black always was a swine."
+
+Peter spent fully ten minutes getting to the cable office.
+
+"Just learned," he cabled his father, "Gilman dismissed because flunked
+me consider this outrageous please see he is reinstated."
+
+The answer, which arrived the next day, did not satisfy Peter. It read:
+"Informed Gilman acted through spite have no authority as you know to
+interfere any act of black."
+
+Since Peter had learned of the disaster that through his laziness had
+befallen the Gilmans, his indignation at the injustice had been hourly
+increasing. Nor had his banishment to Constantinople strengthened his
+filial piety. On the contrary, it had rendered him independent and but
+little inclined to kiss the paternal rod. In consequence his next cable
+was not conciliatory.
+
+"Dismissing Gilman Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me
+appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as you direct please
+reinstate."
+
+To this somewhat peremptory message his father answered:
+
+"If your position unpleasant yourself to blame not Black incident is
+closed."
+
+"Is it?" said the son of his father. He called Stetson to his aid
+and explained. Stetson reminded him of the famous cablegram of his
+distinguished contemporary: "Perdicaris alive and Raisuli dead!"
+
+Peter's paraphrase of this ran: "Gilman returns to Stillwater or I will
+not try for degree."
+
+The reply was equally emphatic:
+
+"You earn your degree or you earn your own living."
+
+This alarmed Stetson, but caused Peter to deliver his ultimatum: "Choose
+to earn my own living am leaving Constantinople."
+
+Within a few days Stetson was also leaving Constantinople by steamer
+via Naples. Peter, who had come to like him very much, would have
+accompanied him had he not preferred to return home more leisurely by
+way of Paris and London.
+
+"You'll get there long before I do," said Peter, "and as soon as you
+arrive I want you to go to Stillwater and give Doctor Gilman some
+souvenir of Turkey from me. Just to show him I've no hard feelings. He
+wouldn't accept money, but he can't refuse a present. I want it to
+be something characteristic of the country, Like a prayer rug, or a
+scimitar, or an illuminated Koran, or..."
+
+Somewhat doubtfully, somewhat sheepishly, Stetson drew from his pocket a
+flat morocco case and opened it. "What's the matter with one of these?"
+he asked.
+
+In a velvet-lined jewel case was a star of green enamel and silver gilt.
+To it was attached a ribbon of red and green.
+
+"That's the Star of the Crescent," said Peter. "Where did you buy it?"
+
+"Buy it!" exclaimed Stetson. "You don't buy them. The Sultan bestows
+them."
+
+"I'll bet the Sultan didn't bestow that one," said Peter.
+
+"I'll bet," returned Stetson, "I've got something in my pocket that says
+he did."
+
+He unfolded an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving
+Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical.
+
+"What does that say when it says it in English?" he asked.
+
+"It says," translated Stetson, "that his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan,
+bestows upon Henry Stetson, educator, author, lecturer, the Star of
+the Order of the Crescent, of the fifth class, for services rendered to
+Turkey."
+
+Peter interrupted him indignantly.
+
+"Never try to fool the fakirs, my son," he protested. "I'm a fakir
+myself. What services did you ever...."
+
+"Services rendered," continued Stetson undisturbed, "in spreading
+throughout the United States a greater knowledge of the customs,
+industries, and religion of the Ottoman Empire. That," he explained,
+"refers to my--I should say our--moving-picture lecture. I thought
+it would look well if, when I lectured on Turkey, I wore a Turkish
+decoration, so I went after this one."
+
+Peter regarded his young friend with incredulous admiration.
+
+"But did they believe you," he demanded, "when you told them you were an
+author and educator?"
+
+Stetson closed one eye and grinned. "They believed whatever I paid them
+to believe."
+
+"If you can get one of those," cried Peter, "Old man Gilman ought to
+get a dozen. I'll tell them he's the author of the longest and dullest
+history of their flea-bitten empire that was ever written. And he's a
+real professor and a real author, and I can prove it. I'll show them the
+five volumes with his name in each. How much did that thing cost you?"
+
+"Two hundred dollars in bribes," said Stetson briskly, "and two months
+of diplomacy."
+
+"I haven't got two months for diplomacy," said Peter, "so I'll have to
+increase the bribes. I'll stay here and get the decoration for Gilman,
+and you work the papers at home. No one ever heard of the Order of the
+Crescent, but that only makes it the easier for us. They'll only know
+what we tell them, and we'll tell them it's the highest honor ever
+bestowed by a reigning sovereign upon an American scholar. If you tell
+the people often enough that anything is the best they believe you.
+That's the way father sells his hams. You've been a press-agent.
+From now on you're going to be my press-agent--I mean Doctor Gilman's
+press-agent. I pay your salary, but your work is to advertise him and
+the Order of the Crescent. I'll give you a letter to Charley Hines at
+Stillwater. He sends out college news to a syndicate and he's the local
+Associated Press man. He's sore at their discharging Gilman and he's my
+best friend, and he'll work the papers as far as you like. Your job is
+to make Stillwater College and Doctor Black and my father believe that
+when they lost Gilman they lost the man who made Stillwater famous.
+And before we get through boosting Gilman, we'll make my father's
+million-dollar gift laboratory look like an insult."
+
+In the eyes of the former press-agent the light of battle burned
+fiercely, memories of his triumphs in exploitation, of his strategies
+and tactics in advertising soared before him.
+
+"It's great!" he exclaimed. "I've got your idea and you've got me. And
+you're darned lucky to get me. I've been press-agent for politicians,
+actors, society leaders, breakfast foods, and horse-shows--and I'm the
+best! I was in charge of the publicity bureau for Galloway when he
+ran for governor. He thinks the people elected him. I know I did. Nora
+Nashville was getting fifty dollars a week in vaudeville when I took
+hold of her; now she gets a thousand. I even made people believe Mrs.
+Hampton-Rhodes was a society leader at Newport, when all she ever saw
+of Newport was Bergers and the Muschenheim-Kings. Why, I am the man that
+made the American People believe Russian dancers can dance!"
+
+"It's plain to see you hate yourself," said 'Peter. "You must not get so
+despondent or you might commit suicide. How much money will you want?"
+
+"How much have you got?"
+
+"All kinds," said Peter. "Some in a letter-of-credit that my father
+earned from the fretful pig, and much more in cash that I won at poker
+from the pashas. When that's gone I've got to go to work and earn my
+living. Meanwhile your salary is a hundred a week and all you need
+to boost Gilman and the Order of the Crescent. We are now the Gilman
+Defense, Publicity, and Development Committee, and you will begin by
+introducing me to the man I am to bribe."
+
+"In this country you don't need any introduction to the man you want to
+bribe," exclaimed Stetson; "you just bribe him!"
+
+
+That same night in the smoking-room of the hotel, Peter and Stetson made
+their first move in the game of winning for Professor Gilman the Order
+of the Crescent. Stetson presented Peter to a young effendi in a frock
+coat and fez. Stetson called him Osman. He was a clerk in the foreign
+office and appeared to be "a friend of a friend of a friend" of the
+assistant third secretary.
+
+The five volumes of the "Rise and Fall" were spread before him, and
+Peter demanded to know why so distinguished a scholar as Doctor
+Gilman had not received some recognition from the country he had so
+sympathetically described. Osman fingered the volumes doubtfully, and
+promised the matter should be brought at once to the attention of the
+grand vizier.
+
+After he had departed Stetson explained that Osman had just as little
+chance of getting within speaking distance of the grand vizier as of the
+ladies of his harem.
+
+"It's like Tammany," said Stetson; "there are sachems, district leaders,
+and lieutenants. Each of them is entitled to trade or give away a few of
+these decorations, just as each district leader gets his percentage
+of jobs in the street-cleaning department. This fellow will go to his
+patron, his patron will go to some undersecretary in the cabinet, he
+will put it up to a palace favorite, and they will divide your money.
+
+"In time the minister of foreign affairs will sign your brevet and a
+hundred others, without knowing what he is signing; then you cable me,
+and the Star of the Crescent will burst upon the United States in a way
+that will make Halley's comet look like a wax match."
+
+The next day Stetson and the tutor sailed for home and Peter was left
+alone to pursue, as he supposed, the Order of the Crescent. On the
+contrary, he found that the Order of the Crescent was pursuing him. He
+had not appreciated that, from underlings and backstair politicians, an
+itinerant showman like Stetson and the only son of an American Croesus
+would receive very different treatment.
+
+Within twenty-four hours a fat man with a blue-black beard and diamond
+rings called with Osman to apologize for the latter. Osman, the fat man
+explained--had been about to make a fatal error. For Doctor Gilman he
+had asked the Order of the Crescent of the fifth class, the same class
+that had been given Stetson. The fifth class, the fat man explained, was
+all very well for tradesmen, dragomans, and eunuchs, but as an honor for
+a savant as distinguished as the friend of his. Hallowell, the fourth
+class would hardly be high enough. The fees, the fat man added, would
+Also be higher; but, he pointed out, it was worth the difference,
+because the fourth class entitled the wearer to a salute from all
+sentries.
+
+"There are few sentries at Stillwater," said Peter; "but I want the best
+and I want it quick. Get me the fourth class."
+
+The next morning he was surprised by an early visit from Stimson of the
+embassy. The secretary was considerably annoyed.
+
+"My dear Hallowell," he protested, "why the devil didn't you tell me you
+wanted a decoration? Of course the State department expressly forbids
+us to ask for one for ourselves, or for any one else. But what's the
+Constitution between friends? I'll get it for you at once--but, on two
+conditions: that you don't tell anybody I got it, and that you tell me
+why you want it, and what you ever did to deserve it."
+
+Instead, Peter explained fully and so sympathetically that the diplomat
+demanded that he, too, should be enrolled as one of the Gilman Defense
+Committee.
+
+"Doctor Gilman's history," he said, "must be presented to the Sultan.
+You must have the five volumes rebound in red and green, the colors of
+Mohammed, and with as much gold tooling as they can carry. I hope," he
+added, "they are not soiled."
+
+"Not by me," Peter assured him.
+
+"I will take them myself," continued Stimson, "to Muley Pasha, the
+minister of foreign affairs, and ask him to present them to his Imperial
+Majesty. He will promise to do so, but he won't; but he knows I know he
+won't so that is all right. And in return he will present us with the
+Order of the Crescent of the third class."
+
+"Going up!" exclaimed Peter. "The third class. That will cost me my
+entire letter-of-credit."
+
+"Not at all," said Stimson. "I've saved you from the grafters. It will
+cost you only what you pay to have the books rebound. And the THIRD
+class is a real honor of which any one might be proud. You wear it
+round your neck, and at your funeral it entitles you to an escort of a
+thousand soldiers."
+
+"I'd rather put up with fewer soldiers," said Peter, "and wear it longer
+round my neck What's the matter with our getting the second class or the
+first class?"
+
+At such ignorance Stimson could not repress a smile.
+
+"The first class," he explained patiently, "is the Great Grand Cross,
+and is given only to reigning sovereigns. The second is called the Grand
+Cross, and is bestowed only on crowned princes, prime ministers, and men
+of world-wide fame...."
+
+"What's the matter with Doctor Gilman's being of world-wide fame?" said
+Peter. "He will be some day, when Stetson starts boosting."
+
+"Some day," retorted Stimson stiffly, "I may be an ambassador. When I
+am I hope to get the Grand Cross of the Crescent, but not now. I'm
+sorry you're not satisfied," he added aggrievedly. "No one can get you
+anything higher than the third class, and I may lose my official head
+asking for that."
+
+"Nothing is too good for old man Gilman," said Peter, "nor for you.
+You get the third class for him, and I'll have father make you an
+ambassador."
+
+That night at poker at the club Peter sat next to Prince Abdul, who
+had come from a reception at the Grand vizier's and still wore his
+decorations. Decorations now fascinated Peter, and those on the coat of
+the young prince he regarded with wide-eyed awe. He also regarded Abdul
+with wide-eyed awe, because he was the favorite nephew of the Sultan,
+and because he enjoyed the reputation of having the worst reputation
+in Turkey. Peter wondered why. He always had found Abdul charming,
+distinguished, courteous to the verge of humility, most cleverly
+cynical, most brilliantly amusing. At poker he almost invariably won,
+and while doing so was so politely bored, so indifferent to his cards
+and the cards held by others, that Peter declared he had never met his
+equal.
+
+In a pause in the game, while some one tore the cover off a fresh pack,
+Peter pointed at the star of diamonds that nestled behind the lapel of
+Abdul's coat.
+
+"May I ask what that is?" said Peter.
+
+The prince frowned at his diamond sunburst as though it annoyed him, and
+then smiled delightedly.
+
+"It is an order," he said in a quick aside, "bestowed only upon men of
+world-wide fame. I dined to-night," he explained, "with your charming
+compatriot, Mr. Joseph Stimson."
+
+"And Joe told?" said Peter.
+
+The prince nodded. "Joe told," he repeated; "but it is all arranged.
+Your distinguished friend, the Sage of Stillwater, will receive the
+Crescent of the third class."
+
+Peter's eyes were still fastened hungrily upon the diamond sunburst.
+
+"Why," he demanded, "can't some one get him one like that?"
+
+As though about to take offense the prince raised his eyebrows, and then
+thought better of it and smiled.
+
+"There are only two men in all Turkey," he said, "who could do that."
+
+"And is the Sultan the other one?" asked Peter. The prince gasped as
+though he had suddenly stepped beneath a cold shower, and then laughed
+long and silently.
+
+"You flatter me," he murmured.
+
+"You know you could if you liked!" whispered Peter stoutly.
+
+Apparently Abdul did not hear him. "I will take one card," he said.
+
+Toward two in the morning there was seventy-five thousand francs in
+the pot, and all save Prince Abdul and Peter had dropped out. "Will you
+divide?" asked the prince.
+
+"Why should I?" said Peter. "I've got you beat now. Do you raise me or
+call?" The prince called and laid down a full house. Peter showed four
+tens.
+
+"I will deal you one hand, double or quits," said the prince.
+
+Over the end of his cigar Peter squinted at the great heap of
+mother-of-pearl counters and gold-pieces and bank-notes.
+
+"You will pay me double what is on the table," he said, "or you quit
+owing me nothing."
+
+The prince nodded.
+
+"Go ahead," said Peter.
+
+The prince dealt them each a hand and discarded two cards. Peter held
+a seven, a pair of kings, and a pair of fours. Hoping to draw another
+king, which might give him a three higher than the three held by Abdul,
+he threw away the seven and the lower pair. He caught another king. The
+prince showed three queens and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Peter, leaning toward him, spoke out of the corner of his mouth.
+
+"I'll make you a sporting proposition," he murmured. "You owe me a
+hundred and fifty thousand francs. I'll stake that against what only
+two men in the empire can give me."
+
+The prince allowed his eyes to travel slowly round the circle of the
+table. But the puzzled glances of the other players showed that to them
+Peter's proposal conveyed no meaning.
+
+The prince smiled cynically.
+
+"For yourself?" he demanded.
+
+"For Doctor Gilman," said Peter.
+
+"We will cut for deal and one hand will decide," said the prince. His
+voice dropped to a whisper. "And no one must ever know," he warned.
+
+Peter also could be cynical.
+
+"Not even the Sultan," he said.
+
+Abdul won the deal and gave himself a very good hand. But the hand he
+dealt Peter was the better one.
+
+The prince was a good loser. The next afternoon the GAZETTE OFFICIALLY
+announced that upon Doctor Henry Gilman, professor emeritus of the
+University of Stillwater, U. S. A., the Sultan had been graciously
+pleased to confer the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crescent.
+
+Peter flashed the great news to Stetson. The cable caught him at
+Quarantine. It read: "Captured Crescent, Grand Cross. Get busy."
+
+But before Stetson could get busy the campaign of publicity had
+been brilliantly opened from Constantinople. Prince Abdul, although
+pitchforked into the Gilman Defense Committee, proved himself one of its
+most enthusiastic members.
+
+"For me it becomes a case of NOBLESSE OBLIGE," he declared. "If it
+is worth doing at all it is worth doing well. To-day the Sultan will
+command that the 'Rise and Fall' be translated into Arabic, and that
+it be placed in the national library. Moreover, the University of
+Constantinople, the College of Salonica, and the National Historical
+Society have each elected Doctor Gilman an honorary member. I proposed
+him, the Patriarch of Mesopotamia seconded him. And the Turkish
+ambassador in America has been instructed to present the insignia with
+his own hands."
+
+Nor was Peter or Stimson idle. To assist Stetson in his press-work, and
+to further the idea that all Europe was now clamoring for the "Rise and
+fall," Peter paid an impecunious but over-educated dragoman to translate
+it into five languages, and Stimson officially wrote of this, and of the
+bestowal of the Crescent to the State Department. He pointed out that
+not since General Grant had passed through Europe had the Sultan so
+highly honored an American. He added he had been requested by the grand
+vizier--who had been requested by Prince Abdul--to request the State
+Department to inform Doctor Gilman of these high honors. A request from
+such a source was a command and, as desired, the State Department
+wrote as requested by the grand vizier to Doctor Gilman, and tendered
+congratulations. The fact was sent out briefly from Washington by
+Associated Press. This official recognition by the Government and by the
+newspapers was all and more than Stetson wanted. He took off his coat
+and with a megaphone, rather than a pen, told the people of the United
+States who Doctor Gilman was, who the Sultan was, what a Grand Cross
+was, and why America's greatest historian was not without honor save in
+his own country. Columns of this were paid for and appeared as "patent
+insides," with a portrait of Doctor Gilman taken from the STILLWATER
+COLLEGE ANNUAL, and a picture of the Grand Cross drawn from imagination,
+in eight hundred newspapers of the Middle, Western, and Eastern States.
+special articles, paragraphs, portraits, and pictures of the Grand Cross
+followed, and, using Stillwater as his base, Stetson continued to
+flood the country. Young Hines, the local correspondent, acting under
+instructions by cable from Peter, introduced him to Doctor Gilman as a
+traveller who lectured on Turkey, and one who was a humble admirer
+of the author of the "Rise and fall." Stetson, having studied it as a
+student crams an examination, begged that he might sit at the feet of
+the master. And for several evenings, actually at his feet, on the steps
+of the ivy-covered cottage, the disguised press-agent drew from the
+unworldly and unsuspecting scholar the simple story of his life.
+To this, still in his character as disciple and student, he added
+photographs he himself made of the master, of the master's ivy-covered
+cottage, of his favorite walk across the campus, of the great historian
+at work at his desk, at work in his rose garden, at play with his wife
+on the croquet lawn. These he held until the insignia should be actually
+presented. This pleasing duty fell to the Turkish ambassador, who, much
+to his astonishment, had received instructions to proceed to Stillwater,
+Massachusetts, a place of which he had never heard, and present to
+a Doctor Gilman, of whom he had never heard, the Grand Cross of the
+Crescent. As soon as the insignia arrived in the official mail-bag
+a secretary brought it from Washington to Boston, and the ambassador
+travelled down from Bar Harbor to receive it, and with the secretary
+took the local train to Stillwater.
+
+The reception extended to him there is still remembered by the
+ambassador as one of the happiest incidents of his distinguished career.
+Never since he came to represent his imperial Majesty in the Western
+republic had its barbarians greeted him in a manner in any way so nearly
+approaching his own idea of what was his due.
+
+"This ambassador," Hines had explained to the mayor of Stillwater,
+who was also the proprietor of its largest department store, "is the
+personal representative of the Sultan. So we've got to treat him right."
+
+"It's exactly," added Stetson, "as though the Sultan himself were
+coming."
+
+"And so few crowned heads visit Stillwater," continued Hines, "that we
+ought to show we appreciate this one, especially as he comes to pay the
+highest honor known to Europe to one of our townsmen."
+
+The mayor chewed nervously on his cigar.
+
+"What'd I better do?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Stetson here," Hines pointed out, "has lived in Turkey, and he
+knows what they expect. Maybe he will help us."
+
+"Will you?" begged the mayor.
+
+"I will," said Stetson.
+
+Then they visited the college authorities. Chancellor Black and most
+of the faculty were on their vacations. But there were half a dozen
+professors still in their homes around the campus, and it was pointed
+out to them that the coming honor to one lately of their number
+reflected glory upon the college and upon them, and that they should
+take official action.
+
+It was also suggested that for photographic purposes they should wear
+their academic robes, caps, and hoods. To these suggestions, with
+alacrity--partly because they all loved Doctor Gilman and partly because
+they had never been photographed by a moving-picture machine--they all
+agreed. So it came about that when the ambassador, hot and cross and
+dusty stepped off the way-train at Stillwater station he found to
+his delighted amazement a red carpet stretching to a perfectly new
+automobile, a company of the local militia presenting arms, a committee,
+consisting of the mayor in a high hat and white gloves and three
+professors in gowns and colored hoods, and the Stillwater silver
+Cornet Band playing what, after several repetitions, the ambassador was
+graciously pleased to recognize as his national anthem.
+
+The ambassador forgot that he was hot and cross. He forgot that he was
+dusty. His face radiated satisfaction and perspiration. Here at last
+were people who appreciated him and his high office. And as the
+mayor helped him into the automobile, and those students who lived
+in Stillwater welcomed him with strange yells, and the moving-picture
+machine aimed at him point blank, he beamed with condescension. But
+inwardly he was ill at ease.
+
+Inwardly he was chastising himself for having, through his ignorance of
+America, failed to appreciate the importance of the man he had come to
+honor. When he remembered he had never even heard of Doctor Gilman he
+blushed with confusion. And when he recollected that he had been almost
+on the point of refusing to come to Stillwater, that he had considered
+leaving the presentation to his secretary, he shuddered. What might not
+the Sultan have done to him! What a narrow escape!
+
+Attracted by the band, by the sight of their fellow townsmen in khaki,
+by the sight of the stout gentleman in the red fez, by a tremendous
+liking and respect for Doctor Gilman, the entire town of Stillwater
+gathered outside his cottage. And inside, the old professor, trembling
+and bewildered and yet strangely happy, bowed his shoulders while the
+ambassador slipped over them the broad green scarf and upon his only
+frock coat pinned the diamond sunburst. In woeful embarrassment Doctor
+Gilman smiled and bowed and smiled, and then, as the delighted mayor of
+Stillwater shouted, "Speech," in sudden panic he reached out his hand
+quickly and covertly, and found the hand of his wife.
+
+"Now, then, three Long ones!" yelled the cheer leader. "Now, then, 'See
+the Conquering Hero!'" yelled the bandmaster. "Attention! Present arms!"
+yelled the militia captain; and the townspeople and the professors
+applauded and waved their hats and handkerchiefs. And Doctor Gilman and
+his wife, he frightened and confused, she happy and proud, and taking it
+all as a matter of course, stood arm in arm in the frame of honeysuckles
+and bowed and bowed and bowed. And the ambassador so far unbent as to
+drink champagne, which appeared mysteriously in tubs of ice from the
+rear of the ivy-covered cottage, with the mayor, with the wives of the
+professors, with the students, with the bandmaster. Indeed, so often did
+he unbend that when the perfectly new automobile conveyed him back to
+the Touraine, he was sleeping happily and smiling in his sleep.
+
+Peter had arrived in America at the same time as had the insignia, but
+Hines and Stetson would not let him show himself in Stillwater.
+They were afraid if all three conspirators foregathered they might
+inadvertently drop some clew that would lead to suspicion and discovery.
+
+So Peter worked from New York, and his first act was anonymously to
+supply his father and Chancellor Black with All the newspaper accounts
+of the great celebration at Stillwater. When Doctor black read them he
+choked. Never before had Stillwater College been brought so prominently
+before the public, and never before had her president been so utterly
+and completely ignored. And what made it worse was that he recognized
+that even had he been present he could not have shown his face. How
+could he, who had, as every one connected with the college now knew, out
+of spite and without cause, dismissed an old and faithful servant, join
+in chanting his praises. He only hoped his patron, Hallowell senior,
+might not hear of Gilman's triumph. But Hallowell senior heard little of
+anything else. At his office, at his clubs, on the golf-links, every one
+he met congratulated him on the high and peculiar distinction that had
+come to his pet college.
+
+"You certainly have the darnedest luck in backing the right horse,"
+exclaimed a rival pork-packer enviously. "Now if I pay a hundred
+thousand for a Velasquez it turns out to be a bad copy worth thirty
+dollars, but you pay a professor three thousand and he brings you in
+half a million dollars' worth of free advertising. Why, this Doctor
+Gilman's doing as much for your college as Doctor Osler did for Johns
+Hopkins or as Walter Camp does for Yale."
+
+Mr. Hallowell received these Congratulations as gracefully as he
+was able, and in secret raged at Chancellor Black. Each day his rage
+increased. It seemed as though there would never be an end to Doctor
+Gilman. The stone he had rejected had become the corner-stone of
+Stillwater. Whenever he opened a newspaper he felt like exclaiming:
+"Will no one rid me of this pestilent fellow?" For the "Rise and Fall,"
+in an edition deluxe limited to two hundred copies, was being bought up
+by all his book-collecting millionaire friends; a popular edition was
+on view in the windows of every book-shop; It was offered as a prize to
+subscribers to all the more sedate magazines, and the name and features
+of the distinguished author had become famous and familiar. Not a day
+passed but that some new honor, at least so the newspapers stated,
+was thrust upon him. Paragraphs announced that he was to be the next
+exchange professor to Berlin; that in May he was to lecture at the
+Sorbonne; that in June he was to receive a degree from Oxford.
+
+A fresh-water college on one of the Great Lakes leaped to the front by
+offering him the chair of history at that seat of learning at a salary
+of five thousand dollars a year. Some of the honors that had been thrust
+upon Doctor Gilman existed only in the imagination of Peter and Stetson,
+but this offer happened to be genuine.
+
+"Doctor Gilman rejected it without consideration. He read the letter
+from the trustees to his wife and shook his head.
+
+"We could not be happy away from Stillwater," he said. "We have only a
+month more in the cottage, but after that we still can walk past it; we
+can look into the garden and see the flowers she planted. We can visit
+the place where she lies. But if we went away we should be lonely and
+miserable for her, and she would be lonely for us."
+
+Mr. Hallowell could not know why Doctor Gilman had refused to leave
+Stillwater; but when he read that the small Eastern college at which
+Doctor Gilman had graduated had offered to make him its president, his
+jealousy knew no bounds.
+
+He telegraphed to Black: "Reinstate Gilman at once; offer him six
+thousand--offer him whatever he wants, but make him promise for no
+consideration to leave Stillwater he is only member faculty ever brought
+any credit to the college if we lose him I'll hold you responsible."
+
+The next morning, hat in hand, smiling ingratiatingly, the Chancellor
+called upon Doctor Gilman and ate so much humble pie that for a week he
+suffered acute mental indigestion. But little did Hallowell senior care
+for that. He had got what he wanted. Doctor Gilman, the distinguished,
+was back in the faculty, and had made only one condition--that he might
+live until he died in the ivy-covered cottage.
+
+Two weeks later, when Peter arrived at Stillwater to take the history
+examination, which, should he pass it, would give him his degree, he
+found on every side evidences of the "worldwide fame" he himself had
+created. The newsstand at the depot, the book-stores, the drugstores,
+the picture-shops, all spoke of Doctor Gilman; and postcards showing
+the ivy-covered cottage, photographs and enlargements of Doctor Gilman,
+advertisements of the different editions of "the" history proclaimed
+his fame. Peter, fascinated by the success of his own handiwork,
+approached the ivy-covered cottage in a spirit almost of awe. But Mrs.
+Gilman welcomed him with the same kindly, sympathetic smile with which
+she always gave courage to the unhappy ones coming up for examinations,
+and Doctor Gilman's high honors in no way had spoiled his gentle
+courtesy.
+
+The examination was in writing, and when Peter had handed in his papers
+Doctor Gilman asked him if he would prefer at once to know the result.
+
+"I should indeed!" Peter assured him.
+
+"Then I regret to tell you, Hallowell," said the professor, "that you
+have not passed. I cannot possibly give you a mark higher than five." In
+real sympathy the sage of Stillwater raised his eyes, but to his great
+astonishment he found that Peter, so far from being cast down or taking
+offense, was smiling delightedly, much as a fond parent might smile upon
+the precocious act of a beloved child.
+
+"I am afraid," said Doctor Gilman gently, "that this summer you did not
+work very hard for your degree!"
+
+Peter Laughed and picked up his hat.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Professor," he said, "you're right I got working
+for something worth while--and I forgot about the degree."
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
+
+This is the true inside story of the invasion of England in 1911 by the
+Germans, and why it failed. I got my data from Baron von Gottlieb, at
+the time military attache of the German Government with the Russian
+army in the second Russian-Japanese War, when Russia drove Japan out of
+Manchuria, and reduced her to a third-rate power. He told me of his
+part in the invasion as we sat, after the bombardment of Tokio, on the
+ramparts of the Emperor's palace, watching the walls of the paper houses
+below us glowing and smoking like the ashes of a prairie fire.
+
+Two years before, at the time of the invasion, von Gottlieb had been
+Carl Schultz, the head-waiter at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer, and a
+spy.
+
+The other end of the story came to me through Lester Ford, the London
+correspondent of the New York Republic. They gave me permission to tell
+it in any fashion I pleased, and it is here set down for the first time.
+
+In telling the story, my conscience is not in the least disturbed, for I
+have yet to find any one who will believe it.
+
+What led directly to the invasion was that some week-end guest of
+the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in
+the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford
+attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place,
+the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then
+again, it might not.
+
+As every German knows, "The Riddle of the Sands" is a novel written by a
+very clever Englishman in which is disclosed a plan for the invasion
+of his country. According to this plan an army of infantry was to
+be embarked in lighters, towed by shallow-draft, sea-going tugs, and
+despatched simultaneously from the seven rivers that form the Frisian
+Isles. From there they were to be convoyed by battle-ships two hundred
+and forty miles through the North Sea, and thrown upon the coast of
+Norfolk somewhere between the Wash and Mundesley. The fact that this
+coast is low-lying and bordered by sand flats which at low water are
+dry, that England maintains no North Sea squadron, and that her nearest
+naval base is at Chatham, seem to point to it as the spot best adapted
+for such a raid.
+
+What von Gottlieb thought was evidenced by the fact that as soon as he
+read the book he mailed it to the German Ambassador in London, and
+under separate cover sent him a letter. In this he said: "I suggest your
+Excellency bring this book to the notice of a certain royal personage,
+and of the Strategy Board. General Bolivar said, 'When you want arms,
+take them from the enemy.' Does not this also follow when you want
+ideas?"
+
+What the Strategy Board thought of the plan is a matter of history. This
+was in 1910. A year later, during the coronation week, Lester Ford
+went to Clarkson's to rent a monk's robe in which to appear at the
+Shakespeare Ball, and while the assistant departed in search of the
+robe, Ford was left alone in a small room hung with full-length mirrors
+and shelves, and packed with the uniforms that Clarkson rents for Covent
+Garden balls and amateur theatricals. While waiting, Ford gratified a
+long, secretly cherished desire to behold himself as a military man, by
+trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when
+the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English
+clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a
+spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The
+assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared
+ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, "Does a German uniform
+always affect a Territorial like that?"
+
+The assistant laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"It did give me quite a turn," he said. "It's this talk of invasion, I
+fancy. But for a fact, sir, if I was a Coast Guard, and you came along
+the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
+anyway."
+
+"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.
+
+He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
+his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
+truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
+words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
+young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
+terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
+Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
+friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
+After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights"
+week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
+undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
+study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
+instead of "wines" he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
+discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
+that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
+undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
+they declared unjust and without intelligence.
+
+"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil here, for
+example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
+never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
+him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
+yours!"
+
+"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.
+
+"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
+as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
+through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
+man from Balliol?"
+
+"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What price that?
+When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
+guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
+country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged
+Herbert. "Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
+will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
+and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
+Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
+in town and all of them undergraduates."
+
+"Give you the idea, yes!" mocked Bellew, trying to gain time. "That's
+just what I say. You boys to-day are so dull. You lack initiative. It's
+the idea that counts. Anybody can do the acting. That's just amateur
+theatricals!"
+
+"Is it!" snorted Herbert. "If you want to know what stage fright is,
+just go on board a British battle-ship with your face covered with burnt
+cork and insist on being treated like an ambassador. You'll find it's a
+little different from a first night with the Simla Thespians!"
+
+Ford had no part in the debate. He had been smoking comfortably and
+with well-timed nods, impartially encouraging each disputant. But now
+he suddenly laid his cigar upon his plate, and, after glancing quickly
+about him, leaned eagerly forward. They were at the corner table of
+the terrace, and, as it was now past nine o'clock, the other diners had
+departed to the theatres and they were quite alone. Below them, outside
+the open windows, were the trees of the embankment, and beyond, the
+Thames, blocked to the west by the great shadows of the Houses of
+Parliament, lit only by the flame in the tower that showed the Lower
+House was still sitting.
+
+"I'LL give you an idea for a rag," whispered Ford. "One that is risky,
+that will make the country sit up, that ought to land you in Jail? Have
+you read 'The Riddle of the Sands'?"
+
+Bellew and Herbert nodded; Birrell made no sign.
+
+"Don't mind him," exclaimed Herbert impatiently. "HE never reads
+anything! Go on!"
+
+"It's the book most talked about," explained Ford. "And what else is
+most talked about?" He answered his own question. "The landing of the
+Germans in Morocco and the chance of war. Now, I ask you, with that book
+in everybody's mind, and the war scare in everybody's mind, what would
+happen if German soldiers appeared to-night on the Norfolk coast just
+where the book says they will appear? Not one soldier, but dozens of
+soldiers; not in one place, but in twenty places?"
+
+"What would happen?" roared Major Bellew loyally. "The Boy Scouts would
+fall out of bed and kick them into the sea!"
+
+"Shut up!" snapped his nephew irreverently. He shook Ford by the arm.
+"How?" he demanded breathlessly. "How are we to do it? It would take
+hundreds of men."
+
+"Two men," corrected Ford, "And a third man to drive the car. I
+thought it out one day at Clarkson's when I came across a lot of German
+uniforms. I thought of it as a newspaper story, as a trick to find out
+how prepared you people are to meet invasion. And when you said just now
+that you wanted a chance to go to jail--"
+
+"What's your plan?" interrupted Birrell.
+
+"We would start just before dawn--" began Ford.
+
+"We?" demanded Herbert. "Are you in this?"
+
+"Am I in it?" cried Ford indignantly. "It's my own private invasion! I'm
+letting you boys in on the ground floor. If I don't go, there won t be
+any invasion!"
+
+The two pink-cheeked youths glanced at each other inquiringly and then
+nodded.
+
+"We accept your services, sir," said Birrell gravely. "What's your
+plan?"
+
+In astonishment Major Bellew glanced from one to the other and then
+slapped the table with his open palm. His voice shook with righteous
+indignation.
+
+"Of all the preposterous, outrageous--Are you mad?" he demanded. "Do you
+suppose for one minute I will allow--"
+
+His nephew shrugged his shoulders and, rising, pushed back his chair.
+
+"Oh, you go to the devil!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Come on, Ford," he
+said. "We'll find some place where uncle can't hear us."
+
+Two days later a touring car carrying three young men, in the twenty-one
+miles between Wells and Cromer, broke down eleven times. Each time this
+misfortune befell them one young man scattered tools in the road and
+on his knees hammered ostentatiously at the tin hood; and the other two
+occupants of the car sauntered to the beach. There they chucked pebbles
+at the waves and then slowly retraced their steps. Each time the route
+by which they returned was different from the one by which they had set
+forth. Sometimes they followed the beaten path down the cliff or, as it
+chanced to be, across the marshes; sometimes they slid down the face of
+the cliff; sometimes they lost themselves behind the hedges and in the
+lanes of the villages. But when they again reached the car the procedure
+of each was alike--each produced a pencil and on the face of his "Half
+Inch" road map traced strange, fantastic signs.
+
+At lunch-time they stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made
+numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had
+come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they
+were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent
+head-waiter, young, and of pleasant, not to say distinguished, bearing.
+In a frock coat he might easily have been mistaken for something even
+more important than a head-waiter--for a German riding-master, a leader
+of a Hungarian band, a manager of a Ritz hotel. But he was not above his
+station. He even assisted the porter in carrying the coats and golf
+bags of the gentlemen from the car to the coffee-room where, with the
+intuition of the homing pigeon, the three strangers had, unaided, found
+their way. As Carl Schultz followed, carrying the dust-coats, a road map
+fell from the pocket of one of them to the floor. Carl Schultz picked
+it up, and was about to replace it, when his eyes were held by notes
+scrawled roughly in pencil. With an expression that no longer was that
+of a head-waiter, Carl cast one swift glance about him and then slipped
+into the empty coat-room and locked the door. Five minutes later, with
+a smile that played uneasily over a face grown gray with anxiety, Carl
+presented the map to the tallest of the three strangers. It was open so
+that the pencil marks were most obvious. By his accent it was evident
+the tallest of the three strangers was an American.
+
+"What the devil!" he protested; "which of you boys has been playing hob
+with my map?"
+
+For just an instant the two pink-cheeked ones regarded him with
+disfavor; until, for just an instant, his eyebrows rose and, with a
+glance, he signified the waiter.
+
+"Oh, that!" exclaimed the younger one. "The Automobile Club asked us
+to mark down petrol stations. Those marks mean that's where you can buy
+petrol."
+
+The head-waiter breathed deeply. With an assured and happy countenance,
+he departed and, for the two-hundredth time that day, looked from the
+windows of the dining-room out over the tumbling breakers to the gray
+stretch of sea. As though fearful that his face would expose his secret,
+he glanced carefully about him and then, assured he was alone, leaned
+eagerly forward, scanning the empty, tossing waters.
+
+In his mind's eye he beheld rolling tug-boats straining against long
+lines of scows, against the dead weight of field-guns, against the pull
+of thousands of motionless, silent figures, each in khaki, each in a
+black leather helmet, each with one hundred and fifty rounds.
+
+In his own language Carl Schultz reproved himself.
+
+"Patience," he muttered; "patience! By ten to-night all will be dark.
+There will be no stars. There will be no moon. The very heavens fight
+for us, and by sunrise our outposts will be twenty miles inland!"
+
+At lunch-time Carl Schultz carefully, obsequiously waited upon the
+three strangers. He gave them their choice of soup, thick or clear,
+of gooseberry pie or Half-Pay pudding. He accepted their shillings
+gratefully, and when they departed for the links he bowed them on their
+way. And as their car turned up Jetty Street, for one instant, he
+again allowed his eyes to sweep the dull gray ocean. Brown-sailed
+fishing-boats were beating in toward Cromer. On the horizon line a
+Norwegian tramp was drawing a lengthening scarf of smoke. Save for these
+the sea was empty.
+
+By gracious permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon
+off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward
+Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman
+on his rounds, to the driver of the char a banc. He had been a year in
+Cromer and was well known and well liked.
+
+Three miles from Cromer, at the top of the highest hill in Overstrand,
+the chimneys of a house showed above a thick tangle of fir-trees.
+Between the trees and the road rose a wall, high, compact, forbidding.
+Carl opened the gate in the wall and pushed his bicycle up a winding
+path hemmed in by bushes. At the sound of his feet on the gravel the
+bushes new apart, and a man sprang into the walk and confronted him.
+But, at sight of the head-waiter, the legs of the man became rigid, his
+heels clicked together, his hand went sharply to his visor.
+
+Behind the house, surrounded on every side by trees, was a tiny lawn.
+In the centre of the lawn, where once had been a tennis court, there
+now stood a slim mast. From this mast dangled tiny wires that ran to a
+kitchen table. On the table, its brass work shining in the sun, was a
+new and perfectly good wireless outfit, and beside it, with his hand on
+the key, was a heavily built, heavily bearded German. In his turn, Carl
+drew his legs together, his heels clicked, his hand stuck to his visor.
+
+"I have been in constant communication," said the man with the beard.
+"They will be here just before the dawn. Return to Cromer and openly
+from the post-office telegraph your cousin in London: 'Will meet you
+to-morrow at the Crystal Palace.' On receipt of that, in the last
+edition of all of this afternoon's papers, he will insert the final
+advertisement. Thirty thousand of our own people will read it. They will
+know the moment has come!"
+
+As Carl coasted back to Cromer he flashed past many pretty gardens
+where, upon the lawns, men in flannels were busy at tennis or, with
+pretty ladies, deeply occupied in drinking tea. Carl smiled grimly. High
+above him on the sky-line of the cliff he saw the three strangers he had
+served at luncheon. They were driving before them three innocuous golf
+balls.
+
+"A nation of wasters," muttered the German, "sleeping at their posts.
+They are fiddling while England falls!"
+
+Mr. Shutliffe, of Stiffkey, had led his cow in from the marsh, and was
+about to close the cow-barn door, when three soldiers appeared suddenly
+around the wall of the village church. They ran directly toward him. It
+was nine o'clock, but the twilight still held. The uniforms the men wore
+were unfamiliar, but in his day Mr. Shutliffe had seen many uniforms,
+and to him all uniforms looked alike. The tallest soldier snapped at Mr.
+Shutliffe fiercely in a strange tongue.
+
+"Du bist gefangen!" he announced. "Das Dorf ist besetzt. Wo sind unsere
+Leute?" he demanded.
+
+"You'll 'ave to excuse me, sir," said Mr. Shutliffe, "but I am a trifle
+'ard of 'earing."
+
+The soldier addressed him in English.
+
+"What is the name of this village?" he demanded.
+
+Mr. Shuttiffe, having lived in the village upward of eighty years,
+recalled its name with difficulty.
+
+"Have you seen any of our people?"
+
+With another painful effort of memory Mr. Shutliffe shook his head.
+
+"Go indoors!" commanded the soldier, "And put out all lights, and remain
+indoors. We have taken this village. We are Germans. You are a prisoner!
+Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir, thank'ee, sir, kindly," stammered Mr. Shutliffe. "May I lock
+in the pigs first, sir?"
+
+One of the soldiers coughed explosively, and ran away, and the two
+others trotted after him. When they looked back, Mr. Shutliffe was still
+standing uncertainly in the dusk, mildly concerned as to whether he
+should lock up the pigs or obey the German gentleman.
+
+The three soldiers halted behind the church wall.
+
+"That was a fine start!" mocked Herbert. "Of course, you had to pick out
+the Village Idiot. If they are all going to take it like that, we had
+better pack up and go home."
+
+"The village inn is still open," said Ford. "We'll close It."
+
+They entered with fixed bayonets and dropped the butts of their rifles
+on the sanded floor. A man in gaiters choked over his ale and two
+fishermen removed their clay pipes and stared. The bar-maid alone arose
+to the occasion.
+
+"Now, then," she exclaimed briskly, "What way is that to come tumbling
+into a respectable place? None of your tea-garden tricks in here, young
+fellow, my lad, or--"
+
+The tallest of the three intruders, in deep guttural accents,
+interrupted her sharply.
+
+"We are Germans!" he declared. "This village is captured. You are
+prisoners of war. Those lights you will out put, and yourselves lock in.
+If you into the street go, we will shoot!"
+
+He gave a command in a strange language; so strange, indeed, that
+the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one
+shouldered his rifle, while the other brought his politely to a salute.
+
+"You ass!" muttered the tall German. "Get out!"
+
+As they charged into the street, they heard behind them a wild feminine
+shriek, then a crash of pottery and glass, then silence, and an instant
+later the Ship Inn was buried in darkness.
+
+"That will hold Stiffkey for a while!" said Ford. "Now, back to the
+car."
+
+But between them and the car loomed suddenly a tall and impressive
+figure. His helmet and his measured tread upon the deserted
+cobble-stones proclaimed his calling.
+
+"The constable!" whispered Herbert. "He must see us, but he mustn't
+speak to us."
+
+For a moment the three men showed themselves in the middle of the
+street, and then, as though at sight of the policeman they had taken
+alarm, disappeared through an opening between two houses. Five minutes
+later a motor-car, with its canvas top concealing its occupants, rode
+slowly into Stiffkey's main street and halted before the constable. The
+driver of the car wore a leather skull-cap and goggles. From his neck to
+his heels he was covered by a raincoat.
+
+"Mr. Policeman," he began; "when I turned in here three soldiers stepped
+in front of my car and pointed rifles at me. Then they ran off toward
+the beach. What's the idea--manoeuvres? Because, they've no right to--"
+
+"Yes, sir," the policeman assured him promptly; "I saw them. It's
+manoeuvres, sir. Territorials."
+
+"They didn't look like Territorials," objected the chauffeur. "They
+looked like Germans."
+
+Protected by the deepening dusk, the constable made no effort to conceal
+a grin.
+
+"Just Territorials, sir," he protested soothingly; "skylarking maybe,
+but meaning no harm. Still, I'll have a look round, and warn 'em."
+
+A voice from beneath the canvas broke in angrily:
+
+"I tell you, they were Germans. It's either a silly joke, or it's
+serious, and you ought to report it. It's your duty to warn the Coast
+Guard."
+
+The constable considered deeply.
+
+"I wouldn't take it on myself to wake the Coast Guard," he protested;
+"not at this time of the night. But if any Germans' been annoying you,
+gentlemen, and you wish to lodge a complaint against them, you give me
+your cards--"
+
+"Ye gods!" cried the man in the rear of the car. "Go on!" he commanded.
+
+As the car sped out of Stiffkey, Herbert exclaimed with disgust:
+
+"What's the use!" he protested. "You couldn't wake these people with
+dynamite! I vote we chuck it and go home."
+
+"They little know of England who only Stiffkey know," chanted the
+chauffeur reprovingly. "Why, we haven't begun yet. Wait till we meet a
+live wire!"
+
+Two miles farther along the road to Cromer, young Bradshaw, the
+job-master's son at Blakeney, was leading his bicycle up the hill. Ahead
+of him something heavy flopped from the bank into the road--and in the
+light of his acetylene lamp he saw a soldier. The soldier dodged across
+the road and scrambled through the hedge on the bank opposite. He was
+followed by another soldier, and then by a third. The last man halted.
+
+"Put out that light," he commanded. "Go to your home and tell no one
+what you have seen. If you attempt to give an alarm you will be shot.
+Our sentries are placed every fifty yards along this road."
+
+The soldier disappeared from in front of the ray of light and followed
+his comrades, and an instant later young Bradshaw heard them sliding
+over the cliff's edge and the pebbles clattering to the beach below.
+Young Bradshaw stood quite still. In his heart was much fear--fear of
+laughter, of ridicule, of failure. But of no other kind of fear. Softly,
+silently he turned his bicycle so that it faced down the long hill he
+had just climbed. Then he snapped off the light. He had been reliably
+informed that in ambush at every fifty yards along the road to Blakeney,
+sentries were waiting to fire on him. And he proposed to run the
+gauntlet. He saw that it was for this moment that, first as a volunteer
+and later as a Territorial, he had drilled in the town hall, practiced
+on the rifle range, and in mixed manoeuvres slept in six inches of mud.
+As he threw his leg across his bicycle, Herbert, from the motor-car
+farther up the hill, fired two shots over his head. These, he explained
+to Ford, were intended to give "verisimilitude to an otherwise bald
+and unconvincing narrative." And the sighing of the bullets gave young
+Bradshaw exactly what he wanted--the assurance that he was not the
+victim of a practical joke. He threw his weight forward and, lifting his
+feet, coasted downhill at forty miles an hour into the main street of
+Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so
+completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His
+head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager.
+A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer
+pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and then
+closing in his wake.
+
+"Have you seen any--any soldiers?" he demanded.
+
+"German soldiers!" Ford answered. "They tried to catch us, but when I
+saw who they were, I ran through them to warn you. They fired and--"
+
+"How many--and where?"
+
+"A half-company at Stiffkey and a half-mile farther on a regiment. We
+didn't know then they were Germans, not until they stopped us. You'd
+better telephone the garrison, and--"
+
+"Thank you!" snapped the elderly gentleman. "I happen to be in command
+of this district. What are your names?"
+
+Ford pushed the car forward, parting the crowd.
+
+"I've no time for that!" he called. "We've got to warn every coast town
+in Norfolk. You take my tip and get London on the long distance!"
+
+As they ran through the night Ford spoke over his shoulder.
+
+"We've got them guessing," he said. "Now, what we want is a live wire,
+some one with imagination, some one with authority who will wake the
+countryside."
+
+"Looks ahead there," said Birrell, "as though it hadn't gone to bed."
+
+Before them, as on a Mafeking night, every window in Cley shone with
+lights. In the main street were fishermen, shopkeepers, "trippers"
+in flannels, summer residents. The women had turned out as though to
+witness a display of fireworks. Girls were clinging to the arms of their
+escorts, shivering in delighted terror. The proprietor of the Red Lion
+sprang in front of the car and waved his arms.
+
+"What's this tale about Germans?" he demanded jocularly.
+
+"You can see their lights from the beach," said Ford. "They've landed
+two regiments between here and Wells. Stiffkey is taken, and they've cut
+all the wires south."
+
+The proprietor refused to be "had."
+
+"Let 'em all come!" he mocked.
+
+"All right," returned Ford. "Let 'em come, but don't take it lying down!
+Get those women off the streets, and go down to the beach, and drive the
+Germans back! Gangway," he shouted, and the car shot forward. "We warned
+you," he called, "And it's up to you to--"
+
+His words were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose
+with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, deep-throated
+cheer.
+
+Outside the village Ford brought the car to a halt and swung in his
+seat.
+
+"This thing is going to fail!" he cried petulantly. "They don't believe
+us. We've got to show ourselves--many times--in a dozen places."
+
+"The British mind moves slowly," said Birrell, the Irishman. "Now, if
+this had happened in my native land--"
+
+He was interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that
+spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past
+and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their
+head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed
+in its tonneau, were swaying from its running boards. Before they could
+find their voices a motor cycle, driven as though the angel of death
+were at the wheel, shaved their mud-guard and, in its turn, vanished
+into the night.
+
+"Things are looking up!" said Ford. "Where is our next stop? As I said
+before, what we want is a live one."
+
+Herbert pressed his electric torch against his road map.
+
+"We are next billed to appear," he said, "about a quarter of a mile from
+here, at the signal-tower of the Great Eastern Railroad, where we visit
+the night telegraph operator and give him the surprise party of his
+life."
+
+The three men had mounted the steps of the signal-tower so quietly that,
+when the operator heard them, they already surrounded him. He saw
+three German soldiers with fierce upturned mustaches, with flat, squat
+helmets, with long brown rifles. They saw an anaemic, pale-faced youth
+without a coat or collar, for the night was warm, who sank back limply
+in his chair and gazed speechless with wide-bulging eyes.
+
+In harsh, guttural tones Ford addressed him. "You are a prisoner," he
+said. "We take over this office in the name of the German Emperor. Get
+out!"
+
+As though instinctively seeking his only weapon of defence, the hand of
+the boy operator moved across the table to the key of his instrument.
+Ford flung his rifle upon it.
+
+"No, you don't!" he growled. "Get out!"
+
+With eyes still bulging, the boy lifted himself into a sitting posture.
+
+"My pay--my month's pay?" he stammered. "Can I take It?"
+
+The expression on the face of the conqueror relaxed.
+
+"Take it and get out," Ford commanded.
+
+With eyes still fixed in fascinated terror upon the invader, the boy
+pulled open the drawer of the table before him and fumbled with the
+papers inside.
+
+"Quick!" cried Ford.
+
+The boy was very quick. His hand leaped from the drawer like a snake,
+and Ford found himself looking into a revolver of the largest calibre
+issued by a civilized people. Birrell fell upon the boy's shoulders,
+Herbert twisted the gun from his fingers and hurled it through the
+window, and almost as quickly hurled himself down the steps of the
+tower. Birrell leaped after him. Ford remained only long enough to
+shout: "Don't touch that instrument! If you attempt to send a message
+through, we will shoot. We go to cut the wires!"
+
+For a minute, the boy in the tower sat rigid, his ears strained, his
+heart beating in sharp, suffocating stabs. Then, with his left arm
+raised to guard his face, he sank to his knees and, leaning forward
+across the table, inviting as he believed his death, he opened the
+circuit and through the night flashed out a warning to his people.
+
+When they had taken their places in the car, Herbert touched Ford on the
+shoulder.
+
+"Your last remark," he said, "was that what we wanted was a live one."
+
+"Don't mention it!" said Ford. "He jammed that gun half down my throat.
+I can taste it still. Where do we go from here?"
+
+"According to the route we mapped out this afternoon," said Herbert, "We
+are now scheduled to give exhibitions at the coast towns of Salthouse
+and Weybourne, but--"
+
+"Not with me!" exclaimed Birrell fiercely. "Those towns have been tipped
+off by now by Blakeney and Cley, and the Boy Scouts would club us to
+death. I vote we take the back roads to Morston, and drop in on a lonely
+Coast Guard. If a Coast Guard sees us, the authorities will have to
+believe him, and they'll call out the navy."
+
+Herbert consulted his map.
+
+"There is a Coast Guard," he said, "stationed just the other side of
+Morston. And," he added fervently, "let us hope he's lonely."
+
+They lost their way in the back roads, and when they again reached the
+coast an hour had passed. It was now quite dark. There were no stars,
+nor moon, but after they had left the car in a side lane and had stepped
+out upon the cliff, they saw for miles along the coast great beacon
+fires burning fiercely.
+
+Herbert came to an abrupt halt.
+
+"Since seeing those fires," he explained, "I feel a strange reluctance
+about showing myself in this uniform to a Coast Guard."
+
+"Coast Guards don't shoot!" mocked Birrell. "They only look at the
+clouds through a telescope. Three Germans with rifles ought to be able
+to frighten one Coast Guard with a telescope."
+
+The whitewashed cabin of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the
+cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the
+cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and
+showed the white fence and the walk of shells.
+
+"We must pass in single file in front of that light," whispered Ford,
+"And then, after we are sure he has seen us, we must run like the
+devil!"
+
+"I'm on in that last scene," growled Herbert.
+
+"Only," repeated Ford with emphasis, "We must be sure he has seen us."
+
+Not twenty feet from them came a bursting roar, a flash, many roars,
+many flashes, many bullets.
+
+"He's seen us!" yelled Birrell.
+
+After the light from his open door had shown him one German soldier
+fully armed, the Coast Guard had seen nothing further. But judging from
+the shrieks of terror and the sounds of falling bodies that followed
+his first shot, he was convinced he was hemmed in by an army, and he
+proceeded to sell his life dearly. Clip after clip of cartridges he
+emptied into the night, now to the front, now to the rear, now out to
+sea, now at his own shadow in the lamp-light. To the people a quarter of
+a mile away at Morston it sounded like a battle.
+
+After running half a mile, Ford, bruised and breathless, fell at full
+length on the grass beside the car. Near it, tearing from his person the
+last vestiges of a German uniform, he found Birrell. He also was puffing
+painfully.
+
+"What happened to Herbert?" panted Ford.
+
+"I don't know," gasped Birrell, "When I saw him last he was diving over
+the cliff into the sea. How many times did you die?"
+
+"About twenty!" groaned the American, "And, besides being dead, I am
+severely wounded. Every time he fired, I fell on my face, and each time
+I hit a rock!"
+
+A scarecrow of a figure appeared suddenly in the rays of the
+head-lights. It was Herbert, scratched, bleeding, dripping with water,
+and clad simply in a shirt and trousers. He dragged out his kit bag and
+fell into his golf clothes.
+
+"Anybody who wants a perfectly good German uniform," he cried, "can have
+mine. I left it in the first row of breakers. It didn't fit me, anyway."
+
+The other two uniforms were hidden in the seat of the car. The rifles
+and helmets, to lend color to the invasion, were dropped in the open
+road, and five minutes later three gentlemen in inconspicuous Harris
+tweeds, and with golf clubs protruding from every part of their car,
+turned into the shore road to Cromer. What they saw brought swift terror
+to their guilty souls and the car to an abrupt halt. Before them was a
+regiment of regulars advancing in column of fours, at the "double." An
+officer sprang to the front of the car and seated himself beside Ford.
+
+"I'll have to commandeer this," he said. "Run back to Cromer. Don't
+crush my men, but go like the devil!"
+
+"We heard firing here," explained the officer at the Coast Guard
+station. "The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen.
+They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel
+walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder,"
+exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who
+first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the
+other coast towns. Because, if you are, he wants your names."
+
+Ford considered rapidly. If he gave false names and that fact were
+discovered, they would be suspected and investigated, and the worst
+might happen. So he replied that his friends and himself probably
+were the men to whom the officer referred. He explained they had been
+returning from Cromer, where they had gone to play golf, when they had
+been held up by the Germans.
+
+"You were lucky to escape," said the officer "And in keeping on to give
+warning you were taking chances. If I may say so, we think you behaved
+extremely well."
+
+Ford could not answer. His guilty conscience shamed him into silence.
+With his siren shrieking and his horn tooting, he was forcing the car
+through lanes of armed men. They packed each side of the road. They were
+banked behind the hedges. Their camp-fires blazed from every hill-top.
+
+"Your regiment seems to have turned out to a man!" exclaimed Ford
+admiringly.
+
+"MY regiment!" snorted the officer. "You've passed through five
+regiments already, and there are as many more in the dark places.
+They're everywhere!" he cried jubilantly.
+
+"And I thought they were only where you see the camp-fires," exclaimed
+Ford.
+
+"That's what the Germans think," said the officer. "It's working like
+a clock," he cried happily. "There hasn't been a hitch. As soon as they
+got your warning to Colonel Raglan, they came down to the coast like a
+wave, on foot, by trains, by motors, and at nine o'clock the Government
+took over all the railroads. The county regiments, regulars, yeomanry,
+territorials, have been spread along this shore for thirty miles. Down
+in London the Guards started to Dover and Brighton two hours ago. The
+Automobile Club in the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned
+them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and
+eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south
+coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off
+the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been
+sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And
+on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast
+alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from
+Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H.
+A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns
+spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They
+thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another
+surprise party!"
+
+On the top of the hill at Overstrand, the headwaiter of the East Cliff
+Hotel and the bearded German stood in the garden back of the house with
+the forbidding walls. From the road in front came unceasingly the tramp
+and shuffle of thousands of marching feet, the rumble of heavy cannon,
+the clanking of their chains, the voices of men trained to command
+raised in sharp, confident orders. The sky was illuminated by countless
+fires. Every window of every cottage and hotel blazed with lights. The
+night had been turned into day. The eyes of the two Germans were like
+the eyes of those who had passed through an earthquake, of those who
+looked upon the burning of San Francisco, upon the destruction of
+Messina.
+
+"We were betrayed, general," whispered the head-waiter.
+
+"We were betrayed, baron," replied the bearded one.
+
+"But you were in time to warn the flotilla."
+
+With a sigh, the older man nodded.
+
+"The last message I received over the wireless," he said, "before I
+destroyed it, read, 'Your message understood. We are returning. Our
+movements will be explained as manoeuvres. And," added the general, "The
+English, having driven us back, will be willing to officially accept
+that explanation. As manoeuvres, this night will go down into history.
+Return to the hotel," he commanded, "And in two months you can rejoin
+your regiment."
+
+On the morning after the invasion the New York Republic published a map
+of Great Britain that covered three columns and a wood-cut of Ford that
+was spread over five. Beneath it was printed: "Lester Ford, our London
+correspondent, captured by the Germans; he escapes and is the first to
+warn the English people."
+
+On the same morning, In an editorial in The Times of London, appeared
+this paragraph:
+
+"The Germans were first seen by the Hon. Arthur Herbert, the eldest son
+of Lord Cinaris; Mr. Patrick Headford Birrell--both of Balliol College,
+Oxford; and Mr. Lester Ford, the correspondent of the New York Republic.
+These gentlemen escaped from the landing party that tried to make them
+prisoners, and at great risk proceeded in their motor-car over roads
+infested by the Germans to all the coast towns of Norfolk, warning the
+authorities. Should the war office fail to recognize their services, the
+people of Great Britain will prove that they are not ungrateful."
+
+A week later three young men sat at dinner on the terrace of the Savoy.
+
+"Shall we, or shall we not," asked Herbert, "tell my uncle that we
+three, and we three alone, were the invaders?"
+
+"That's hardly correct," said Ford, "as we now know there were two
+hundred thousand invaders. We were the only three who got ashore."
+
+"I vote we don't tell him," said Birrell. "Let him think with everybody
+else that the Germans blundered; that an advance party landed too soon
+and gave the show away. If we talk," he argued, "We'll get credit for a
+successful hoax. If we keep quiet, everybody will continue to think we
+saved England. I'm content to let it go at that."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. BLOOD WILL TELL
+
+David Greene was an employee of the Burdett Automatic Punch Company.
+The manufacturing plant of the company was at Bridgeport, but in the
+New York offices there were working samples of all the punches, from the
+little nickel-plated hand punch with which conductors squeezed holes in
+railroad tickets, to the big punch that could bite into an iron plate
+as easily as into a piece of pie. David's duty was to explain these
+different punches, and accordingly when Burdett Senior or one of the
+sons turned a customer over to David he spoke of him as a salesman.
+But David called himself a "demonstrator." For a short time he even
+succeeded in persuading the other salesmen to speak of themselves as
+demonstrators, but the shipping clerks and bookkeepers laughed them out
+of it. They could not laugh David out of it. This was so, partly
+because he had no sense of humor, and partly because he had a
+great-great-grandfather. Among the salesmen on lower Broadway, to
+possess a great-great-grandfather is unusual, even a great-grandfather
+is a rarity, and either is considered superfluous. But to David the
+possession of a great-great-grandfather was a precious and open delight.
+He had possessed him only for a short time. Undoubtedly he always had
+existed, but it was not until David's sister Anne married a doctor
+in Bordentown, New Jersey, and became socially ambitious, that David
+emerged as a Son of Washington.
+
+It was sister Anne, anxious to "get in" as a "Daughter" and wear
+a distaff pin in her shirtwaist, who discovered the revolutionary
+ancestor. She unearthed him, or rather ran him to earth, in the
+graveyard of the Presbyterian church at Bordentown. He was no less a
+person than General Hiram Greene, and he had fought with Washington at
+Trenton and at Princeton. Of this there was no doubt. That, later, on
+moving to New York, his descendants became peace-loving salesmen did not
+affect his record. To enter a society founded on heredity, the important
+thing is first to catch your ancestor, and having made sure of him,
+David entered the Society of the Sons of Washington with flying colors.
+He was not unlike the man who had been speaking prose for forty years
+without knowing it. He was not unlike the other man who woke to find
+himself famous. He had gone to bed a timid, near-sighted, underpaid
+salesman without a relative in the world, except a married sister in
+Bordentown, and he awoke to find he was a direct descendant of "Neck
+or Nothing" Greene, a revolutionary hero, a friend of Washington, a
+man whose portrait hung in the State House at Trenton. David's life had
+lacked color. The day he carried his certificate of membership to the
+big jewelry store uptown and purchased two rosettes, one for each of his
+two coats, was the proudest of his life.
+
+The other men in the Broadway office took a different view. As Wyckoff,
+one of Burdett's flying squadron of travelling salesmen, said,
+"All grandfathers look alike to me, whether they're great, or
+great-great-great. Each one is as dead as the other. I'd rather have a
+live cousin who could loan me a five, or slip me a drink. What did your
+great-great dad ever do for you?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said David stiffly, "he fought in the War of the
+Revolution. He saved us from the shackles of monarchical England;
+he made it possible for me and you to enjoy the liberties of a free
+republic."
+
+"Don't try to tell me your grandfather did all that," protested Wyckoff,
+"because I know better. There were a lot of others helped. I read about
+it in a book."
+
+"I am not grudging glory to others," returned David; "I am only saying I
+am proud that I am a descendant of a revolutionist."
+
+Wyckoff dived into his inner pocket and produced a leather photograph
+frame that folded like a concertina.
+
+"I don't want to be a descendant," he said; "I'd rather be an ancestor.
+Look at those." Proudly he exhibited photographs of Mrs. Wyckoff with
+the baby and of three other little Wyckoffs. David looked with envy at
+the children.
+
+"When I'm married," he stammered, and at the words he blushed, "I hope
+to be an ancestor."
+
+"If you're thinking of getting married," said Wyckoff, "you'd better
+hope for a raise in salary."
+
+The other clerks were as unsympathetic as Wyckoff. At first when David
+showed them his parchment certificate, and his silver gilt insignia with
+on one side a portrait of Washington, and on the other a Continental
+soldier, they admitted it was dead swell. They even envied him, not
+the grandfather, but the fact that owing to that distinguished relative
+David was constantly receiving beautifully engraved invitations to
+attend the monthly meetings of the society; to subscribe to a fund to
+erect monuments on battle-fields to mark neglected graves; to join in
+joyous excursions to the tomb of Washington or of John Paul Jones;
+to inspect West Point, Annapolis, and Bunker Hill; to be among those
+present at the annual "banquet" at Delmonico's. In order that when he
+opened these letters he might have an audience, he had given the society
+his office address.
+
+In these communications he was always addressed as "Dear Compatriot,"
+and never did the words fail to give him a thrill. They seemed to lift
+him out of Burdett's salesrooms and Broadway, and place him next to
+things uncommercial, untainted, high, and noble. He did not quite know
+what an aristocrat was, but he believed being a compatriot made him an
+aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
+overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
+he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the
+blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
+easily with a word could I crush them!"
+
+But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
+They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
+teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
+liable to give that impression.
+
+When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
+although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
+person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss
+Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
+prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
+figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
+something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
+accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
+Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
+when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
+go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
+from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
+
+The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
+great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
+as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
+another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
+to achieve glory for himself.
+
+From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
+descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
+determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
+person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
+The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
+raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
+of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
+sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
+with awe, touched her imagination.
+
+"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're
+a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."
+
+"I know I'm not worthy of you," David sighed.
+
+"I don't mean that, and you know I don't," Emily replied indignantly.
+"It has nothing to do with me! I want you to be worthy of yourself, of
+your grandpa Hiram!"
+
+"But HOW?" complained David. "What chance has a twenty-five dollar a
+week clerk--"
+
+It was a year before the Spanish-American War, while the patriots of
+Cuba were fighting the mother country for their independence.
+
+"If I were a Son of the Revolution," said Emily, "I'd go to Cuba and
+help free it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense," cried David. "If I did that I'd lose my job, and
+we'd never be able to marry. Besides, what's Cuba done for me? All I
+know about Cuba is, I once smoked a Cuban cigar and it made me ill."
+
+"Did Lafayette talk like that?" demanded Emily. "Did he ask what have
+the American rebels ever done for me?"
+
+"If I were in Lafayette's class," sighed David, "I wouldn't be selling
+automatic punches."
+
+"There's your trouble," declared Emily "You lack self-confidence. You're
+too humble, you've got fighting blood and you ought to keep saying to
+yourself, 'Blood will tell,' and the first thing you know, it WILL tell!
+You might begin by going into politics in your ward. Or, you could join
+the militia. That takes only one night a week, and then, if we DID go to
+war with Spain, you'd get a commission, and come back a captain!"
+
+Emily's eyes were beautiful with delight. But the sight gave David no
+pleasure. In genuine distress, he shook his head.
+
+"Emily," he said, "you're going to be awfully disappointed in me."
+
+Emily's eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But
+when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
+
+"No, I'm not," she protested; "only I want a husband with a career, and
+one who'll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him."
+
+"I've often wished you would," said David.
+
+"Would what? Run your career for you?"
+
+"No, keep quiet. Only it didn't seem polite to tell you so."
+
+"Maybe I'd like you better," said Emily, "if you weren't so darned
+polite."
+
+A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and
+David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling
+salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a
+step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David
+was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted.
+Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She
+did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something
+lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and
+completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in
+the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days
+that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their
+honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days--at
+least she did not count them aloud.
+
+David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than
+learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she
+was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in
+ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from
+Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed
+her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to
+the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him.
+It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell
+him.
+
+The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close
+to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful,
+and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of
+congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please
+Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram
+Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons.
+A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for
+celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and
+shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish
+more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish
+Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
+
+And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked
+him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite
+son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary
+manner.
+
+On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to
+leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute,
+and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any
+Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame
+Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train
+to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later,
+when the conductor looked at David's ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and
+dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked
+back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would
+find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north.
+In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
+
+There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by
+fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment
+he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be
+encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from
+tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a
+shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in
+mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot,
+and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down
+under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train
+or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched
+a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead
+trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was
+not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of
+the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the
+train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing
+himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For,
+in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would
+have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his
+companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
+
+"I am alone," he told himself, "on a railroad embankment, entirely
+surrounded by alligators."
+
+And then he found he was not alone.
+
+In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him
+there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and
+the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above
+the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the
+embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of
+a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the
+embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had
+been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the
+clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou
+broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf
+an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his
+pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the
+company of his fellow creatures, David's heart leaped with pleasure.
+He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug,
+something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No
+lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks
+were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from
+her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood
+uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to
+the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not
+considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure.
+The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who
+means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high
+boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his
+movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily
+excited. He thrust himself close against David.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" demanded the man from the tug. "How'd you get
+here?"
+
+"I walked," said David.
+
+"Walked?" the man snorted incredulously.
+
+"I took the wrong train," explained David pleasantly. "They put me off
+about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I'm going
+to wait here for the next train north."
+
+The little man laughed mockingly.
+
+"Oh, no you're not," he said. "If you walked here, you can just walk
+away again!" With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory
+gesture.
+
+"You walk!" he commanded.
+
+"I'll do just as I please about that," said David.
+
+As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the
+tug.
+
+"I'll find some one who'll make you walk!" he called. "You WAIT, that's
+all, you WAIT!"
+
+David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private
+property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station
+the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he
+judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks
+and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself
+hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any
+other person.
+
+"They're river pirates," said David to himself, "or smugglers. They're
+certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence
+of a perfectly harmless stranger?"
+
+Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
+
+"I wish that train would come," he sighed. And instantly? as though in
+answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard
+the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his
+course of action.
+
+The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and
+smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by
+the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His
+plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though
+he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only
+stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his
+arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in
+amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred
+yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail's pace, carried no
+head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it
+blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear
+of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a
+train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as
+unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly
+tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
+
+"Is the place haunted!" exclaimed David.
+
+He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to
+a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the
+ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls
+and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
+
+So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her
+mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note
+the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little
+man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore
+no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters
+of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his
+right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that
+moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man
+carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest
+man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his
+beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild
+moonlight it flamed like a torch.
+
+"What's your business?" demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
+
+"I came here," began David, "to wait for a train--"
+
+The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
+
+"Yes," he shouted; "this is the sort of place any one would pick out to
+wait for a train!"
+
+In front of David's nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher's glove.
+"Don't you lie to ME!" he bullied. "Do you know who I am? Do you know
+WHO you're up against? I'm--"
+
+The barkeeper person interrupted.
+
+"Never mind who you are," he said. "We know that. Find out who HE is."
+
+David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come here on purpose?" he protested. "I'm a
+travelling man--"
+
+"You won't travel any to-night," mocked the red-haired one. "You've seen
+what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union
+wire. Well, you don't do it. You don't leave here to-night!"
+
+As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in
+riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
+
+"Tie him to a tree!" he suggested.
+
+"Better take him on board," said the barkeeper, "and send him back by
+the pilot. When we're once at sea, he can't hurt us any."
+
+"What makes you think I want to hurt you?" demanded David. "Who do you
+think I am?"
+
+"We know who you are," shouted the fiery-headed one. "You're a
+blanketty-blank spy! You're a government spy or a Spanish spy, and
+whichever you are you don't get away to-night!"
+
+David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his
+self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
+
+"You have made a very serious mistake," he said, "and whether you like
+it or not, I AM leaving here to-night, and YOU can go to the devil!"
+
+Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a
+short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling
+up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was
+conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting
+to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head
+rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance,
+and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying,
+"Nine--ten--and OUT!"
+
+When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In
+his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of
+a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf
+cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed
+wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw
+that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed
+with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side
+the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with
+stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
+
+"Sorry to disturb you," said the youth in the golf cap, "but we drop the
+pilot in a few minutes and you're going with him."
+
+David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as
+large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
+
+"What happened to me?" he demanded.
+
+"You were sort of kidnapped, I guess," laughed the young man. "It was a
+raw deal, but they couldn't take any chances. The pilot will land you at
+Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad."
+
+"But why?" demanded David indignantly. "Why was I kidnapped? What had I
+done? Who were those men who--"
+
+From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the
+engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
+
+"Come on," commanded the young man briskly. "The pilot's going ashore.
+Here's your grip, here's your hat. The ladder's on the port side. Look
+where you're stepping. We can't show any lights, and it's dark as--"
+
+But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws
+an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into
+the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the
+fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
+
+It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths,
+prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men
+scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one
+man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a
+fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came,
+David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby
+hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph
+to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
+
+David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap.
+Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves,
+the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and
+quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open
+sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a
+policeman's bull's-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and
+held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by
+the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great
+was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David's
+ear.
+
+"That's the revenue cutter!" he shouted. "She's been laying for us for
+three weeks, and now," he shrieked exultingly, "the old man's going to
+give her a race for it."
+
+From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David's nerves were getting
+beyond his control.
+
+"But how," he demanded, "how do I get ashore?"
+
+"You don't!"
+
+"When he drops the pilot, don't I--"
+
+"How can he drop the pilot?" yelled the youth. "The pilot's got to stick
+by the boat. So have you."
+
+David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to
+face.
+
+"Stick by what boat?" yelled David. "Who are these men? Who are you?
+What boat is this?"
+
+In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring
+at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching
+himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue
+board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As
+David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down
+his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
+
+"THE THREE FRIENDS!" shrieked David. "She's a filibuster! She's a
+pirate! Where're we going?
+
+"To Cuba!"
+
+David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
+
+"What for?" he shrieked.
+
+The young man regarded him coldly.
+
+"To pick bananas," he said.
+
+"I won't go to Cuba," shouted David. "I've got to work! I'm paid to sell
+machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I'll lose my job if I'm not put
+ashore. I'll sue you! I'll have the law--"
+
+David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that
+the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a
+succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged.
+Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to
+stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did
+not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he
+would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to
+David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots.
+Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish,
+rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the
+waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight
+the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the
+tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the
+slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a
+hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had
+found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, "She's fired two blanks
+at us!" he cried; "now she's firing cannon-balls!"
+
+"Thank God," whispered David; "perhaps she'll sink us!"
+
+But The Three Friends showed her heels to the revenue cutter, and so far
+as David knew hours passed into days and days into weeks. It was like
+those nightmares in which in a minute one is whirled through centuries
+of fear and torment. Sometimes, regardless of nausea, of his aching
+head, of the hard deck, of the waves that splashed and smothered
+him, David fell into broken slumber. Sometimes he woke to a dull
+consciousness of his position. At such moments he added to his misery by
+speculating upon the other misfortunes that might have befallen him
+on shore. Emily, he decided, had given him up for lost and
+married--probably a navy officer in command of a battle-ship. Burdett
+and Sons had cast him off forever. Possibly his disappearance had
+caused them to suspect him; even now they might be regarding him as
+a defaulter, as a fugitive from justice. His accounts, no doubt, were
+being carefully overhauled. In actual time, two days and two nights had
+passed; to David it seemed many ages.
+
+On the third day he crawled to the stern, where there seemed less
+motion, and finding a boat's cushion threw it in the lee scupper and
+fell upon it. From time to time the youth in the golf cap had brought
+him food and drink, and he now appeared from the cook's galley bearing a
+bowl of smoking soup.
+
+David considered it a doubtful attention.
+
+But he said, "You're very kind. How did a fellow like you come to mix up
+with these pirates?"
+
+The youth laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"They're not pirates, they're patriots," he said, "and I'm not mixed
+up with them. My name is Henry Carr and I'm a guest of Jimmy Doyle, the
+captain."
+
+"The barkeeper with the derby hat?" said David.
+
+"He's not a barkeeper, he's a teetotaler," Carr corrected, "and he's the
+greatest filibuster alive. He knows these waters as you know Broadway,
+and he's the salt of the earth. I did him a favor once; sort of
+mouse-helping-the-lion idea. Just through dumb luck I found out about
+this expedition. The government agents in New York found out I'd found
+out and sent for me to tell. But I didn't, and I didn't write the story
+either. Doyle heard about that. So, he asked me to come as his guest,
+and he's promised that after he's landed the expedition and the arms I
+can write as much about it as I darn please."
+
+"Then you're a reporter?" said David.
+
+"I'm what we call a cub reporter," laughed Carr. "You see, I've always
+dreamed of being a war correspondent. The men in the office say I dream
+too much. They're always guying me about it. But, haven't you noticed,
+it's the ones who dream who find their dreams come true. Now this isn't
+real war, but it's a near war, and when the real thing breaks loose,
+I can tell the managing editor I served as a war correspondent in the
+Cuban-Spanish campaign. And he may give me a real job!"
+
+"And you LIKE this?" groaned David.
+
+"I wouldn't, if I were as sick as you are," said Carr, "but I've a
+stomach like a Harlem goat." He stooped and lowered his voice. "Now,
+here are two fake filibusters," he whispered. "The men you read about in
+the newspapers. If a man's a REAL filibuster, nobody knows it!"
+
+Coming toward them was the tall man who had knocked David out, and the
+little one who had wanted to tie him to a tree.
+
+"All they ask," whispered Carr, "is money and advertisement. If they
+knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls
+himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida
+coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is
+a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English
+officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen
+battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the
+red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans.
+The Junta thinks they're great fighters, and it's sent them down here
+to work the machine guns. But I'm afraid the only fighting they will do
+will be in the sporting columns, and not in the ring."
+
+A half dozen sea-sick Cubans were carrying a heavy, oblong box. They
+dropped it not two yards from where David lay, and with a screwdriver
+Lighthouse Harry proceeded to open the lid.
+
+Carr explained to David that The Three Friends was approaching that part
+of the coast of Cuba on which she had arranged to land her expedition,
+and that in case she was surprised by one of the Spanish patrol boats
+she was preparing to defend herself.
+
+"They've got an automatic gun in that crate," said Carr, "and they're
+going to assemble it. You'd better move; they'll be tramping all over
+you."
+
+David shook his head feebly.
+
+"I can't move!" he protested. "I wouldn't move if it would free Cuba."
+
+For several hours with very languid interest David watched Lighthouse
+Harry and Colonel Beamish screw a heavy tripod to the deck and balance
+above it a quick-firing one-pounder. They worked very slowly, and to
+David, watching them from the lee scupper, they appeared extremely
+unintelligent.
+
+"I don't believe either of those thugs put an automatic gun together
+in his life," he whispered to Carr. "I never did, either, but I've put
+hundreds of automatic punches together, and I bet that gun won't work."
+
+"What's wrong with it?" said Carr.
+
+Before David could summon sufficient energy to answer, the attention of
+all on board was diverted, and by a single word.
+
+Whether the word is whispered apologetically by the smoking-room steward
+to those deep in bridge, or shrieked from the tops of a sinking ship it
+never quite fails of its effect. A sweating stoker from the engine-room
+saw it first.
+
+"Land!" he hailed.
+
+The sea-sick Cubans raised themselves and swung their hats; their voices
+rose in a fierce chorus.
+
+"Cuba libre!" they yelled.
+
+The sun piercing the morning mists had uncovered a coast-line broken
+with bays and inlets. Above it towered green hills, the peak of each
+topped by a squat blockhouse; in the valleys and water courses like
+columns of marble rose the royal palms.
+
+"You MUST look!" Carr entreated David, "it's just as it is in the
+pictures!
+
+"Then I don't have to look," groaned David.
+
+The Three Friends was making for a point of land that curved like a
+sickle. On the inside of the sickle was Nipe Bay. On the opposite shore
+of that broad harbor at the place of rendezvous a little band of Cubans
+waited to receive the filibusters. The goal was in sight. The dreadful
+voyage was done. Joy and excitement thrilled the ship's company. Cuban
+patriots appeared in uniforms with Cuban flags pinned in the brims of
+their straw sombreros. From the hold came boxes of small-arm ammunition
+of Mausers, rifles, machetes, and saddles. To protect the landing a box
+of shells was placed in readiness beside the one-pounder.
+
+"In two hours, if we have smooth water," shouted Lighthouse Harry,
+"we ought to get all of this on shore. And then, all I ask," he cried
+mightily, "is for some one to kindly show me a Spaniard!"
+
+His heart's desire was instantly granted. He was shown not only one
+Spaniard, but several Spaniards. They were on the deck of one of the
+fastest gun-boats of the Spanish navy. Not a mile from The Three
+Friends she sprang from the cover of a narrow inlet. She did not signal
+questions or extend courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug
+was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she
+raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there
+came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle of Mausers.
+
+With an explosion of terrifying oaths Lighthouse Harry thrust a shell
+into the breech of the quick-firing gun. Without waiting to aim it, he
+tugged at the trigger. Nothing happened! He threw open the breech and
+gazed impotently at the base of the shell. It was untouched. The ship
+was ringing with cries of anger, of hate, with rat-like squeaks of fear.
+
+Above the heads of the filibusters a shell screamed and within a hundred
+feet splashed into a wave.
+
+From his mat in the lee scupper David groaned miserably. He was far
+removed from any of the greater emotions.
+
+"It's no use!" he protested. "They can't do! It's not connected!"
+
+"WHAT'S not connected?" yelled Carr. He fell upon David. He half-lifted,
+half-dragged him to his feet.
+
+"If you know what's wrong with that gun, you fix it! Fix it," he
+shouted, "or I'll--"
+
+David was not concerned with the vengeance Carr threatened. For, on
+the instant a miracle had taken place. With the swift insidiousness
+of morphine, peace ran through his veins, soothed his racked body, his
+jangled nerves. The Three Friends had made the harbor, and was gliding
+through water flat as a pond. But David did not know why the change had
+come. He knew only that his soul and body were at rest, that the sun was
+shining, that he had passed through the valley of the shadow, and once
+more was a sane, sound young man.
+
+With a savage thrust of the shoulder he sent Lighthouse Harry sprawling
+from the gun. With swift, practised fingers he fell upon its mechanism.
+He wrenched it apart. He lifted it, reset, readjusted it.
+
+Ignorant themselves, those about him saw that he understood, saw that
+his work was good.
+
+They raised a joyous, defiant cheer. But a shower of bullets drove them
+to cover, bullets that ripped the deck, splintered the superstructure,
+smashed the glass in the air ports, like angry wasps sang in a
+continuous whining chorus. Intent only on the gun, David worked
+feverishly. He swung to the breech, locked it, and dragged it open,
+pulled on the trigger and found it gave before his forefinger.
+
+He shouted with delight.
+
+"I've got it working," he yelled.
+
+He turned to his audience, but his audience had fled. From beneath one
+of the life-boats protruded the riding-boots of Colonel Beamish, the
+tall form of Lighthouse Harry was doubled behind a water butt. A shell
+splashed to port, a shell splashed to starboard. For an instant David
+stood staring wide-eyed at the greyhound of a boat that ate up the
+distance between them, at the jets of smoke and stabs of flame that
+sprang from her bow, at the figures crouched behind her gunwale, firing
+in volleys.
+
+To David it came suddenly, convincingly, that in a dream he had lived
+it all before, and something like raw poison stirred in David, something
+leaped to his throat and choked him, something rose in his brain and
+made him see scarlet. He felt rather than saw young Carr kneeling at the
+box of ammunition, and holding a shell toward him. He heard the click
+as the breech shut, felt the rubber tire of the brace give against
+the weight of his shoulder, down a long shining tube saw the pursuing
+gun-boat, saw her again and many times disappear behind a flash of
+flame. A bullet gashed his forehead, a bullet passed deftly through his
+forearm, but he did not heed them. Confused with the thrashing of the
+engines, with the roar of the gun he heard a strange voice shrieking
+unceasingly:
+
+"Cuba libre!" it yelled. "To hell with Spain!" and he found that the
+voice was his own.
+
+The story lost nothing in the way Carr wrote it.
+
+"And the best of it is," he exclaimed joyfully, "it's true!"
+
+For a Spanish gun-boat HAD been crippled and forced to run herself
+aground by a tug-boat manned by Cuban patriots, and by a single gun
+served by one man, and that man an American. It was the first sea-fight
+of the war. Over night a Cuban navy had been born, and into the
+limelight a cub reporter had projected a new "hero," a ready-made,
+warranted-not-to-run, popular idol.
+
+They were seated in the pilot-house, "Jimmy" Doyle, Carr, and David, the
+patriots and their arms had been safely dumped upon the coast of Cuba,
+and The Three Friends was gliding swiftly and, having caught the Florida
+straits napping, smoothly toward Key West. Carr had just finished
+reading aloud his account of the engagement.
+
+"You will tell the story just as I have written it," commanded the proud
+author. "Your being South as a travelling salesman was only a blind.
+You came to volunteer for this expedition. Before you could explain your
+wish you were mistaken for a secret-service man, and hustled on board.
+That was just where you wanted to be, and when the moment arrived you
+took command of the ship and single-handed won the naval battle of Nipe
+Bay."
+
+Jimmy Doyle nodded his head approvingly. "You certainty did, Dave,"
+protested the great man, "I seen you when you done it!"
+
+At Key West Carr filed his story and while the hospital surgeons kept
+David there over one steamer, to dress his wounds, his fame and features
+spread across the map of the United States.
+
+Burdett and Sons basked in reflected glory. Reporters besieged their
+office. At the Merchants Down-Town Club the business men of lower
+Broadway tendered congratulations.
+
+"Of course, it's a great surprise to us," Burdett and Sons would protest
+and wink heavily. "Of course, when the boy asked to be sent South we'd
+no idea he was planning to fight for Cuba! Or we wouldn't have let him
+go, would we?" Then again they would wink heavily. "I suppose you know,"
+they would say, "that he's a direct descendant of General Hiram Greene,
+who won the battle of Trenton. What I say is, 'Blood will tell!'" And
+then in a body every one in the club would move against the bar and
+exclaim: "Here's to Cuba libre!"
+
+When the Olivette from Key West reached Tampa Bay every Cuban in the
+Tampa cigar factories was at the dock. There were thousands of them and
+all of the Junta, in high hats, to read David an address of welcome.
+
+And, when they saw him at the top of the gang-plank with his head in a
+bandage and his arm in a sling, like a mob of maniacs they howled and
+surged toward him. But before they could reach their hero the courteous
+Junta forced them back, and cleared a pathway for a young girl. She was
+travel-worn and pale, her shirt-waist was disgracefully wrinkled, her
+best hat was a wreck. No one on Broadway would have recognized her as
+Burdett and Sons' most immaculate and beautiful stenographer.
+
+She dug the shapeless hat into David's shoulder, and clung to him.
+"David!" she sobbed, "promise me you'll never, never do it again!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 5. THE SAILORMAN
+
+Before Latimer put him on watch, the Nantucket sailorman had not a care
+in the world. If the wind blew from the north, he spun to the left; if
+it came from the south, he spun to the right. But it was entirely
+the wind that was responsible. So, whichever way he turned, he smiled
+broadly, happily. His outlook upon the world was that of one who loved
+his fellowman. He had many brothers as like him as twins all over
+Nantucket and Cape Cod and the North Shore, smiling from the railings of
+verandas, from the roofs of bungalows, from the eaves of summer palaces.
+Empaled on their little iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
+languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
+sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been
+a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he
+would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer
+bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders
+most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried
+treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really
+asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.
+
+Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
+Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
+pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen
+Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she
+departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of
+stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she
+played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines
+her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded
+youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
+Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with
+the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the
+matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age.
+When she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously
+and joyfully by their maiden names. And the matrons liked it. In
+comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so
+strongly appeal.
+
+"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them, "and
+Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were
+twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside
+her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat.
+Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or
+because Helen drives so fast he can't keep it on?"
+
+"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new arrival.
+"That might help some."
+
+"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never leaves her."
+
+This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them
+so many times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf
+together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way
+to look. But they gloried in their shame. If you tactfully pretended not
+to see them, Helen shouted at you. She made you feel you had been caught
+doing something indelicate and underhand.
+
+The mothers of Fair Harbor were rather slow in accepting young
+Latimer. So many of their sons had seen Helen shake her head in that
+inarticulate, worried way, and look so sorry for them, that any strange
+young man who apparently succeeded where those who had been her friends
+for years had learned they must remain friends, could not hope to escape
+criticism. Besides, they did not know him: he did not come from Boston
+and Harvard, but from a Western city. They were told that at home, at
+both the law and the game of politics, he worked hard and successfully;
+but it was rather held against him by the youth of Fair Harbor that
+he played at there games, not so much for the sake of the game as for
+exercise. He put aside many things, such as whiskey and soda at two in
+the morning, and bridge all afternoon, with the remark: "I find it does
+not tend toward efficiency." It was a remark that irritated and, to the
+minds of the men at the country clubs, seemed to place him. They liked
+to play polo because they liked to play polo, not because it kept their
+muscles limber and their brains clear.
+
+"Some Western people were telling me," said one of the matrons, "that he
+wants to be the next lieutenant-governor. They say he is very ambitious
+and very selfish."
+
+"Any man is selfish," protested one who for years had attempted to marry
+Helen, "who wants to keep Helen to himself. But that he should wish to
+be a lieutenant-governor, too, is rather an anticlimax. It makes one
+lose sympathy."
+
+Latimer went on his way without asking any sympathy. The companionship
+of Helen Page was quite sufficient. He had been working overtime and was
+treating himself to his first vacation in years--he was young--he was
+in love and he was very happy. Nor was there any question, either, that
+Helen Page was happy. Those who had known her since she was a child
+could not remember when she had not been happy, but these days she wore
+her joyousness with a difference. It was in her eyes, in her greetings
+to old friends: it showed itself hourly in courtesies and kindnesses.
+She was very kind to Latimer, too. She did not deceive him. She told him
+she liked better to be with him than with any one else,--it would have
+been difficult to deny to him what was apparent to an entire summer
+colony,--but she explained that that did not mean she would marry him.
+She announced this when the signs she knew made it seem necessary. She
+announced it in what was for her a roundabout way, by remarking suddenly
+that she did not intend to marry for several years.
+
+This brought Latimer to his feet and called forth from him remarks so
+eloquent that Helen found it very difficult to keep her own. She as
+though she had been caught in an undertow and was being whirled out to
+sea. When, at last, she had regained her breath, only because Latimer
+had paused to catch his, she shook her head miserably.
+
+"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the same
+thing!"
+
+"What do they think?" demanded Latimer.
+
+"That they want to marry me."
+
+Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
+
+"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this important
+difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE
+you as I do!"
+
+"That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.
+
+"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.
+
+"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen. "I don't mean to be unfeeling. I'm not
+unfeeling. I'm only trying to be fair. If I don't seem to take it to
+heart, it's because I know it does no good. I can see how miserable
+a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind
+whether or not she wants to marry him. But when there's so many she just
+stops worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all."
+
+"ALL!" exclaimed Latimer. "It is incredible that I have undervalued you,
+but may I ask how many there are?"
+
+"I don't know," sighed Helen miserably. "There seems to be something
+about me that--"
+
+"There is!" interrupted Latimer. "I've noticed it. You don't have to
+tell me about it. I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult
+habit to break!"
+
+It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it. At least,
+not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
+
+One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on
+which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored
+a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff. The cliff overlooked
+the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played
+hide and seek. On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this
+place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back
+to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water. Sometimes the poets whose
+works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to
+them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into
+his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and
+mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
+
+But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible
+for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please
+excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--" and the spell
+was gone.
+
+One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford
+Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?"
+
+"I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy;
+he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and
+he can't swim, and he'll drown. I told his mother only yesterday--"
+
+"I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in
+what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning
+man myself!"
+
+Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly. "Men get over THAT kind of
+drowning," she said.
+
+"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer. "And don't tell me," he
+cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all say."
+
+"If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen. "If one could only be sure
+that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him
+the way he says he cares before you marry him. If you could know that,
+it would help you a lot in making up your mind."
+
+"There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is to
+marry him. I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry me."
+
+One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the
+man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the
+village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their
+hiding-place. There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the
+ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the
+world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind
+caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it
+tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the
+sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand
+a tiny oar and smiling happily.
+
+"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us."
+
+"He is on guard," Latimer explained. "I put him there to warn us if
+any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away
+trespassers. Do you understand?" he demanded of the sailorman. "Your
+duty is to protect this beautiful lady. So long as I love her you must
+guard this place. It is a life sentence. You are always on watch. You
+never sleep. You are her slave. She says you have a friendly smile. She
+wrongs you. It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile. I am sure
+when I look at her mine is equally idiotic. In fact, we are in many ways
+alike. I also am her slave. I also am devoted only to her service. And I
+never sleep, at least not since I met her."
+
+From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman
+and frowned.
+
+"It is not a happy simile," she objected. "For one thing, a sailorman
+has a sweetheart in every port."
+
+"Wait and see," said Latimer.
+
+"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on
+earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less
+CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--"
+
+"Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn. "You come back here,"
+he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the winds have
+beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you
+will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently,
+proudly, joyously, devotedly. Because those who are your slaves, those
+who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if
+you drive them away!"
+
+The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about
+in a delirium of joy. His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs,
+his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one
+blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
+
+When the golden-rod turned gray, and the leaves red and yellow, and it
+was time for Latimer to return to his work in the West, he came to say
+good-by. But the best Helen could do to keep hope alive in him was to
+say that she was glad he cared. She added it was very helpful to think
+that a man such as he believed you were so fine a person, and during the
+coming winter she would try to be like the fine person he believed her
+to be, but which, she assured him, she was not.
+
+Then he told her again she was the most wonderful being in the world, to
+which she said: "Oh, indeed no!" and then, as though he were giving her
+a cue, he said: "Good-by!" But she did not take up his cue, and they
+shook hands. He waited, hardly daring to breathe.
+
+"Surely, now that the parting has come," he assured himself, "she will
+make some sign, she will give me a word, a look that will write 'total'
+under the hours we have spent together, that will help to carry me
+through the long winter."
+
+But he held her hand so long and looked at her so hungrily that
+he really forced her to say: "Don't miss your train," which kind
+consideration for his comfort did not delight him as it should. Nor,
+indeed, later did she herself recall the remark with satisfaction.
+
+With Latimer out of the way the other two hundred and forty-nine suitor
+attacked with renewed hope. Among other advantages they had over Latimer
+was that they were on the ground. They saw Helen daily, at dinners,
+dances, at the country clubs, in her own drawing-room. Like any sailor
+from the Charlestown Navy Yard and his sweetheart, they could walk
+beside her in the park and throw peanuts to the pigeons, and scratch
+dates and initials on the green benches; they could walk with her up one
+side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when
+the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were
+beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known
+her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and
+friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to
+her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests,
+and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and
+his efforts in politics or of his love. To write to her of his affairs
+seemed wasteful and impertinent, and of his love for her, after she had
+received what he told of it in silence, he was too proud to speak. So he
+wrote but seldom, and then only to say: "You know what I send you." Had
+he known it, his best letters were those he did not send. When in the
+morning mail Helen found his familiar handwriting, that seemed to stand
+out like the face of a friend in a crowd, she would pounce upon
+the letter, read it, and, assured of his love, would go on her way
+rejoicing. But when in the morning there was no letter, she wondered
+why, and all day she wondered why. And the next morning when again
+she was disappointed, her thoughts of Latimer and her doubts and
+speculations concerning him shut out every other interest. He became a
+perplexing, insistent problem. He was never out of her mind. And then he
+would spoil it all by writing her that he loved her and that of all the
+women in the world she was the only one. And, reassured upon that point,
+Helen happily and promptly would forget all about him.
+
+But when she remembered him, although months had passed since she had
+seen him, she remembered him much more distinctly, much more gratefully,
+than that one of the two hundred and fifty with whom she had walked that
+same afternoon. Latimer could not know it, but of that anxious multitude
+he was first, and there was no second. At least Helen hoped, when she
+was ready to marry, she would love Latimer enough to want to marry him.
+But as yet she assured herself she did not want to marry any one. As she
+was, life was very satisfactory. Everybody loved her, everybody invited
+her to be of his party, or invited himself to join hers, and the object
+of each seemed to be to see that she enjoyed every hour of every day.
+Her nature was such that to make her happy was not difficult. Some of
+her devotees could do it by giving her a dance and letting her invite
+half of Boston, and her kid brother could do it by taking her to
+Cambridge to watch the team at practice.
+
+She thought she was happy because she was free. As a matter of fact, she
+was happy because she loved some one and that particular some one loved
+her. Her being "free" was only her mistaken way of putting it. Had she
+thought she had lost Latimer and his love, she would have discovered
+that, so far from being free, she was bound hand and foot and heart and
+soul.
+
+But she did not know that, and Latimer did not know that.
+
+Meanwhile, from the branch of the tree in the sheltered, secret
+hiding-place that overlooked the ocean, the sailorman kept watch. The
+sun had blistered him, the storms had buffeted him, the snow had frozen
+upon his shoulders. But his loyalty never relaxed. He spun to the
+north, he spun to the south, and so rapidly did he scan the surrounding
+landscape that no one could hope to creep upon him unawares. Nor,
+indeed, did any one attempt to do so. Once a fox stole into the secret
+hiding-place, but the sailorman flapped his oars and frightened him
+away. He was always triumphant. To birds, to squirrels, to trespassing
+rabbits he was a thing of terror. Once, when the air was still, an
+impertinent crow perched on the very limb on which he stood, and with
+scornful, disapproving eyes surveyed his white trousers, his blue
+reefer, his red cheeks. But when the wind suddenly drove past them the
+sailorman sprang into action and the crow screamed in alarm and darted
+away. So, alone and with no one to come to his relief, the sailorman
+stood his watch. About him the branches bent with the snow, the icicles
+froze him into immobility, and in the tree-tops strange groanings filled
+him with alarms. But undaunted, month after month, alert and smiling,
+he waited the return of the beautiful lady and of the tall young man who
+had devoured her with such beseeching, unhappy eyes.
+
+Latimer found that to love a woman like Helen Page as he loved her was
+the best thing that could come into his life. But to sit down and lament
+over the fact that she did not love him did not, to use his favorite
+expression, "tend toward efficiency." He removed from his sight the
+three pictures of her he had cut from illustrated papers, and ceased to
+write to her.
+
+In his last letter he said: "I have told you how it is, and that is how
+it is always going to be. There never has been, there never can be any
+one but you. But my love is too precious, too sacred to be brought
+out every week in a letter and dangled before your eyes like an
+advertisement of a motor-car. It is too wonderful a thing to be
+cheapened, to be subjected to slights and silence. If ever you should
+want it, it is yours. It is here waiting. But you must tell me so. I
+have done everything a man can do to make you understand. But you do not
+want me or my love. And my love says to me: 'Don't send me there
+again to have the door shut in my face. Keep me with you to be your
+inspiration, to help you to live worthily.' And so it shall be."
+
+When Helen read that letter she did not know what to do. She did not
+know how to answer it. Her first impression was that suddenly she had
+grown very old, and that some one had turned off the sun, and that in
+consequence the world had naturally grown cold and dark. She could not
+see why the two hundred and forty-nine expected her to keep on doing
+exactly the same things she had been doing with delight for six months,
+and indeed for the last six years. Why could they not see that no longer
+was there any pleasure in them? She would have written and told Latimer
+that she found she loved him very dearly if in her mind there had not
+arisen a fearful doubt. Suppose his letter was not quite honest? He
+said that he would always love her, but how could she now know that?
+Why might not this letter be only his way of withdrawing from a position
+which he wished to abandon, from which, perhaps, he was even glad to
+escape? Were this true, and she wrote and said all those things that
+were in her heart, that now she knew were true, might she not hold him
+to her against his will? The love that once he had for her might no
+longer exist, and if, in her turn, she told him she loved him and had
+always loved him, might he not in some mistaken spirit of chivalry feel
+it was his duty to pretend to care? Her cheeks burned at the thought. It
+was intolerable. She could not write that letter. And as day succeeded
+day, to do so became more difficult. And so she never wrote and was very
+unhappy. And Latimer was very unhappy. But he had his work, and Helen
+had none, and for her life became a game of putting little things
+together, like a picture puzzle, an hour here and an hour there, to make
+up each day. It was a dreary game.
+
+From time to time she heard of him through the newspapers. For, in his
+own State, he was an "Insurgent" making a fight, the outcome of which
+was expected to show what might follow throughout the entire West.
+When he won his fight much more was written about him, and he became
+a national figure. In his own State the people hailed him as the next
+governor, promised him a seat in the Senate. To Helen this seemed to
+take him further out of her life. She wondered if now she held a place
+even in his thoughts.
+
+At Fair Harbor the two hundred and forty-nine used to joke with her
+about her politician. Then they considered Latimer of importance only
+because Helen liked him. Now they discussed him impersonally and over
+her head, as though she were not present, as a power, an influence,
+as the leader and exponent of a new idea. They seemed to think she
+no longer could pretend to any peculiar claim upon him, that now he
+belonged to all of them.
+
+Older men would say to her: "I hear you know Latimer? What sort of a man
+is he?"
+
+Helen would not know what to tell them. She could not say he was a man
+who sat with his back to a pine-tree, reading from a book of verse, or
+halting to devour her with humble, entreating eyes.
+
+She went South for the winter, the doctors deciding she was run down
+and needed the change. And with an unhappy laugh at her own expense she
+agreed in their diagnosis. She was indifferent as to where they sent
+her, for she knew wherever she went she must still force herself to
+go on putting one hour on top of another, until she had built up the
+inexorable and necessary twenty-four.
+
+When she returned winter was departing, but reluctantly, and returning
+unexpectedly to cover the world with snow, to eclipse the thin spring
+sunshine with cheerless clouds. Helen took herself seriously to task.
+She assured herself it was weak-minded to rebel. The summer was coming
+and Fair Harbor with all its old delights was before her. She compelled
+herself to take heart, to accept the fact that, after all, the world is
+a pretty good place, and that to think only of the past, to live only on
+memories and regrets, was not only cowardly and selfish, but, as Latimer
+had already decided, did not tend toward efficiency.
+
+Among the other rules of conduct that she imposed upon herself was not
+to think of Latimer. At least, not during the waking hours. Should she,
+as it sometimes happened, dream of him--should she imagine they were
+again seated among the pines, riding across the downs, or racing at
+fifty miles an hour through country roads, with the stone fences flying
+past, with the wind and the sun in their eyes, and in their hearts
+happiness and content--that would not be breaking her rule. If she
+dreamed of him, she could not be held responsible. She could only be
+grateful.
+
+And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came
+East. Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with
+a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of
+three cities. He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party
+leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's country. He was due to speak
+in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to
+leave for the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the
+city. He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New
+York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him. And for that
+week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting
+cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward
+to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes. And that during the
+time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more
+direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to
+remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out
+of her life, maybe forever. No one saw in her going any significance.
+Spring had come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at
+Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of
+some one of the Page family was easily explained.
+
+She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it
+herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if
+it would not have been wiser had she stayed away. For she found that the
+memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out
+by those of one summer, by those of one man. The natives greeted her
+joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the
+village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant. They welcomed her as though
+they were her vassals and she their queen. But it was the one man she
+had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused
+her throat to tighten. She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and
+hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in
+the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively
+to his open windows. Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him. The
+golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where
+he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds
+than to remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where
+the schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon;
+the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies; the
+pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
+
+On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places
+purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way. They no longer
+distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort. They were old friends,
+who had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
+
+But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the opening
+among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea--she could
+not bring herself to visit. And then, on the afternoon of the third day
+when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own
+accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road. And
+again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked
+the sea, he came to a full stop. There was no need to make him fast. For
+hours, stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same
+branches patiently waiting.
+
+On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one
+enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred
+circle. And then she stood quite still. What she had expected to find
+there she could not have told, but it was gone. The place was unknown
+to her. She saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal.
+No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more
+poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness. There was no
+sign of his or of her former presence. Across the open space something
+had passed its hand, and it had changed. What had been a trysting-place,
+a bower, a nest, had become a tomb. A tomb, she felt, for something that
+once had been brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead. She
+had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her
+forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had
+remembered it, and as now she must always remember It. She turned softly
+on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
+
+But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of
+wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the
+branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And
+at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a
+violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the
+woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged
+wings.
+
+Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the sailorman.
+
+Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy,
+calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down
+at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's
+ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though
+Latimer stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no
+longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that
+brought to her peace, and pride, and happiness.
+
+"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish words,
+"you will guard this place. It is a life sentence!"
+
+With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman
+stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty. With a
+joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her
+hands and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
+
+An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair
+Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between
+his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by
+landing them in jail.
+
+At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark
+places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced
+against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
+beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of
+the one thing that could make his life worth living.
+
+And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat,
+the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at
+peace, his duty well performed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6. THE MIND READER
+
+When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
+life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he
+knew. Under the title of "Tales of the Yard" they were collected in book
+form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a
+reporter on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of
+which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in
+gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
+and later in a book under the title of "Tales of the Streets." They also
+were well received.
+
+Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: "There
+are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men of genius and
+reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way
+that he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe
+something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a
+way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but
+if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling
+tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers;
+how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
+has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how
+each of them feels. He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot
+do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at
+college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales
+are only of newspaper work. You merely report what you see. So, if you
+are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to
+do is to see as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life.
+You must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
+London."
+
+"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And in
+London I should have to sweep a crossing."
+
+"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about a man
+who swept a crossing."
+
+It was not alone the literary editor's words of wisdom that had driven
+Philip to London. Helen Carey was in London, visiting the daughter
+of the American Ambassador; and, though Philip had known her only one
+winter, he loved her dearly. The great trouble was that he had no money,
+and that she possessed so much of it that, unless he could show some
+unusual quality of mind or character, his asking her to marry him, from
+his own point of view at least, was quite impossible. Of course, he knew
+that no one could love her as he did, that no one so truly wished for
+her happiness, or would try so devotedly to make her happy. But to him
+it did not seem possible that a girl could be happy with a man who was
+not able to pay for her home, or her clothes, or her food, who would
+have to borrow her purse if he wanted a new pair of gloves or a
+hair-cut. For Philip Endicott, while rich in birth and education and
+charm of manner, had no money at all. When, in May, he came from New
+York to lay siege to London and to the heart of Helen Carey he had with
+him, all told, fifteen hundred dollars. That was all he possessed in the
+world; and unless the magazines bought his stories there was no prospect
+of his getting any more.
+
+Friends who knew London told him that, if you knew London well, it was
+easy to live comfortably there and to go about and even to entertain
+modestly on three sovereigns a day. So, at that rate, Philip calculated
+he could stay three months. But he found that to know London well enough
+to be able to live there on three sovereigns a day you had first to
+spend so many five-pound notes in getting acquainted with London that
+there were no sovereigns left. At the end of one month he had just
+enough money to buy him a second-class passage back to New York, and he
+was as far from Helen as ever.
+
+Often he had read in stories and novels of men who were too poor to
+marry. And he had laughed at the idea. He had always said that when two
+people truly love each other it does not matter whether they have money
+or not. But when in London, with only a five-pound note, and face to
+face with the actual proposition of asking Helen Carey not only to marry
+him but to support him, he felt that money counted for more than he had
+supposed. He found money was many different things--it was self-respect,
+and proper pride, and private honors and independence. And, lacking
+these things, he felt he could ask no girl to marry him, certainly not
+one for whom he cared as he cared for Helen Carey. Besides, while he
+knew how he loved her, he had no knowledge whatsoever that she loved
+him. She always seemed extremely glad to see him; but that might be
+explained in different ways. It might be that what was in her heart for
+him was really a sort of "old home week" feeling; that to her it was a
+relief to see any one who spoke her own language, who did not need to
+have it explained when she was jesting, and who did not think when she
+was speaking in perfectly satisfactory phrases that she must be talking
+slang.
+
+The Ambassador and his wife had been very kind to Endicott, and, as a
+friend of Helen's, had asked him often to dinner and had sent him cards
+for dances at which Helen was to be one of the belles and beauties. And
+Helen herself had been most kind, and had taken early morning walks with
+him in Hyde Park and through the National Galleries; and they had fed
+buns to the bears in the Zoo, and in doing so had laughed heartily. They
+thought it was because the bears were so ridiculous that they laughed.
+Later they appreciated that the reason they were happy was because
+they were together. Had the bear pit been empty, they still would have
+laughed.
+
+On the evening of the thirty-first of May, Endicott had gone to bed with
+his ticket purchased for America and his last five-pound note to last
+him until the boat sailed. He was a miserable young man. He knew now
+that he loved Helen Carey in such a way that to put the ocean between
+them was liable to unseat his courage and his self-control. In London
+he could, each night, walk through Carlton House Terrace and, leaning
+against the iron rails of the Carlton Club, gaze up at her window.
+But, once on the other side of the ocean, that tender exercise must
+be abandoned. He must even consider her pursued by most attractive
+guardsmen, diplomats, and belted earls. He knew they could not love her
+as he did; he knew they could not love her for the reasons he loved her,
+because the fine and beautiful things in her that he saw and worshipped
+they did not seek, and so did not find. And yet, for lack of a few
+thousand dollars, he must remain silent, must put from him the best that
+ever came into his life, must waste the wonderful devotion he longed
+to give, must starve the love that he could never summon for any other
+woman.
+
+On the thirty-first of May he went to sleep utterly and completely
+miserable. On the first of June he woke hopeless and unrefreshed.
+
+And then the miracle came.
+
+Prichard, the ex-butler who valeted all the young gentlemen in the house
+where Philip had taken chambers, brought him his breakfast. As he
+placed the eggs and muffins on the tables to Philip it seemed as though
+Prichard had said: "I am sorry he is leaving us. The next gentleman
+who takes these rooms may not be so open-handed. He never locked up his
+cigars or his whiskey. I wish he'd give me his old dress-coat. It fits
+me, except across the shoulders."
+
+Philip stared hard at Prichard; but the lips of the valet had not moved.
+In surprise and bewilderment, Philip demanded:
+
+"How do you know it fits? Have you tried it on?"
+
+"I wouldn't take such a liberty," protested Prichard. "Not with any of
+our gentlemen's clothes."
+
+"How did you know I was talking about clothes," demanded Philip. "You
+didn't say anything about clothes, did you?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not; but you asked me, sir, and I--"
+
+"Were you thinking of clothes?"
+
+"Well, sir, you might say, in a way, that I was," answered the valet.
+"Seeing as you're leaving, sir, and they're not over-new, I thought..."
+
+"It's mental telepathy," said Philip.
+
+"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Prichard.
+
+"You needn't wait," said Philip.
+
+The coincidence puzzled him; but by the time he had read the morning
+papers he had forgotten about it, and it was not until he had emerged
+into the street that it was forcibly recalled. The street was crowded
+with people; and as Philip stepped in among them, It was as though every
+one at whom he looked began to talk aloud. Their lips did not move,
+nor did any sound issue from between them; but, without ceasing, broken
+phrases of thoughts came to him as clearly as when, in passing in a
+crowd, snatches of talk are carried to the ears. One man thought of his
+debts; another of the weather, and of what disaster it might bring to
+his silk hat; another planned his luncheon; another was rejoicing over
+a telegram he had but that moment received. To himself he kept repeating
+the words of the telegram--"No need to come, out of danger." To Philip
+the message came as clearly as though he were reading it from the folded
+slip of paper that the stranger clutched in his hand.
+
+Confused and somewhat frightened, and in order that undisturbed he might
+consider what had befallen him, Philip sought refuge from the crowded
+street in the hallway of a building. His first thought was that for some
+unaccountable cause his brain for the moment was playing tricks with
+him, and he was inventing the phrases he seemed to hear, that he was
+attributing thoughts to others of which they were entirely innocent.
+But, whatever it was that had befallen him, he knew it was imperative
+that he should at once get at the meaning of it.
+
+The hallway in which he stood opened from Bond Street up a flight of
+stairs to the studio of a fashionable photographer, and directly in
+front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted.
+Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept
+repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or
+a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff?
+Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff
+Mary Queen of Scots would look ridiculous!"
+
+Although the young woman had spoken not a single word, although indeed
+she was biting impatiently at her lower lip, Philip had distinguished
+the words clearly. Or, if he had not distinguished them, he surely was
+going mad. It was a matter to be at once determined, and the young woman
+should determine it. He advanced boldly to her, and raised his hat.
+
+"Pardon me," he said, "but I believe you are waiting for your maid
+Hudson?"
+
+As though fearing an impertinence, the girl regarded him in silence.
+
+"I only wish to make sure," continued Philip, "that you are she for whom
+I have a message. You have an appointment, I believe, to be photographed
+in fancy dress as Mary Queen of Scots?"
+
+"Well?" assented the girl.
+
+"And you telephoned Hudson," he continued, "to bring you your muff."
+
+The girl exclaimed with vexation.
+
+"Oh!" she protested; "I knew they'd get it wrong! Not muff, ruff! I want
+my ruff."
+
+Philip felt a cold shiver creep down his spine.
+
+"For the love of Heaven!" he exclaimed in horror; "it's true!"
+
+"What's true?" demanded the young woman in some alarm.
+
+"That I'm a mind reader," declared Philip. "I've read your mind! I can
+read everybody's mind. I know just what you're thinking now. You're
+thinking I'm mad!"
+
+The actions of the young lady showed that again he was correct. With a
+gasp of terror she fled past him and raced up the stairs to the studio.
+Philip made no effort to follow and to explain. What was there to
+explain? How could he explain that which, to himself, was unbelievable?
+Besides, the girl had served her purpose. If he could read the mind of
+one, he could read the minds of all. By some unexplainable miracle, to
+his ordinary equipment of senses a sixth had been added. As easily as,
+before that morning, he could look into the face of a fellow-mortal,
+he now could look into the workings of that fellow-mortal's mind. The
+thought was appalling. It was like living with one's ear to a key-hole.
+In his dismay his first idea was to seek medical advice--the best in
+London. He turned instantly in the direction of Harley Street. There,
+he determined, to the most skilled alienist in town he would explain his
+strange plight. For only as a misfortune did the miracle appear to him.
+But as he made his way through the streets his pace slackened.
+
+Was he wise, he asked himself, in allowing others to know he possessed
+this strange power? Would they not at once treat him as a madman?
+Might they not place him under observation, or even deprive him of his
+liberty? At the thought he came to an abrupt halt His own definition of
+the miracle as a "power" had opened a new line of speculation. If this
+strange gift (already he was beginning to consider it more leniently)
+were concealed from others, could he not honorably put it to some useful
+purpose? For, among the blind, the man with one eye is a god. Was not
+he--among all other men the only one able to read the minds of all
+other men--a god? Turning into Bruton Street, he paced its quiet length
+considering the possibilities that lay within him.
+
+It was apparent that the gift would lead to countless embarrassments.
+If it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends
+avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at
+the mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would
+lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might
+easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the
+present he had best give no hint to others of his unique power.
+
+As the idea of possessing this power became more familiar, he regarded
+it with less aversion. He began to consider to what advantage he could
+place it. He could see that, given the right time and the right man, he
+might learn secrets leading to far-reaching results. To a statesman, to
+a financier, such a gift as he possessed would make him a ruler of men.
+Philip had no desire to be a ruler of men; but he asked himself how
+could he bend this gift to serve his own? What he most wished was to
+marry Helen Carey; and, to that end, to possess money. So he must meet
+men who possessed money, who were making money. He would put questions
+to them. And with words they would give evasive answers; but their minds
+would tell him the truth.
+
+The ethics of this procedure greatly disturbed him. Certainly it was no
+better than reading other people's letters. But, he argued, the dishonor
+in knowledge so obtained would lie only in the use he made of it. If he
+used it without harm to him from whom it was obtained and with benefit
+to others, was he not justified in trading on his superior equipment? He
+decided that each case must be considered separately in accordance
+with the principle involved. But, principle or no principle, he was
+determined to become rich. Did not the end justify the means? Certainly
+an all-wise Providence had not brought Helen Carey into his life only to
+take her away from him. It could not be so cruel. But, in selecting them
+for one another, the all-wise Providence had overlooked the fact that
+she was rich and he was poor. For that oversight Providence apparently
+was now endeavoring to make amends. In what certainly was a fantastic
+and roundabout manner Providence had tardily equipped him with a gift
+that could lead to great wealth. And who was he to fly in the face of
+Providence? He decided to set about building up a fortune, and building
+it in a hurry.
+
+From Bruton Street he had emerged upon Berkeley Square; and, as Lady
+Woodcote had invited him to meet Helen at luncheon at the Ritz, he
+turned in that direction. He was too early for luncheon; but in the
+corridor of the Ritz he knew he would find persons of position and
+fortune, and in reading their minds he might pass the time before
+luncheon with entertainment, possibly with profit. For, while pacing
+Bruton Street trying to discover the principles of conduct that
+threatened to hamper his new power, he had found that in actual
+operation it was quite simple. He learned that his mind, in relation
+to other minds, was like the receiver of a wireless station with an
+unlimited field. For, while the wireless could receive messages only
+from those instruments with which it was attuned, his mind was in key
+with all other minds. To read the thoughts of another, he had only to
+concentrate his own upon that person; and to shut off the thoughts of
+that person, he had only to turn his own thoughts elsewhere. But also
+he discovered that over the thoughts of those outside the range of his
+physical sight he had no control. When he asked of what Helen Carey was
+at that moment thinking, there was no result. But when he asked, "Of
+what is that policeman on the corner thinking?" he was surprised to find
+that that officer of the law was formulating regulations to abolish the
+hobble skirt as an impediment to traffic.
+
+As Philip turned into Berkeley Square, the accents of a mind in great
+distress smote upon his new and sixth sense. And, in the person of a
+young gentleman leaning against the park railing, he discovered the
+source from which the mental sufferings emanated. The young man was a
+pink-cheeked, yellow-haired youth of extremely boyish appearance, and
+dressed as if for the race-track. But at the moment his pink and babyish
+face wore an expression of complete misery. With tear-filled eyes he was
+gazing at a house of yellow stucco on the opposite side of the street.
+And his thoughts were these: "She is the best that ever lived, and I am
+the most ungrateful of fools. How happy were we in the house of yellow
+stucco! Only now, when she has closed its doors to me, do I know how
+happy! If she would give me another chance, never again would I distress
+or deceive her."
+
+So far had the young man progressed in his thoughts when an automobile
+of surprising smartness swept around the corner and drew up in front
+of the house of yellow stucco, and from it descended a charming young
+person. She was of the Dresden-shepherdess type, with large blue eyes of
+haunting beauty and innocence.
+
+"My wife!" exclaimed the blond youth at the railings. And instantly he
+dodged behind a horse that, while still attached to a four-wheeler, was
+contentedly eating from a nose-bag.
+
+With a key the Dresden shepherdess opened the door to the yellow house
+and disappeared.
+
+The calling of the reporter trains him in audacity, and to act quickly.
+He shares the troubles of so many people that to the troubles of other
+people he becomes callous, and often will rush in where friends of the
+family fear to tread. Although Philip was not now acting as a reporter,
+he acted quickly. Hardly had the door closed upon the young lady than
+he had mounted the steps and rung the visitor's bell. As he did so, he
+could not resist casting a triumphant glance in the direction of the
+outlawed husband. And, in turn, what the outcast husband, peering from
+across the back of the cab horse, thought of Philip, of his clothes, of
+his general appearance, and of the manner in which he would delight to
+alter all of them, was quickly communicated to the American. They were
+thoughts of a nature so violent and uncomplimentary that Philip hastily
+cut off all connection.
+
+As Philip did not know the name of the Dresden-china doll, it was
+fortunate that on opening the door, the butler promptly announced:
+
+"Her ladyship is not receiving."
+
+"Her ladyship will, I think, receive me," said Philip pleasantly, "when
+you tell her I come as the special ambassador of his lordship."
+
+From a tiny reception-room on the right of the entrance-hall there
+issued a feminine exclamation of surprise, not unmixed with joy; and in
+the hall the noble lady instantly appeared.
+
+When she saw herself confronted by a stranger, she halted in
+embarrassment. But as, even while she halted, her only thought had
+been, "Oh! if he will only ask me to forgive him!" Philip felt no
+embarrassment whatsoever. Outside, concealed behind a cab horse, was the
+erring but bitterly repentant husband; inside, her tenderest thoughts
+racing tumultuously toward him, was an unhappy child-wife begging to be
+begged to pardon.
+
+For a New York reporter, and a Harvard graduate of charm and good
+manners, it was too easy.
+
+"I do not know you," said her ladyship. But even as she spoke she
+motioned to the butler to go away. "You must be one of his new friends."
+Her tone was one of envy.
+
+"Indeed, I am his newest friend," Philip assured her; "but I can safely
+say no one knows his thoughts as well as I. And they are all of you!"
+
+The china shepherdess blushed with happiness, but instantly she shook
+her head.
+
+"They tell me I must not believe him," she announced. "They tell me--"
+
+"Never mind what they tell you," commanded Philip. "Listen to ME. He
+loves you. Better than ever before, he loves you. All he asks is the
+chance to tell you so. You cannot help but believe him. Who can look at
+you, and not believe that he loves you! Let me," he begged, "bring him
+to you." He started from her when, remembering the somewhat violent
+thoughts of the youthful husband, he added hastily: "Or perhaps it would
+be better if you called him yourself."
+
+"Called him!" exclaimed the lady. "He is in Paris-at the races--with
+her!"
+
+"If they tell you that sort of thing," protested Philip indignantly,
+"you must listen to me. He is not in Paris. He is not with her. There
+never was a her!"
+
+He drew aside the lace curtains and pointed. "He is there--behind that
+ancient cab horse, praying that you will let him tell you that not only
+did he never do it; but, what is much more important, he will never do
+it again."
+
+The lady herself now timidly drew the curtains apart, and then more
+boldly showed herself upon the iron balcony. Leaning over the scarlet
+geraniums, she beckoned with both hands. The result was instantaneous.
+Philip bolted for the front door, leaving it open; and, as he darted
+down the steps, the youthful husband, in strides resembling those of an
+ostrich, shot past him. Philip did not cease running until he was well
+out of Berkeley Square. Then, not ill-pleased with the adventure, he
+turned and smiled back at the house of yellow stucco.
+
+"Bless you, my children," he murmured; "bless you!"
+
+He continued to the Ritz; and, on crossing Piccadilly to the quieter
+entrance to the hotel in Arlington Street, found gathered around it
+a considerable crowd drawn up on either side of a red carpet that
+stretched down the steps of the hotel to a court carriage. A red carpet
+in June, when all is dry under foot and the sun is shining gently,
+can mean only royalty; and in the rear of the men in the street Philip
+halted. He remembered that for a few days the young King of Asturia and
+the Queen Mother were at the Ritz incognito; and, as he never had seen
+the young man who so recently and so tragically had been exiled from his
+own kingdom, Philip raised himself on tiptoe and stared expectantly.
+
+As easily as he could read their faces could he read the thoughts of
+those about him. They were thoughts of friendly curiosity, of pity for
+the exiles; on the part of the policemen who had hastened from a cross
+street, of pride at their temporary responsibility; on the part of the
+coachman of the court carriage, of speculation as to the possible amount
+of his Majesty's tip. The thoughts were as harmless and protecting as
+the warm sunshine.
+
+And then, suddenly and harshly, like the stroke of a fire bell at
+midnight, the harmonious chorus of gentle, hospitable thoughts was
+shattered by one that was discordant, evil, menacing. It was the thought
+of a man with a brain diseased; and its purpose was murder.
+
+"When they appear at the doorway," spoke the brain of the maniac, "I
+shall lift the bomb from my pocket. I shall raise it above my head. I
+shall crash it against the stone steps. It will hurl them and all of
+these people into eternity and me with them. But I shall LIVE--a martyr
+to the Cause. And the Cause will flourish!"
+
+Through the unsuspecting crowd, like a football player diving for a
+tackle, Philip hurled himself upon a little dark man standing close to
+the open door of the court carriage. From the rear Philip seized
+him around the waist and locked his arms behind him, elbow to elbow.
+Philip's face, appearing over the man's shoulder, stared straight into
+that of the policeman.
+
+"He has a bomb in his right-hand pocket!" yelled Philip. "I can hold him
+while you take it! But, for Heaven's sake, don't drop it!" Philip turned
+upon the crowd. "Run! all of you!" he shouted. "Run like the devil!"
+
+At that instant the boy King and his Queen Mother, herself still young
+and beautiful, and cloaked with a dignity and sorrow that her robes of
+mourning could not intensify, appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Go back, sir!" warned Philip. "He means to kill you!"
+
+At the words and at sight of the struggling men, the great lady swayed
+helplessly, her eyes filled with terror. Her son sprang protectingly
+in front of her. But the danger was past. A second policeman was now
+holding the maniac by the wrists, forcing his arms above his head;
+Philip's arms, like a lariat, were wound around his chest; and from his
+pocket the first policeman gingerly drew forth a round, black object of
+the size of a glass fire-grenade. He held it high in the air, and waved
+his free hand warningly. But the warning was unobserved. There was no
+one remaining to observe it. Leaving the would-be assassin struggling
+and biting in the grasp of the stalwart policeman, and the other
+policeman unhappily holding the bomb at arm's length, Philip sought to
+escape into the Ritz. But the young King broke through the circle of
+attendants and stopped him.
+
+"I must thank you," said the boy eagerly; "and I wish you to tell me how
+you came to suspect the man's purpose."
+
+Unable to speak the truth, Philip, the would-be writer of fiction, began
+to improvise fluently.
+
+"To learn their purpose, sir," he said, "is my business. I am of the
+International Police, and in the secret service of your Majesty."
+
+"Then I must know your name," said the King, and added with a dignity
+that was most becoming, "You will find we are not ungrateful."
+
+Philip smiled mysteriously and shook his head.
+
+"I said in your secret service," he repeated. "Did even your Majesty
+know me, my usefulness would be at an end." He pointed toward the two
+policemen. "If you desire to be just, as well as gracious, those are the
+men to reward."
+
+He slipped past the King and through the crowd of hotel officials into
+the hall and on into the corridor.
+
+The arrest had taken place so quietly and so quickly that through the
+heavy glass doors no sound had penetrated, and of the fact that they
+had been so close to a possible tragedy those in the corridor were still
+ignorant. The members of the Hungarian orchestra were arranging their
+music; a waiter was serving two men of middle age with sherry; and two
+distinguished-looking elderly gentlemen seated together on a sofa were
+talking in leisurely whispers.
+
+One of the two middle-aged men was well known to Philip, who as a
+reporter had often, in New York, endeavored to interview him on matters
+concerning the steel trust. His name was Faust. He was a Pennsylvania
+Dutchman from Pittsburgh, and at one time had been a foreman of the
+night shift in the same mills he now controlled. But with a roar and
+a spectacular flash, not unlike one of his own blast furnaces, he had
+soared to fame and fortune. He recognized Philip as one of the bright
+young men of the Republic; but in his own opinion he was far too
+self-important to betray that fact.
+
+Philip sank into an imitation Louis Quatorze chair beside a fountain in
+imitation of one in the apartment of the Pompadour, and ordered what
+he knew would be an execrable imitation of an American cocktail. While
+waiting for the cocktail and Lady Woodcote's luncheon party, Philip,
+from where he sat, could not help but overhear the conversation of Faust
+and of the man with him. The latter was a German with Hebraic features
+and a pointed beard. In loud tones he was congratulating the American
+many-time millionaire on having that morning come into possession of
+a rare and valuable masterpiece, a hitherto unknown and but recently
+discovered portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez.
+
+Philip sighed enviously.
+
+"Fancy," he thought, "owning a Velasquez! Fancy having it all to
+yourself! It must be fun to be rich. It certainly is hell to be poor!"
+
+The German, who was evidently a picture-dealer, was exclaiming in tones
+of rapture, and nodding his head with an air of awe and solemnity.
+
+"I am telling you the truth, Mr. Faust," he said. "In no gallery in
+Europe, no, not even in the Prado, is there such another Velasquez. This
+is what you are doing, Mr. Faust, you are robbing Spain. You are robbing
+her of something worth more to her than Cuba. And I tell you, so soon
+as it is known that this Velasquez is going to your home in Pittsburgh,
+every Spaniard will hate you and every art-collector will hate you, too.
+For it is the most wonderful art treasure in Europe. And what a bargain,
+Mr. Faust! What a bargain!"
+
+To make sure that the reporter was within hearing, Mr. Faust glanced
+in the direction of Philip and, seeing that he had heard, frowned
+importantly. That the reporter might hear still more, he also raised his
+voice.
+
+"Nothing can be called a bargain, Baron," he said, "that costs three
+hundred thousand dollars!"
+
+Again he could not resist glancing toward Philip, and so eagerly
+that Philip deemed it would be only polite to look interested. So he
+obligingly assumed a startled look, with which he endeavored to mingle
+simulations of surprise, awe, and envy.
+
+The next instant an expression of real surprise overspread his features.
+
+Mr. Faust continued. "If you will come upstairs," he said to the
+picture-dealer, "I will give you your check; and then I should like to
+drive to your apartments and take a farewell look at the picture."
+
+"I am sorry," the Baron said, "but I have had it moved to my art gallery
+to be packed."
+
+"Then let's go to the gallery," urged the patron of art. "We've just
+time before lunch." He rose to his feet, and on the instant the soul of
+the picture-dealer was filled with alarm.
+
+In actual words he said: "The picture is already boxed and in its lead
+coffin. No doubt by now it is on its way to Liverpool. I am sorry." But
+his thoughts, as Philip easily read them, were: "Fancy my letting this
+vulgar fool into the Tate Street workshop! Even HE would know that old
+masters are not found in a half-finished state on Chelsea-made frames
+and canvases. Fancy my letting him see those two half-completed Van
+Dycks, the new Hals, the half-dozen Corots. He would even see his own
+copy of Velasquez next to the one exactly like it--the one MacMillan
+finished yesterday and that I am sending to Oporto, where next year, in
+a convent, we shall 'discover' it."
+
+Philip's surprise gave way to intense amusement. In his delight at the
+situation upon which he had stumbled, he laughed aloud. The two men,
+who had risen, surprised at the spectacle of a young man laughing at
+nothing, turned and stared. Philip also rose.
+
+"Pardon me," he said to Faust, "but you spoke so loud I couldn't help
+overhearing. I think we've met before, when I was a reporter on the
+Republic."
+
+The Pittsburgh millionaire made a pretense, of annoyance.
+
+"Really!" he protested irritably, "you reporters butt in everywhere. No
+public man is safe. Is there no place we can go where you fellows won't
+annoy us?"
+
+"You can go to the devil for all I care," said Philip, "or even to
+Pittsburgh!"
+
+He saw the waiter bearing down upon him with the imitation cocktail,
+and moved to meet it. The millionaire, fearing the reporter would escape
+him, hastily changed his tone. He spoke with effective resignation.
+
+"However, since you've learned so much," he said, "I'll tell you the
+whole of it. I don't want the fact garbled, for it is of international
+importance. Do you know what a Velasquez is?"
+
+"Do you?" asked Philip.
+
+The millionaire smiled tolerantly.
+
+"I think I do," he said. "And to prove it, I shall tell you something
+that will be news to you. I have just bought a Velasquez that I am going
+to place in my art museum. It is worth three hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Philip accepted the cocktail the waiter presented. It was quite as bad
+as he had expected.
+
+"Now, I shall tell you something," he said, "that will be news to you.
+You are not buying a Velasquez. It is no more a Velasquez than this hair
+oil is a real cocktail. It is a bad copy, worth a few dollars."
+
+"How dare you!" shouted Faust. "Are you mad?"
+
+The face of the German turned crimson with rage.
+
+"Who is this insolent one?" he sputtered.
+
+"I will make you a sporting proposition," said Philip. "You can take it,
+or leave it. You two will get into a taxi. You will drive to this man's
+studio in Tate Street. You will find your Velasquez is there and not on
+its way to Liverpool. And you will find one exactly like it, and a dozen
+other 'old masters' half-finished. I'll bet you a hundred pounds I'm
+right! And I'll bet this man a hundred pounds that he DOESN'T DARE TAKE
+YOU TO HIS STUDIO!"
+
+"Indeed, I will not," roared the German. "It would be to insult myself."
+
+"It would be an easy way to earn a hundred pounds, too," said Philip.
+
+"How dare you insult the Baron?" demanded Faust. "What makes you
+think--"
+
+"I don't think, I know!" said Philip. "For the price of a taxi-cab fare
+to Tate Street, you win a hundred pounds."
+
+"We will all three go at once," cried the German. "My car is outside.
+Wait here. I will have it brought to the door?"
+
+Faust protested indignantly.
+
+"Do not disturb yourself, Baron," he said; "just because a fresh
+reporter--"
+
+But already the German had reached the hall. Nor did he stop there. They
+saw him, without his hat, rush into Piccadilly, spring into a taxi, and
+shout excitedly to the driver. The next moment he had disappeared.
+
+"That's the last you'll see of him," said Philip.
+
+"His actions are certainly peculiar," gasped the millionaire. "He did
+not wait for us. He didn't even wait for his hat! I think, after all, I
+had better go to Tate Street."
+
+"Do so," said Philip, "and save yourself three hundred thousand dollars,
+and from the laughter of two continents. You'll find me here at lunch.
+If I'm wrong, I'll pay you a hundred pounds."
+
+"You should come with me," said Faust. "It is only fair to yourself."
+
+"I'll take your word for what you find in the studio," said Philip. "I
+cannot go. This is my busy day."
+
+Without further words, the millionaire collected his hat and stick, and,
+in his turn, entered a taxi-cab and disappeared.
+
+Philip returned to the Louis Quatorze chair and lit a cigarette. Save
+for the two elderly gentlemen on the sofa, the lounge was still empty,
+and his reflections were undisturbed. He shook his head sadly.
+
+"Surely," Philip thought, "the French chap was right who said words were
+given us to conceal our thoughts. What a strange world it would be if
+every one possessed my power. Deception would be quite futile and lying
+would become a lost art. I wonder," he mused cynically, "is any one
+quite honest? Does any one speak as he thinks and think as he speaks?"
+
+At once came a direct answer to his question. The two elderly gentlemen
+had risen and, before separating, had halted a few feet from him.
+
+"I sincerely hope, Sir John," said one of the two, "that you have
+no regrets. I hope you believe that I have advised you in the best
+interests of all?"
+
+"I do, indeed," the other replied heartily "We shall be thought entirely
+selfish; but you know and I know that what we have done is for the
+benefit of the shareholders."
+
+Philip was pleased to find that the thoughts of each of the old
+gentlemen ran hand in hand with his spoken words. "Here, at least," he
+said to himself, "are two honest men."
+
+As though loath to part, the two gentlemen still lingered.
+
+"And I hope," continued the one addressed as Sir John, "that you approve
+of my holding back the public announcement of the combine until the
+afternoon. It will give the shareholders a better chance. Had we given
+out the news in this morning's papers the stockbrokers would have--"
+
+"It was most wise," interrupted the other. "Most just."
+
+The one called Sir John bowed himself away, leaving the other still
+standing at the steps of the lounge. With his hands behind his back, his
+chin sunk on his chest, he remained, gazing at nothing, his thoughts far
+away.
+
+Philip found them thoughts of curious interest. They were concerned with
+three flags. Now, the gentleman considered them separately; and Philip
+saw the emblems painted clearly in colors, fluttering and flattened
+by the breeze. Again, the gentleman considered them in various
+combinations; but always, in whatever order his mind arranged them, of
+the three his heart spoke always to the same flag, as the heart of a
+mother reaches toward her firstborn.
+
+Then the thoughts were diverted; and in his mind's eye the old gentleman
+was watching the launching of a little schooner from a shipyard on the
+Clyde. At her main flew one of the three flags--a flag with a red cross
+on a white ground. With thoughts tender and grateful, he followed her
+to strange, hot ports, through hurricanes and tidal waves; he saw her
+return again and again to the London docks, laden with odorous coffee,
+mahogany, red rubber, and raw bullion. He saw sister ships follow in her
+wake to every port in the South Sea; saw steam packets take the place
+of the ships with sails; saw the steam packets give way to great
+ocean liners, each a floating village, each equipped, as no village is
+equipped, with a giant power house, thousands of electric lamps, suite
+after suite of silk-lined boudoirs, with the floating harps that vibrate
+to a love message three hundred miles away, to the fierce call for help
+from a sinking ship. But at the main of each great vessel there still
+flew the same house-flag--the red cross on the field of white--only now
+in the arms of the cross there nestled proudly a royal crown.
+
+Philip cast a scared glance at the old gentleman, and raced down the
+corridor to the telephone.
+
+Of all the young Englishmen he knew, Maddox was his best friend and a
+stock-broker. In that latter capacity Philip had never before addressed
+him. Now he demanded his instant presence at the telephone.
+
+Maddox greeted him genially, but Philip cut him short.
+
+"I want you to act for me," he whispered, "and act quick! I want you
+to buy for me one thousand shares of the Royal Mail Line, of the
+Elder-Dempster, and of the Union Castle."
+
+He heard Maddox laugh indulgently.
+
+"There's nothing in that yarn of a combine," he called. "It has fallen
+through. Besides, shares are at fifteen pounds."
+
+Philip, having in his possession a second-class ticket and a five-pound
+note, was indifferent to that, and said so.
+
+"I don't care what they are," he shouted. "The combine is already signed
+and sealed, and no one knows it but myself. In an hour everybody will
+know it!"
+
+"What makes you think you know it?" demanded the broker.
+
+"I've seen the house-flags!" cried Philip. "I have--do as I tell you,"
+he commanded.
+
+There was a distracting delay.
+
+"No matter who's back of you," objected Maddox, "it's a big order on a
+gamble."
+
+"It's not a gamble," cried Philip. "It's an accomplished fact. I'm at
+the Ritz. Call me up there. Start buying now, and, when you've got a
+thousand of each, stop!"
+
+Philip was much too agitated to go far from the telephone booth; so for
+half an hour he sat in the reading-room, forcing himself to read the
+illustrated papers. When he found he had read the same advertisement
+five times, he returned to the telephone. The telephone boy met him
+half-way with a message.
+
+"Have secured for you a thousand shares of each," he read, "at fifteen.
+Maddox."
+
+Like a man awakening from a nightmare, Philip tried to separate
+the horror of the situation from the cold fact. The cold fact was
+sufficiently horrible. It was that, without a penny to pay for them,
+he had bought shares in three steamship lines, which shares, added
+together, were worth two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
+He returned down the corridor toward the lounge. Trembling at his own
+audacity, he was in a state of almost complete panic, when that happened
+which made his outrageous speculation of little consequence. It was
+drawing near to half-past one; and, in the persons of several smart men
+and beautiful ladies, the component parts of different luncheon parties
+were beginning to assemble.
+
+Of the luncheon to which Lady Woodcote had invited him, only one
+guest had arrived; but, so far as Philip was concerned, that one was
+sufficient. It was Helen herself, seated alone, with her eyes fixed
+on the doors opening from Piccadilly. Philip, his heart singing with
+appeals, blessings, and adoration, ran toward her. Her profile was
+toward him, and she could not see him; but he could see her. And he
+noted that, as though seeking some one, her eyes were turned searchingly
+upon each young man as he entered and moved from one to another of those
+already in the lounge. Her expression was eager and anxious.
+
+"If only," Philip exclaimed, "she were looking for me! She certainly is
+looking for some man. I wonder who it can be?"
+
+As suddenly as if he had slapped his face into a wall, he halted in his
+steps. Why should he wonder? Why did he not read her mind? Why did he
+not KNOW? A waiter was hastening toward him. Philip fixed his mind upon
+the waiter, and his eyes as well. Mentally Philip demanded of him: "Of
+what are you thinking?"
+
+There was no response. And then, seeing an unlit cigarette hanging
+from Philip's lips, the waiter hastily struck a match and proffered
+it. Obviously, his mind had worked, first, in observing the half-burned
+cigarette; next, in furnishing the necessary match. And of no step in
+that mental process had Philip been conscious! The conclusion was only
+too apparent. His power was gone. No longer was he a mind reader!
+
+Hastily Philip reviewed the adventures of the morning. As he considered
+them, the moral was obvious. The moment he had used his power to his
+own advantage, he had lost it. So long as he had exerted it for the
+happiness of the two lovers, to save the life of the King, to thwart
+the dishonesty of a swindler, he had been all-powerful; but when he
+endeavored to bend it to his own uses, it had fled from him. As he stood
+abashed and repentant, Helen turned her eyes toward him; and, at the
+sight of him, there leaped to them happiness and welcome and complete
+content. It was "the look that never was on land or sea," and it was not
+necessary to be a mind reader to understand it. Philip sprang toward her
+as quickly as a man dodges a taxi-cab.
+
+"I came early," said Helen, "because I wanted to talk to you before the
+others arrived." She seemed to be repeating words already rehearsed, to
+be following a course of conduct already predetermined. "I want to tell
+you," she said, "that I am sorry you are going away. I want to tell you
+that I shall miss you very much." She paused and drew a long breath. And
+she looked at Philip as if she was begging him to make it easier for her
+to go on.
+
+Philip proceeded to make it easier.
+
+"Will you miss me," he asked, "in the Row, where I used to wait among
+the trees to see you ride past? Will you miss me at dances, where I used
+to hide behind the dowagers to watch you waltzing by? Will you miss me
+at night, when you come home by sunrise, and I am not hiding against the
+railings of the Carlton Club, just to see you run across the pavement
+from your carriage, just to see the light on your window blind, just to
+see the light go out, and to know that you are sleeping?"
+
+Helen's eyes were smiling happily. She looked away from him.
+
+"Did you use to do that?" she asked.
+
+"Every night I do that," said Philip. "Ask the policemen! They arrested
+me three times."
+
+"Why?" said Helen gently.
+
+But Philip was not yet free to speak, so he said:
+
+"They thought I was a burglar."
+
+Helen frowned. He was making it very hard for her.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said. "Why did you keep guard outside my
+window?"
+
+"It was the policeman kept guard," said Philip. "I was there only as a
+burglar. I came to rob. But I was a coward, or else I had a conscience,
+or else I knew my own unworthiness." There was a long pause. As both
+of them, whenever they heard the tune afterward, always remembered, the
+Hungarian band, with rare inconsequence, was playing the "Grizzly Bear,"
+and people were trying to speak to Helen. By her they were received with
+a look of so complete a lack of recognition, and by Philip with a glare
+of such savage hate, that they retreated in dismay. The pause seemed to
+last for many years.
+
+At last Helen said: "Do you know the story of the two roses? They grew
+in a garden under a lady's window. They both loved her. One looked up
+at her from the ground and sighed for her; but the other climbed to
+the lady's window, and she lifted him in and kissed him--because he had
+dared to climb."
+
+Philip took out his watch and looked at it. But Helen did not mind his
+doing that, because she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She
+was delighted to find that she was making it very hard for him, too.
+
+"At any moment," Philip said, "I may know whether I owe two hundred
+and twenty-five thousand dollars which I can never pay, or whether I am
+worth about that sum. I should like to continue this conversation at
+the exact place where you last spoke--AFTER I know whether I am going to
+jail, or whether I am worth a quarter of a million dollars."
+
+Helen laughed aloud with happiness.
+
+"I knew that was it!" she cried. "You don't like my money. I was afraid
+you did not like ME. If you dislike my money, I will give it away, or I
+will give it to you to keep for me. The money does not matter, so long
+as you don't dislike me."
+
+What Philip would have said to that, Helen could not know, for a page in
+many buttons rushed at him with a message from the telephone, and with
+a hand that trembled Philip snatched it. It read: "Combine is announced,
+shares have gone to thirty-one, shall I hold or sell?"
+
+That at such a crisis he should permit of any interruption hurt Helen
+deeply. She regarded him with unhappy eyes. Philip read the message
+three times. At last, and not without uneasy doubts as to his own
+sanity, he grasped the preposterous truth. He was worth almost a quarter
+of a million dollars! At the page he shoved his last and only five-pound
+note. He pushed the boy from him.
+
+"Run!" he commanded. "Get out of here, Tell him he is to SELL!"
+
+He turned to Helen with a look in his eyes that could not be questioned
+or denied. He seemed incapable of speech, and, to break the silence,
+Helen said: "Is it good news?"
+
+"That depends entirely upon you," replied Philip soberly. "Indeed, all
+my future life depends upon what you are going to say next."
+
+Helen breathed deeply and happily.
+
+"And--what am I going to say?"
+
+"How can I know that?" demanded Philip. "Am I a mind reader?"
+
+But what she said may be safely guessed from the fact that they both
+chucked Lady Woodcotes luncheon, and ate one of penny buns, which they
+shared with the bears in Regents Park.
+
+Philip was just able to pay for the penny buns. Helen paid for the
+taxi-cab.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7. THE NAKED MAN
+
+In their home town of Keepsburg, the Keeps were the reigning dynasty,
+socially and in every way. Old man Keep was president of the trolley
+line, the telephone company, and the Keep National Bank. But Fred, his
+son, and the heir apparent, did not inherit the business ability of his
+father; or, if he did, he took pains to conceal that fact. Fred had gone
+through Harvard, but as to that also, unless he told people, they would
+not have known it. Ten minutes after Fred met a man he generally told
+him.
+
+When Fred arranged an alliance with Winnie Platt, who also was of the
+innermost inner set of Keepsburg, everybody said Keepsburg would soon
+lose them. And everybody was right. When single, each had sighed for
+other social worlds to conquer, and when they combined their fortunes
+and ambitions they found Keepsburg impossible, and they left it to
+lay siege to New York. They were too crafty to at once attack New York
+itself. A widow lady they met while on their honeymoon at Palm Beach had
+told them not to attempt that. And she was the Palm Beach correspondent
+of a society paper they naturally accepted her advice. She warned them
+that in New York the waiting-list is already interminable, and that, if
+you hoped to break into New York society, the clever thing to do was to
+lay siege to it by way of the suburbs and the country clubs. If you went
+direct to New York knowing no one, you would at once expose that fact,
+and the result would be disastrous.
+
+She told them of a couple like themselves, young and rich and from the
+West, who, at the first dance to which they were invited, asked, "Who is
+the old lady in the wig?" and that question argued them so unknown that
+it set them back two years. It was a terrible story, and it filled the
+Keeps with misgivings. They agreed with the lady correspondent that it
+was far better to advance leisurely; first firmly to intrench themselves
+in the suburbs, and then to enter New York, not as the Keeps from
+Keepsburg, which meant nothing, but as the Fred Keeps of Long Island, or
+Westchester, or Bordentown.
+
+"In all of those places," explained the widow lady, "our smartest people
+have country homes, and at the country club you may get to know them.
+Then, when winter comes, you follow them on to the city."
+
+The point from which the Keeps elected to launch their attack was
+Scarboro-on-the-Hudson. They selected Scarboro because both of them
+could play golf, and they planned that their first skirmish should be
+fought and won upon the golf-links of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club.
+But the attack did not succeed. Something went wrong. They began to fear
+that the lady correspondent had given them the wrong dope. For, although
+three months had passed, and they had played golf together until they
+were as loath to clasp a golf club as a red-hot poker, they knew no one,
+and no one knew them. That is, they did not know the Van Wardens; and
+if you lived at Scarboro and were not recognized by the Van Wardens, you
+were not to be found on any map.
+
+Since the days of Hendrik Hudson the country-seat of the Van Wardens
+had looked down upon the river that bears his name, and ever since those
+days the Van Wardens had looked down upon everybody else. They were so
+proud that at all their gates they had placed signs reading, "No horses
+allowed. Take the other road." The other road was an earth road used by
+tradespeople from Ossining; the road reserved for the Van Wardens, and
+automobiles, was of bluestone. It helped greatly to give the Van Warden
+estate the appearance of a well kept cemetery. And those Van Wardens who
+occupied the country-place were as cold and unsociable as the sort of
+people who occupy cemeteries--except "Harry" Van Warden, and she lived
+in New York at the Turf Club.
+
+Harry, according to all local tradition--for he frequently motored out
+to Warden Koopf, the Van Warden country-seat--and, according to the
+newspapers, was a devil of a fellow and in no sense cold or unsociable.
+So far as the Keeps read of him, he was always being arrested for
+overspeeding, or breaking his collar-bone out hunting, or losing his
+front teeth at polo. This greatly annoyed the proud sisters at Warden
+Koopf; not because Harry was arrested or had broken his collar-bone, but
+because it dragged the family name into the newspapers.
+
+"If you would only play polo or ride to hounds instead of playing golf,"
+sighed Winnie Keep to her husband, "you would meet Harry Van Warden, and
+he'd introduce you to his sisters, and then we could break in anywhere."
+
+"If I was to ride to hounds," returned her husband, "the only thing I'd
+break would be my neck."
+
+The country-place of the Keeps was completely satisfactory, and for the
+purposes of their social comedy the stage-setting was perfect. The
+house was one they had rented from a man of charming taste and inflated
+fortune; and with it they had taken over his well-disciplined butler,
+his pictures, furniture, family silver, and linen. It stood upon an
+eminence, was heavily wooded, and surrounded by many gardens; but its
+chief attraction was an artificial lake well stocked with trout that lay
+directly below the terrace of the house and also in full view from the
+road to Albany.
+
+This latter fact caused Winnie Keep much concern. In the neighborhood
+were many Italian laborers, and on several nights the fish had tempted
+these born poachers to trespass; and more than once, on hot summer
+evenings, small boys from Tarrytown and Ossining had broken through the
+hedge, and used the lake as a swimming-pool.
+
+"It makes me nervous," complained Winnie. "I don't like the idea of
+people prowling around so near the house. And think of those twelve
+hundred convicts, not one mile away, in Sing Sing. Most of them are
+burglars, and if they ever get out, our house is the very first one
+they'll break into."
+
+"I haven't caught anybody in this neighborhood breaking into our house
+yet," said Fred, "and I'd be glad to see even a burglar!"
+
+They were seated on the brick terrace that overlooked the lake. It was
+just before the dinner hour, and the dusk of a wonderful October
+night had fallen on the hedges, the clumps of evergreens, the rows
+of close-clipped box. A full moon was just showing itself above the
+tree-tops, turning the lake into moving silver. Fred rose from his
+wicker chair and, crossing to his young bride, touched her hair
+fearfully with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"What if we don't know anybody, Win," he said, "and nobody knows us?
+It's been a perfectly good honeymoon, hasn't it? If you just look at it
+that way, it works out all right. We came here really for our honeymoon,
+to be together, to be alone--"
+
+Winnie laughed shortly. "They certainly have left us alone!" she sighed.
+
+"But where else could we have been any happier?" demanded the young
+husband loyally. "Where will you find any prettier place than this, just
+as it is at this minute, so still and sweet and silent? There's nothing
+the matter with that moon, is there? Nothing the matter with the lake?
+Where's there a better place for a honeymoon? It's a bower--a bower of
+peace, solitude a--bower of--"
+
+As though mocking his words, there burst upon the sleeping countryside
+the shriek of a giant siren. It was raucous, virulent, insulting. It
+came as sharply as a scream of terror, it continued in a bellow of rage.
+Then, as suddenly as it had cried aloud, it sank to silence; only after
+a pause of an instant, as though giving a signal, to shriek again in two
+sharp blasts. And then again it broke into the hideous long drawn scream
+of rage, insistent, breathless, commanding; filling the soul of him who
+heard it, even of the innocent, with alarm.
+
+"In the name of Heaven!" gasped Keep, "what's that?"
+
+Down the terrace the butler was hastening toward them. When he stopped,
+he spoke as though he were announcing dinner. "A convict, sir," he said,
+"has escaped from Sing Sing. I thought you might not understand the
+whistle. I thought perhaps you would wish Mrs. Keep to come in-doors."
+
+"Why?" asked Winnie Keep.
+
+"The house is near the road, madam," said the butler. "And there are
+so many trees and bushes. Last summer two of them hid here, and the
+keepers--there was a fight." The man glanced at Keep. Fred touched his
+wife on the arm.
+
+"It's time to dress for dinner, Win," he said.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" demanded Winnie.
+
+"I'm going to finish this cigar first. It doesn't take me long to
+change." He turned to the butler. "And I'll have a cocktail, too I'll
+have it out here."
+
+The servant left them, but in the French window that opened from the
+terrace to the library Mrs. Keep lingered irresolutely. "Fred," she
+begged, "you--you're not going to poke around in the bushes, are
+you?--just because you think I'm frightened?"
+
+Her husband laughed at her. "I certainly am NOT!" he said. "And you're
+not frightened, either. Go in. I'll be with you in a minute."
+
+But the girl hesitated. Still shattering the silence of the night the
+siren shrieked relentlessly; it seemed to be at their very door, to beat
+and buffet the window-panes. The bride shivered and held her fingers to
+her ears.
+
+"Why don't they stop it!" she whispered. "Why don't they give him a
+chance!"
+
+When she had gone, Fred pulled one of the wicker chairs to the edge
+of the terrace, and, leaning forward with his chin in his hands, sat
+staring down at the lake. The moon had cleared the tops of the trees,
+had blotted the lawns with black, rigid squares, had disguised the
+hedges with wavering shadows. Somewhere near at hand a criminal--a
+murderer, burglar, thug--was at large, and the voice of the prison he
+had tricked still bellowed in rage, in amazement, still clamored not
+only for his person but perhaps for his life. The whole countryside
+heard it: the farmers bedding down their cattle for the night; the
+guests of the Briar Cliff Inn, dining under red candle shades; the joy
+riders from the city, racing their cars along the Albany road. It woke
+the echoes of Sleepy Hollow. It crossed the Hudson. The granite walls
+of the Palisades flung it back against the granite walls of the prison.
+Whichever way the convict turned, it hunted him, reaching for him,
+pointing him out--stirring in the heart of each who heard it the lust of
+the hunter, which never is so cruel as when the hunted thing is a man.
+
+"Find him!" shrieked the siren. "Find him! He's there, behind your
+hedge! He's kneeling by the stone wall. THAT'S he running in the
+moonlight. THAT'S he crawling through the dead leaves! Stop him! Drag
+him down! He's mine! Mine!"
+
+But from within the prison, from within the gray walls that made the
+home of the siren, each of twelve hundred men cursed it with his soul.
+Each, clinging to the bars of his cell, each, trembling with a fearful
+joy, each, his thumbs up, urging on with all the strength of his will
+the hunted, rat-like figure that stumbled panting through the crisp
+October night, bewildered by strange lights, beset by shadows,
+staggering and falling, running like a mad dog in circles, knowing that
+wherever his feet led him the siren still held him by the heels.
+
+As a rule, when Winnie Keep was dressing for dinner, Fred, in the room
+adjoining, could hear her unconsciously and light-heartedly singing
+to herself. It was a habit of hers that he loved. But on this night,
+although her room was directly above where he sat upon the terrace, he
+heard no singing. He had been on the terrace for a quarter of an hour.
+Gridley, the aged butler who was rented with the house, and who for
+twenty years had been an inmate of it, had brought the cocktail and
+taken away the empty glass. And Keep had been alone with his thoughts.
+They were entirely of the convict. If the man suddenly confronted him
+and begged his aid, what would he do? He knew quite well what he would
+do. He considered even the means by which he would assist the fugitive
+to a successful get-away.
+
+The ethics of the question did not concern Fred. He did not weigh his
+duty to the State of New York, or to society. One day, when he had
+visited "the institution," as a somewhat sensitive neighborhood prefers
+to speak of it, he was told that the chance of a prisoner's escaping
+from Sing Sing and not being at once retaken was one out of six
+thousand. So with Fred it was largely a sporting proposition. Any man
+who could beat a six-thousand-to-one shot commanded his admiration.
+
+And, having settled his own course of action, he tried to imagine
+himself in the place of the man who at that very moment was endeavoring
+to escape. Were he that man, he would first, he decided, rid himself
+of his tell-tale clothing. But that would leave him naked, and in
+Westchester County a naked man would be quite as conspicuous as one in
+the purple-gray cloth of the prison. How could he obtain clothes? He
+might hold up a passer-by, and, if the passer-by did not flee from
+him or punch him into insensibility, he might effect an exchange of
+garments; he might by threats obtain them from some farmer; he might
+despoil a scarecrow.
+
+But with none of these plans was Fred entirely satisfied. The question
+deeply perplexed him. How best could a naked man clothe himself? And as
+he sat pondering that point, from the bushes a naked man emerged. He was
+not entirely undraped. For around his nakedness he had drawn a canvas
+awning. Fred recognized it as having been torn from one of the row-boats
+in the lake. But, except for that, the man was naked to his heels. He
+was a young man of Fred's own age. His hair was cut close, his face
+smooth-shaven, and above his eye was a half-healed bruise. He had the
+sharp, clever, rat-like face of one who lived by evil knowledge. Water
+dripped from him, and either for that reason or from fright the young
+man trembled, and, like one who had been running, breathed in short,
+hard gasps.
+
+Fred was surprised to find that he was not in the least surprised. It
+was as though he had been waiting for the man, as though it had been an
+appointment.
+
+Two thoughts alone concerned him: that before he could rid himself of
+his visitor his wife might return and take alarm, and that the man, not
+knowing his friendly intentions, and in a state to commit murder, might
+rush him. But the stranger made no hostile move, and for a moment in the
+moonlight the two young men eyed each other warily.
+
+Then, taking breath and with a violent effort to stop the chattering of
+his teeth, the stranger launched into his story.
+
+"I took a bath in your pond," he blurted forth, "and--and they stole my
+clothes! That's why I'm like this!"
+
+Fred was consumed with envy. In comparison with this ingenious narrative
+how prosaic and commonplace became his own plans to rid himself of
+accusing garments and explain his nakedness. He regarded the stranger
+with admiration. But even though he applauded the other's invention, he
+could not let him suppose that he was deceived by it.
+
+"Isn't it rather a cold night to take a bath?" he said.
+
+As though in hearty agreement, the naked man burst into a violent fit of
+shivering.
+
+"It wasn't a bath," he gasped. "It was a bet!"
+
+"A what!" exclaimed Fred. His admiration was increasing. "A bet? Then
+you are not alone?"
+
+"I am NOW--damn them!" exclaimed the naked one. He began again
+reluctantly. "We saw you from the road, you and a woman, sitting here
+in the light from that room. They bet me I didn't dare strip and swim
+across your pond with you sitting so near. I can see now it was framed
+up on me from the start. For when I was swimming back I saw them run to
+where I'd left my clothes, and then I heard them crank up, and when I
+got to the hedge the car was gone!"
+
+Keep smiled encouragingly. "The car!" he assented. "So you've been
+riding around in the moonlight?"
+
+The other nodded, and was about to speak when there burst in upon them
+the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and
+came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed
+fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a
+fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer
+to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave the eyes of
+Keep.
+
+"You--you couldn't lend me a suit of clothes could you?" he stuttered.
+"Just for to-night? I'll send them back. It's all right," he added;
+reassuringly. "I live near here."
+
+With a start Keep raised his eyes, and distressed by his look, the young
+man continued less confidently.
+
+"I don't blame you if you don't believe it," he stammered, "seeing me
+like this; but I DO live right near here. Everybody around here knows
+me, and I guess you've read about me in the papers, too. I'm--that is,
+my name--" like one about to take a plunge he drew a short breath, and
+the rat-like eyes regarded Keep watchfully--"my name is Van Warden. I'm
+the one you read about--Harry--I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+After a pause, slowly and reprovingly Fred shook his head; but his smile
+was kindly even regretful, as though he were sorry he could not longer
+enjoy the stranger's confidences.
+
+"My boy!" he exclaimed, "you're MORE than Van Warden! You're a genius!"
+He rose and made a peremptory gesture. "Sorry," he said, "but this isn't
+safe for either of us. Follow me, and I'll dress you up and send you
+where you want to go." He turned and whispered over his shoulder: "Some
+day let me hear from you. A man with your nerve--"
+
+In alarm the naked one with a gesture commanded silence.
+
+The library led to the front hall. In this was the coat-room. First
+making sure the library and hall were free of servants, Fred tiptoed to
+the coat-room and, opening the door, switched: on the electric light.
+The naked man, leaving in his wake a trail of damp footprints, followed
+at his heels.
+
+Fred pointed at golf-capes, sweaters, greatcoats hanging from hooks, and
+on the floor at boots and overshoes.
+
+"Put on that motor-coat and the galoshes," he commanded. "They'll cover
+you in case you have to run for it. I'm going to leave you here while
+I get you some clothes. If any of the servants butt in, don't lose your
+head. Just say you're waiting to see me--Mr. Keep. I won't be long.
+Wait."
+
+"Wait!" snorted the stranger. "You BET I'll wait!"
+
+As Fred closed the door upon him, the naked one was rubbing himself
+violently with Mrs. Keep's yellow golf-jacket.
+
+In his own room Fred collected a suit of blue serge, a tennis shirt,
+boots, even a tie. Underclothes he found ready laid out for him, and he
+snatched them from the bed. From a roll of money in his bureau drawer
+he counted out a hundred dollars. Tactfully he slipped the money in the
+trousers pocket of the serge suit and with the bundle of clothes in his
+arms raced downstairs and shoved them into the coat-room.
+
+"Don't come out until I knock," he commanded. "And," he added in a
+vehement whisper, "don't come out at all unless you have clothes on!"
+
+The stranger grunted.
+
+Fred rang for Gridley and told him to have his car brought around to the
+door. He wanted it to start at once within two minutes. When the butler
+had departed, Fred, by an inch, again opened the coat-room door. The
+stranger had draped himself in the underclothes and the shirt, and at
+the moment was carefully arranging the tie.
+
+"Hurry!" commanded Keep. "The car'll be here in a minute. Where shall I
+tell him to take you?"
+
+The stranger chuckled excitedly; his confidence seemed to be returning.
+"New York," he whispered, "fast as he can get there! Look here," he
+added doubtfully, "there's a roll of bills in these clothes."
+
+"They're yours," said Fred.
+
+The stranger exclaimed vigorously. "You're all right!" he whispered. "I
+won't forget this, or you either. I'll send the money back same time I
+send the clothes."
+
+"Exactly!" said Fred.
+
+The wheels of the touring-car crunched on the gravel drive, and Fred
+slammed to the door, and like a sentry on guard paced before it. After
+a period which seemed to stretch over many minutes there came from the
+inside a cautious knocking. With equal caution Fred opened the door of
+the width of a finger, and put his ear to the crack.
+
+"You couldn't find me a button-hook, could you?" whispered the stranger.
+
+Indignantly Fred shut the door and, walking to the veranda, hailed the
+chauffeur. James, the chauffeur, was a Keepsburg boy, and when Keep had
+gone to Cambridge James had accompanied him. Keep knew the boy could be
+trusted.
+
+"You're to take a man to New York," he said, "or wherever he wants
+to go. Don't talk to him. Don't ask any questions. So, if YOU'RE
+questioned, you can say you know nothing. That's for your own good!"
+
+The chauffeur mechanically touched his cap and started down the steps.
+As he did so, the prison whistle, still unsatisfied, still demanding its
+prey, shattered the silence. As though it had hit him a physical blow,
+the youth jumped. He turned and lifted startled, inquiring eyes to where
+Keep stood above him.
+
+"I told you," said Keep, "to ask no questions."
+
+As Fred re-entered the hall, Winnie Keep was coming down the stairs
+toward him. She had changed to one of the prettiest evening gowns of her
+trousseau, and so outrageously lovely was the combination of herself and
+the gown that her husband's excitement and anxiety fell from him, and he
+was lost in admiration. But he was not for long lost. To his horror; the
+door of the coat-closet opened toward his wife and out of the closet the
+stranger emerged. Winnie, not accustomed to seeing young men suddenly
+appear from among the dust-coats, uttered a sharp shriek.
+
+With what he considered great presence of mind, Fred swung upon the
+visitor.
+
+"Did you fix it?" he demanded.
+
+The visitor did not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his
+eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by
+Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to
+nod his head dully.
+
+"Come," commanded Fred. "The car is waiting."
+
+Still the stranger did not move. As though he had never before seen a
+woman, as though her dazzling loveliness held him in a trance, he stood
+still, gazing, gaping, devouring Winnie with his eyes. In her turn,
+Winnie beheld a strange youth who looked like a groom out of livery,
+so overcome by her mere presence as to be struck motionless and
+inarticulate. For protection she moved in some alarm toward her husband.
+
+The stranger gave a sudden jerk of his body that might have been
+intended for a bow. Before Keep could interrupt him, like a parrot
+reciting its lesson, he exclaimed explosively:
+
+"My name's Van Warden. I'm Harry Van Warden."
+
+He seemed as little convinced of the truth of his statement as though
+he had announced that he was the Czar of Russia. It was as though a
+stage-manager had drilled him in the lines.
+
+But upon Winnie, as her husband saw to his dismay, the words produced
+an instant and appalling effect. She fairly radiated excitement and
+delight. How her husband had succeeded in capturing the social prize of
+Scarboro she could not imagine, but, for doing so, she flashed toward
+him a glance of deep and grateful devotion.
+
+Then she beamed upon the stranger. "Won't Mr. Van Warden stay to
+dinner?" she asked.
+
+Her husband emitted a howl. "He will NOT!" he cried. "He's not that kind
+of a Van Warden. He's a plumber. He's the man that fixes the telephone!"
+
+He seized the visitor by the sleeve of the long motor-coat and dragged
+him down the steps. Reluctantly, almost resistingly, the visitor
+stumbled after him, casting backward amazed glances at the beautiful
+lady. Fred thrust him into the seat beside the chauffeur. Pointing at
+the golf-cap and automobile goggles which the stranger was stupidly
+twisting in his hands, Fred whispered fiercely:
+
+"Put those on! Cover your face! Don't speak! The man knows what to do."
+
+With eager eyes and parted lips James the chauffeur was waiting for the
+signal. Fred nodded sharply, and the chauffeur stooped to throw in the
+clutch. But the car did not start. From the hedge beside the driveway,
+directly in front of the wheels, something on all fours threw itself
+upon the gravel; something in a suit of purple-gray; something torn
+and bleeding, smeared with sweat and dirt; something that cringed and
+crawled, that tried to rise and sank back upon its knees, lifting to the
+glare of the head-lights the white face and white hair of a very old,
+old man. The kneeling figure sobbed; the sobs rising from far down in
+the pit of the stomach, wrenching the body like waves of nausea. The man
+stretched his arms toward them. From long disuse his voice cracked and
+broke.
+
+"I'm done!" he sobbed. "I can't go no farther! I give myself up!"
+
+Above the awful silence that held the four young people, the prison
+siren shrieked in one long, mocking howl of triumph.
+
+It was the stranger who was the first to act. Pushing past Fred, and
+slipping from his own shoulders the long motor-coat, he flung it over
+the suit of purple-gray. The goggles he clapped upon the old man's
+frightened eyes, the golf-cap he pulled down over the white hair. With
+one arm he lifted the convict, and with the other dragged and pushed him
+into the seat beside the chauffeur. Into the hands of the chauffeur he
+thrust the roll of bills.
+
+"Get him away!" he ordered. "It's only twelve miles to the Connecticut
+line. As soon as you're across, buy him clothes and a ticket to Boston.
+Go through White Plains to Greenwich--and then you're safe!"
+
+As though suddenly remembering the presence of the owner of the car, he
+swung upon Fred. "Am I right?" he demanded.
+
+"Of course!" roared Fred. He flung his arm at the chauffeur as though
+throwing him into space.
+
+"Get-to-hell-out-of-here!" he shouted.
+
+The chauffeur, by profession a criminal, but by birth a human being,
+chuckled savagely and this time threw in the clutch. With a grinding of
+gravel the racing-car leaped into the night, its ruby rear lamp winking
+in farewell, its tiny siren answering the great siren of the prison in
+jeering notes of joy and victory.
+
+Fred had supposed that at the last moment the younger convict proposed
+to leap to the running-board, but instead the stranger remained
+motionless.
+
+Fred shouted impotently after the flying car. In dismay he seized the
+stranger by the arm.
+
+"But you?" he demanded. "How are you going to get away?"
+
+The stranger turned appealingly to where upon the upper step stood
+Winnie Keep.
+
+"I don't want to get away," he said. "I was hoping, maybe, you'd let me
+stay to dinner."
+
+A terrible and icy chill crept down the spine of Fred Keep. He moved so
+that the light from the hall fell full upon the face of the stranger.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me," Fred demanded, "who the devil you are?"
+
+The stranger exclaimed peevishly. "I've BEEN telling you all evening,"
+he protested. "I'm Harry Van Warden!"
+
+Gridley, the ancient butler, appeared in the open door.
+
+"Dinner is served, madam," he said.
+
+The stranger gave an exclamation of pleasure. "Hello, Gridley!" he
+cried. "Will you please tell Mr. Keep who I am? Tell him, if he'll ask
+me to dinner, I won't steal the spoons."
+
+Upon the face of Gridley appeared a smile it never had been the
+privilege of Fred Keep to behold. The butler beamed upon the stranger
+fondly, proudly, by the right of long acquaintanceship, with the
+affection of an old friend. Still beaming, he bowed to Keep.
+
+"If Mr. Harry--Mr. Van Warden," he said, "is to stay to dinner, might I
+suggest, sir, he is very partial to the Paul Vibert, '84."
+
+Fred Keep gazed stupidly from his butler to the stranger and then at his
+wife. She was again radiantly beautiful and smilingly happy.
+
+Gridley coughed tentatively. "Shall I open a bottle, sir?" he asked.
+
+Hopelessly Fred tossed his arms heavenward.
+
+"Open a case!" he roared.
+
+At ten o'clock, when they were still at table and reaching a state of
+such mutual appreciation that soon they would be calling each other by
+their first names, Gridley brought in a written message he had taken
+from the telephone. It was a long-distance call from Yonkers, sent by
+James, the faithful chauffeur.
+
+Fred read it aloud.
+
+"I got that party the articles he needed," it read, "and saw him safe on
+a train to Boston. On the way back I got arrested for speeding the car
+on the way down. Please send money. I am in a cell in Yonkers."
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
+
+Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with
+the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times. Twice,
+unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round
+Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset. Jimmie
+knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not
+deceived. He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and
+secretly vowed to "stalk" him. From that moment, had the stranger known
+it, he was as good as dead. For a boy scout with badges on his
+sleeve for "stalking" and "path-finding," not to boast of others
+for "gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy. Even had, General
+Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie
+Sniffen would have been one. Because, by birth he was a boy, and by
+inheritance, a scout. In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of
+the county families. If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen; and with
+Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of
+the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach
+road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of
+his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and
+rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
+
+If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's
+great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted
+deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted
+weasles will count for nothing. It will not explain why to Jimmie, from
+Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the
+cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as
+familiar as his own kitchen garden, nor explain why, when you could not
+see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could
+see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
+
+Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's
+axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before
+in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own
+tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a
+secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he
+would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
+
+"But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure
+himself. And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill
+with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right. But still
+Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that
+when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther. "Mebbe dad
+told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed
+it, or, mebbe, I read it in a story book."
+
+The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy
+scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent. He was spending the
+week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides
+being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President
+of the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill
+Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them. In
+deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen
+in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war. It was
+his peroration that made trouble.
+
+"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with
+Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit. You
+can begin now. When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New
+Bedford. They will first capture the munition works at Springfield,
+Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and
+then they will start for New York City. They will follow the New Haven
+and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.
+I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet,
+"that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as
+blackberries. They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to
+find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what
+extent their armies can live on the country. They are counting the cows,
+the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down
+on their maps the wells and streams."
+
+As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the
+door, Mr. Gould spoke in a whisper. "Keep your eyes open!" he commanded.
+"Watch every stranger. If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your
+sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here. Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be
+prepared!'"
+
+That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they
+saw spiked helmets.
+
+Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.
+
+"Next time you talk to my scouts," he declared, "you'll talk on 'Votes
+for Women.' After what you said to-night every real estate agent who
+dares open a map will be arrested. We're not trying to drive people away
+from Westchester, we're trying to sell them building sites."
+
+"YOU are not!" retorted his friend, "you own half the county now, and
+you're trying to buy the other half."
+
+"I'm a justice of the peace," explained Van Vorst. "I don't know WHY I
+am, except that they wished it on me. All I get out of it is trouble.
+The Italians make charges against my best friends for overspeeding and
+I have to fine them, and my best friends bring charges against the
+Italians for poaching, and when I fine the Italians, they send me Black
+Hand letters. And now every day I'll be asked to issue a warrant for
+a German spy who is selecting gun sites. And he will turn out to be a
+millionaire who is tired of living at the Ritz-Carlton and wants to
+'own his own home' and his own golf-links. And he'll be so hot at being
+arrested that he'll take his millions to Long Island and try to break
+into the Piping Rock Club. And, it will be your fault!"
+
+The young justice of the peace was right. At least so far as Jimmie
+Sniffen was concerned, the words of the war prophet had filled one mind
+with unrest. In the past Jimmie's idea of a holiday had been to spend it
+scouting in the woods. In this pleasure he was selfish. He did not want
+companions who talked, and trampled upon the dead leaves so that they
+frightened the wild animals and gave the Indians warning. Jimmie
+liked to pretend. He liked to fill the woods with wary and hostile
+adversaries. It was a game of his own inventing. If he crept to the
+top of a hill and on peering over it, surprised a fat woodchuck, he
+pretended the woodchuck was a bear, weighing two hundred pounds; if,
+himself unobserved, he could lie and watch, off its guard, a rabbit,
+squirrel, or, most difficult of all, a crow, it became a deer and that
+night at supper Jimmie made believe he was eating venison. Sometimes he
+was a scout of the Continental Army and carried despatches to General
+Washington. The rules of that game were that if any man ploughing in
+the fields, or cutting trees in the woods, or even approaching along the
+same road, saw Jimmie before Jimmie saw him, Jimmie was taken prisoner,
+and before sunrise was shot as a spy. He was seldom shot. Or else why
+on his sleeve was the badge for "stalking." But always to have to make
+believe became monotonous. Even "dry shopping" along the Rue de la Paix
+when you pretend you can have anything you see in any window, leaves one
+just as rich, but unsatisfied. So the advice of the war correspondent
+to seek out German spies came to Jimmie like a day at the circus, like a
+week at the Danbury Fair. It not only was a call to arms, to protect his
+flag and home, but a chance to play in earnest the game in which he
+most delighted. No longer need he pretend. No longer need he waste his
+energies in watching, unobserved, a greedy rabbit rob a carrot field.
+The game now was his fellow-man and his enemy; not only his enemy, but
+the enemy of his country.
+
+In his first effort Jimmie was not entirely successful. The man looked
+the part perfectly; he wore an auburn beard, disguising spectacles, and
+he carried a suspicious knapsack. But he turned out to be a professor
+from the Museum of Natural History, who wanted to dig for Indian
+arrow-heads. And when Jimmie threatened to arrest him, the indignant
+gentleman arrested Jimmie. Jimmie escaped only by leading the professor
+to a secret cave of his own, though on some one else's property, where
+one not only could dig for arrow-heads, but find them. The professor
+was delighted, but for Jimmie it was a great disappointment. The week
+following Jimmie was again disappointed.
+
+On the bank of the Kensico Reservoir, he came upon a man who was acting
+in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He was making notes in a book,
+and his runabout which he had concealed in a wood road was stuffed with
+blue-prints. It did not take Jimmie long to guess his purpose. He was
+planning to blow up the Kensico dam, and cut off the water supply of
+New York City. Seven millions of people without water! With out firing
+a shot, New York must surrender! At the thought Jimmie shuddered, and
+at the risk of his life by clinging to the tail of a motor truck, he
+followed the runabout into White Plains. But there it developed the
+mysterious stranger, so far from wishing to destroy the Kensico dam,
+was the State Engineer who had built it, and, also, a large part of the
+Panama Canal. Nor in his third effort was Jimmie more successful. From
+the heights of Pound Ridge he discovered on a hilltop below him a man
+working alone upon a basin of concrete. The man was a German-American,
+and already on Jimmie's list of "suspects." That for the use of the
+German artillery he was preparing a concrete bed for a siege gun was
+only too evident. But closer investigation proved that the concrete was
+only two inches thick. And the hyphenated one explained that the basin
+was built over a spring, in the waters of which he planned to erect
+a fountain and raise gold fish. It was a bitter blow. Jimmie became
+discouraged. Meeting Judge Van Vorst one day in the road he told him
+his troubles. The young judge proved unsympathetic. "My advice to you,
+Jimmie," he said, "is to go slow. Accusing everybody of espionage is a
+very serious matter. If you call a man a spy, it's sometimes hard for
+him to disprove it; and the name sticks. So, go slow--very slow. Before
+you arrest any more people, come to me first for a warrant."
+
+So, the next time Jimmie proceeded with caution.
+
+Besides being a farmer in a small way, Jimmie's father was a handy man
+with tools. He had no union card, but, in laying shingles along a blue
+chalk line, few were as expert. It was August, there was no school, and
+Jimmie was carrying a dinner-pail to where his father was at work on a
+new barn. He made a cross-cut through the woods, and came upon the young
+man in the golf-cap. The stranger nodded, and his eyes, which seemed to
+be always laughing, smiled pleasantly. But he was deeply tanned, and,
+from the waist up, held himself like a soldier, so, at once, Jimmie
+mistrusted him. Early the next morning Jimmie met him again. It had not
+been raining, but the clothes of the young man were damp. Jimmie guessed
+that while the dew was still on the leaves the young man had been
+forcing his way through underbrush. The stranger must have remembered
+Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now,
+or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!"
+
+Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when
+did you have your breakfast?"
+
+"I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite,
+and I lost myself. But, I haven't lost my appetite. Which is the
+shortest way back to Bedford?"
+
+"The first road to your right," said Jimmie.
+
+"Is it far?" asked the stranger anxiously. That he was very hungry was
+evident.
+
+"It's a half-hour's walk," said Jimmie
+
+"If I live that long," corrected the young man; and stepped out briskly.
+
+Jimmie knew that within a hundred yards a turn in the road would shut
+him from sight. So, he gave the stranger time to walk that distance,
+and, then, diving into the wood that lined the road, "stalked" him. From
+behind a tree he saw the stranger turn and look back, and seeing no one
+in the road behind him, also leave it and plunge into the woods.
+
+He had not turned toward Bedford; he had turned to the left. Like a
+runner stealing bases, Jimmie slipped from tree to tree. Ahead of him he
+heard the stranger trampling upon dead twigs, moving rapidly as one who
+knew his way. At times through the branches Jimmie could see the broad
+shoulders of the stranger, and again could follow his progress only by
+the noise of the crackling twigs. When the noises ceased, Jimmie guessed
+the stranger had reached the wood road, grass-grown and moss-covered,
+that led to Middle Patent. So, he ran at right angles until he also
+reached it, and as now he was close to where it entered the main road,
+he approached warily. But, he was too late. There was a sound like the
+whir of a rising partridge, and ahead of him from where it had been
+hidden, a gray touring-car leaped into the highway. The stranger was
+at the wheel. Throwing behind it a cloud of dust, the car raced toward
+Greenwich. Jimmie had time to note only that it bore a Connecticut
+State license; that in the wheel-ruts the tires printed little V's, like
+arrow-heads.
+
+For a week Jimmie saw nothing of the spy, but for many hot and dusty
+miles he stalked arrow-heads. They lured him north, they lured him
+south, they were stamped in soft asphalt, in mud, dust, and fresh-spread
+tarvia. Wherever Jimmie walked, arrow-heads ran before. In his sleep as
+in his copy-book, he saw endless chains of V's. But not once could he
+catch up with the wheels that printed them. A week later, just at sunset
+as he passed below Round Hill, he saw the stranger on top of it. On the
+skyline, in silhouette against the sinking sun, he was as conspicuous
+as a flagstaff. But to approach him was impossible. For acres Round Hill
+offered no other cover than stubble. It was as bald as a skull. Until
+the stranger chose to descend, Jimmie must wait. And the stranger was
+in no haste. The sun sank and from the west Jimmie saw him turn his face
+east toward the Sound. A storm was gathering, drops of rain began to
+splash and as the sky grew black the figure on the hilltop faded into
+the darkness. And then, at the very spot where Jimmie had last seen
+it, there suddenly flared two tiny flashes of fire. Jimmie leaped from
+cover. It was no longer to be endured. The spy was signalling. The time
+for caution had passed, now was the time to act. Jimmie raced to the
+top of the hill, and found it empty. He plunged down it, vaulted a stone
+wall, forced his way through a tangle of saplings, and held his breath
+to listen. Just beyond him, over a jumble of rocks, a hidden stream was
+tripping and tumbling. Joyfully, it laughed and gurgled. Jimmie turned
+hot. It sounded as though from the darkness the spy mocked him. Jimmie
+shook his fist at the enshrouding darkness. Above the tumult of the
+coming storm and the tossing tree-tops, he raised his voice.
+
+"You wait!" he shouted. "I'll get you yet! Next time, I'll bring a gun."
+
+Next time, was the next morning. There had been a hawk hovering over
+the chicken yard, and Jimmie used that fact to explain his borrowing the
+family shotgun. He loaded it with buckshot, and, in the pocket of his
+shirt buttoned his license to "hunt, pursue and kill, to take with traps
+or other devices."
+
+He remembered that Judge Van Vorst had warned him, before he arrested
+more spies, to come to him for a warrant. But with an impatient shake of
+the head Jimmie tossed the recollection from him. After what he had seen
+he could not possibly be again mistaken. He did not need a warrant. What
+he had seen was his warrant--plus the shotgun.
+
+As a "pathfinder" should, he planned to take up the trail where he had
+lost it, but, before he reached Round Hill, he found a warmer trail.
+Before him, stamped clearly in the road still damp from the rain of the
+night before, two lines of little arrow-heads pointed the way. They were
+so fresh that at each twist in the road, lest the car should be just
+beyond him, Jimmie slackened his steps. After half a mile the scent
+grew hot. The tracks were deeper, the arrow-heads more clearly cut, and
+Jimmie broke into a run. Then, the arrow-heads swung suddenly to the
+right, and in a clearing at the edge of a wood, were lost. But the tires
+had pressed deep into the grass, and just inside the wood, he found the
+car. It was empty. Jimmie was drawn two ways. Should he seek the spy
+on the nearest hilltop, or, until the owner returned, wait by the car.
+Between lying in ambush and action, Jimmie preferred action. But, he did
+not climb the hill nearest the car; he climbed the hill that overlooked
+that hill.
+
+Flat on the ground, hidden in the golden-rod he lay motionless. Before
+him, for fifteen miles stretched hills and tiny valleys. Six miles away
+to his right rose the stone steeple, and the red roofs of Greenwich.
+Directly before him were no signs of habitation, only green forests,
+green fields, gray stone walls, and, where a road ran up-hill, a splash
+of white, that quivered in the heat. The storm of the night before had
+washed the air. Each leaf stood by itself. Nothing stirred; and in the
+glare of the August sun every detail of the landscape was as distinct as
+those in a colored photograph; and as still.
+
+In his excitement the scout was trembling.
+
+"If he moves," he sighed happily, "I've got him!"
+
+Opposite, across a little valley was the hill at the base of which
+he had found the car. The slope toward him was bare, but the top was
+crowned with a thick wood; and along its crest, as though establishing
+an ancient boundary, ran a stone wall, moss-covered and wrapped in
+poison-ivy. In places, the branches of the trees, reaching out to the
+sun, overhung the wall and hid it in black shadows. Jimmie divided the
+hill into sectors. He began at the right, and slowly followed the wall.
+With his eyes he took it apart, stone by stone. Had a chipmunk raised
+his head, Jimmie would have seen him. So, when from the stone wall, like
+the reflection of the sun upon a window-pane, something flashed, Jimmie
+knew he had found his spy. A pair of binoculars had betrayed him.
+Jimmie now saw him clearly. He sat on the ground at the top of the hill
+opposite, in the deep shadow of an oak, his back against the stone wall.
+With the binoculars to his eyes he had leaned too far forward, and upon
+the glass the sun had flashed a warning.
+
+Jimmie appreciated that his attack must be made from the rear. Backward,
+like a crab he wriggled free of the golden-rod, and hidden by the
+contour of the hill, raced down it and into the woods on the hill
+opposite. When he came to within twenty feet of the oak beneath which
+he had seen the stranger, he stood erect, and as though avoiding a live
+wire, stepped on tip-toe to the wall. The stranger still sat against it.
+The binoculars hung from a cord around his neck. Across his knees was
+spread a map. He was marking it with a pencil, and as he worked, he
+hummed a tune.
+
+Jimmie knelt, and resting the gun on the top of the wall, covered him.
+
+"Throw up your hands!" he commanded.
+
+The stranger did not start. Except that he raised his eyes he gave no
+sign that he had heard. His eyes stared across the little sun-filled
+valley. They were half closed as though in study, as though perplexed
+by some deep and intricate problem. They appeared to see beyond the
+sun-filled valley some place of greater moment, some place far distant.
+
+Then the eyes smiled, and slowly, as though his neck were stiff, but
+still smiling, the stranger turned his head. When he saw the boy, his
+smile was swept away in waves of surprise, amazement, and disbelief.
+These were followed instantly by an expression of the most acute alarm.
+"Don't point that thing at me!" shouted the stranger. "Is it loaded?"
+With his cheek pressed to the stock and his eye squinted down the length
+of the brown barrel, Jimmie nodded. The stranger flung up his open
+palms. They accented his expression of amazed incredulity. He seemed to
+be exclaiming, "Can such things be?"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Jimmie.
+
+With alacrity the stranger rose.
+
+"Walk over there," ordered the scout. "Walk backward. Stop! Take off
+those field-glasses and throw them to me." Without removing his eyes
+from the gun the stranger lifted the binoculars from his neck and tossed
+them to the stone wall. "See here!" he pleaded, "if you'll only point
+that damned blunderbuss the other way, you can have the glasses, and my
+watch, and clothes, and all my money; only don't--"
+
+Jimmie flushed crimson. "You can't bribe me," he growled. At least, he
+tried to growl, but because his voice was changing, or because he was
+excited the growl ended in a high squeak. With mortification, Jimmie
+flushed a deeper crimson. But the stranger was not amused. At Jimmie's
+words he seemed rather the more amazed.
+
+"I'm not trying to bribe you," he protested. "If you don't want
+anything, why are you holding me up?"
+
+"I'm not," returned Jimmie, "I'm arresting you!"
+
+The stranger laughed with relief. Again his eyes smiled. "Oh," he cried,
+"I see! Have I been trespassing?"
+
+With a glance Jimmie measured the distance between himself and the
+stranger. Reassured, he lifted one leg after the other over the wall.
+"If you try to rush me," he warned, "I'll shoot you full of buckshot."
+
+The stranger took a hasty step BACKWARD. "Don't worry about that," he
+exclaimed. "I'll not rush you. Why am I arrested?"
+
+Hugging the shotgun with his left arm, Jimmie stopped and lifted the
+binoculars. He gave them a swift glance, slung them over his shoulder,
+and again clutched his weapon. His expression was now stern and
+menacing.
+
+"The name on them" he accused, "is 'Weiss, Berlin.' Is that your name?"
+The stranger smiled, but corrected himself, and replied gravely, "That's
+the name of the firm that makes them."
+
+Jimmie exclaimed in triumph. "Hah!" he cried, "made in Germany!"
+
+The stranger shook his head.
+
+"I don't understand," he said. "Where WOULD a Weiss glass be made?"
+With polite insistence he repeated, "Would you mind telling me why I am
+arrested, and who you might happen to be?"
+
+Jimmie did not answer. Again he stooped and picked up the map, and as he
+did so, for the first time the face of the stranger showed that he was
+annoyed. Jimmie was not at home with maps. They told him nothing. But
+the penciled notes on this one made easy reading. At his first glance he
+saw, "Correct range, 1,800 yards"; "this stream not fordable"; "slope of
+hill 15 degrees inaccessible for artillery." "Wire entanglements here";
+"forage for five squadrons."
+
+Jimmie's eyes flashed. He shoved the map inside his shirt, and with the
+gun motioned toward the base of the hill. "Keep forty feet ahead of me,"
+he commanded, "and walk to your car." The stranger did not seem to hear
+him. He spoke with irritation.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "I'll have to explain to you about that map."
+
+"Not to me, you won't," declared his captor. "You're going to drive
+straight to Judge Van Vorst's, and explain to HIM!"
+
+The stranger tossed his arms even higher. "Thank God!" he exclaimed
+gratefully.
+
+With his prisoner Jimmie encountered no further trouble. He made a
+willing captive. And if in covering the five miles to Judge Van Vorst's
+he exceeded the speed limit, the fact that from the rear seat Jimmie
+held the shotgun against the base of his skull was an extenuating
+circumstance.
+
+They arrived in the nick of time. In his own car young Van Vorst and a
+bag of golf clubs were just drawing away from the house. Seeing the car
+climbing the steep driveway that for a half-mile led from his lodge to
+his front door, and seeing Jimmie standing in the tonneau brandishing a
+gun, the Judge hastily descended. The sight of the spy hunter filled him
+with misgiving, but the sight of him gave Jimmie sweet relief. Arresting
+German spies for a small boy is no easy task. For Jimmie the strain was
+great. And now that he knew he had successfully delivered him into the
+hands of the law, Jimmie's heart rose with happiness. The added presence
+of a butler of magnificent bearing and of an athletic looking chauffeur
+increased his sense of security. Their presence seemed to afford a
+feeling of security to the prisoner also. As he brought the car to a
+halt, he breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of deep relief.
+
+Jimmie fell from the tonneau. In concealing his sense of triumph, he was
+not entirety successful.
+
+"I got him!" he cried. "I didn't make no mistake about THIS one!"
+
+"What one?" demanded Van Vorst.
+
+Jimmie pointed dramatically at his prisoner. With an anxious expression
+the stranger was tenderly fingering the back of his head. He seemed to
+wish to assure himself that it was still there.
+
+"THAT one!" cried Jimmie. "He's a German spy!"
+
+The patience of Judge Van Vorst fell from him. In his exclamation was
+indignation, anger, reproach.
+
+"Jimmie!" he cried.
+
+Jimmie thrust into his hand the map. It was his "Exhibit A." "Look what
+he's wrote," commanded the scout. "It's all military words. And these
+are his glasses. I took 'em off him. They're made in GERMANY! I been
+stalking him for a week. He's a spy!"
+
+When Jimmie thrust the map before his face, Van Vorst had glanced at it.
+Then he regarded it more closely. As he raised his eyes they showed that
+he was puzzled.
+
+But he greeted the prisoner politely.
+
+"I'm extremely sorry you've been annoyed," he said. "I'm only glad it's
+no worse. He might have shot you. He's mad over the idea that every
+stranger he sees--"
+
+The prisoner quickly interrupted.
+
+"Please!" he begged, "Don't blame the boy. He behaved extremely well.
+Might I speak with you--ALONE?" he asked.
+
+Judge Van Vorst led the way across the terrace, and to the smoking-room,
+that served also as his office, and closed the door. The stranger walked
+directly to the mantelpiece and put his finger on a gold cup.
+
+"I saw your mare win that at Belmont Park," he said. "She must have been
+a great loss to you?"
+
+"She was," said Van Vorst. "The week before she broke her back, I
+refused three thousand for her. Will you have a cigarette?"
+
+The stranger waved aside the cigarettes.
+
+"I brought you inside," he said, "because I didn't want your servants to
+hear; and because I don't want to hurt that boy's feelings. He's a fine
+boy; and he's a damned clever scout. I knew he was following me and I
+threw him off twice, but to-day he caught me fair. If I really had been
+a German spy, I couldn't have got away from him. And I want him to think
+he has captured a German spy. Because he deserves just as much credit
+as though he had, and because it's best he shouldn't know whom he DID
+capture."
+
+Van Vorst pointed to the map. "My bet is," he said, "that you're an
+officer of the State militia, taking notes for the fall manoeuvres. Am I
+right?"
+
+The stranger smiled in approval, but shook his head.
+
+"You're warm," he said, "but it's more serious than manoeuvres. It's the
+Real Thing." From his pocketbook he took a visiting card and laid it on
+the table. "I'm 'Sherry' McCoy," he said, "Captain of Artillery in the
+United States Army." He nodded to the hand telephone on the table.
+
+"You can call up Governor's Island and get General Wood or his aide,
+Captain Dorey, on the phone. They sent me here. Ask THEM. I'm not
+picking out gun sites for the Germans; I'm picking out positions of
+defense for Americans when the Germans come!"
+
+Van Vorst laughed derisively.
+
+"My word!" he exclaimed. "You're as bad as Jimmie!"
+
+Captain McCoy regarded him with disfavor.
+
+"And you, sir," he retorted, "are as bad as ninety million other
+Americans. You WON'T believe! When the Germans are shelling this hill,
+when they're taking your hunters to pull their cook-wagons, maybe,
+you'll believe THEN."
+
+"Are you serious?" demanded Van Vorst. "And you an army officer?"
+
+"That's why I am serious," returned McCoy. "WE know. But when we try to
+prepare for what is coming, we must do it secretly--in underhand ways,
+for fear the newspapers will get hold of it and ridicule us, and accuse
+us of trying to drag the country into war. That's why we have to prepare
+under cover. That's why I've had to skulk around these hills like a
+chicken thief. And," he added sharply, "that's why that boy must not
+know who I am. If he does, the General Staff will get a calling down at
+Washington, and I'll have my ears boxed."
+
+Van Vorst moved to the door.
+
+"He will never learn the truth from me," he said. "For I will tell him
+you are to be shot at sunrise."
+
+"Good!" laughed the Captain. "And tell me his name. If ever we fight
+over Westchester County, I want that lad for my chief of scouts. And
+give him this. Tell him to buy a new scout uniform. Tell him it comes
+from you."
+
+But no money could reconcile Jimmie to the sentence imposed upon his
+captive. He received the news with a howl of anguish. "You mustn't," he
+begged; "I never knowed you'd shoot him! I wouldn't have caught him, if
+I'd knowed that. I couldn't sleep if I thought he was going to be shot
+at sunrise." At the prospect of unending nightmares Jimmie's voice shook
+with terror. "Make it for twenty years," he begged. "Make it for ten,"
+he coaxed, "but, please, promise you won't shoot him."
+
+When Van Vorst returned to Captain McCoy, he was smiling, and the butler
+who followed, bearing a tray and tinkling glasses, was trying not to
+smile.
+
+"I gave Jimmie your ten dollars," said Van Vorst, "and made it twenty,
+and he has gone home. You will be glad to hear that he begged me to
+spare your life, and that your sentence has been commuted to twenty
+years in a fortress. I drink to your good fortune."
+
+"No!" protested Captain McCoy, "We will drink to Jimmie!"
+
+When Captain McCoy had driven away, and his own car and the golf clubs
+had again been brought to the steps, Judge Van Vorst once more attempted
+to depart; but he was again delayed.
+
+Other visitors were arriving.
+
+Up the driveway a touring-car approached, and though it limped on a flat
+tire, it approached at reckless speed. The two men in the front seat
+were white with dust; their faces, masked by automobile glasses, were
+indistinguishable. As though preparing for an immediate exit, the car
+swung in a circle until its nose pointed down the driveway up which it
+had just come. Raising his silk mask the one beside the driver shouted
+at Judge Van Vorst. His throat was parched, his voice was hoarse and hot
+with anger.
+
+"A gray touring-car," he shouted. "It stopped here. We saw it from that
+hill. Then the damn tire burst, and we lost our way. Where did he go?"
+
+"Who?" demanded Van Vorst, stiffly, "Captain McCoy?"
+
+The man exploded with an oath. The driver with a shove of his elbow,
+silenced him.
+
+"Yes, Captain McCoy," assented the driver eagerly. "Which way did he
+go?"
+
+"To New York," said Van Vorst.
+
+The driver shrieked at his companion.
+
+"Then, he's doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He
+stooped and threw in the clutch. The car lurched forward.
+
+A cold terror swept young Van Vorst.
+
+"What do you want with him?" he called "Who are you?"
+
+Over one shoulder the masked face glared at him. Above the roar of the
+car the words of the driver were flung back. "We're Secret Service from
+Washington," he shouted. "He's from their embassy. He's a German spy!"
+
+Leaping and throbbing at sixty miles an hour, the car vanished in a
+curtain of white, whirling dust.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE CARD-SHARP
+
+I had looked forward to spending Christmas with some people in Suffolk,
+and every one in London assured me that at their house there would be
+the kind of a Christmas house party you hear about but see only in the
+illustrated Christmas numbers. They promised mistletoe, snapdragon, and
+Sir Roger de Coverley. On Christmas morning we would walk to church,
+after luncheon we would shoot, after dinner we would eat plum pudding
+floating in blazing brandy, dance with the servants, and listen to the
+waits singing "God rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay."
+
+To a lone American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in
+my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children,
+of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls,
+skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them,
+sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my
+wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation,
+and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him
+save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful
+harmony with his appendix for fifty years, I thought, for one week
+longer he might safely maintain the status quo. But his cable in reply
+was an ultimatum. So, on Christmas eve, instead of Hallam Hall and
+a Yule log, I was in a gale plunging and pitching off the coast of
+Ireland, and the only log on board was the one the captain kept to
+himself.
+
+I sat in the smoking-room, depressed and cross, and it must have been on
+the principle that misery loves company that I foregathered with Talbot,
+or rather that Talbot foregathered with me. Certainty, under happier
+conditions and in haunts of men more crowded, the open-faced manner
+in which he forced himself upon me would have put me on my guard. But,
+either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the
+fictitious gayety of our few fellow-passengers, or because the young man
+in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from
+dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and
+icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a merry Christmas.
+
+Even after they unmasked Talbot I had neither the heart nor the
+inclination to turn him down. Indeed, had not some of the passengers
+testified that I belonged to a different profession, the smoking-room
+crowd would have quarantined me as his accomplice. On the first night I
+met him I was not certain whether he was English or giving an imitation.
+All the outward and visible signs were English, but he told me that,
+though he had been educated at Oxford and since then had spent most of
+his years in India, playing polo, he was an American. He seemed to have
+spent much time, and according to himself much money, at the French
+watering-places and on the Riviera. I felt sure that it was in France
+I had already seen him, but where I could not recall. He was hard to
+place. Of people at home and in London well worth knowing he talked
+glibly, but in speaking of them he made several slips. It was his taking
+the trouble to cover up the slips that first made me wonder if his
+talking about himself was not mere vanity, but had some special object.
+I felt he was presenting letters of introduction in order that later he
+might ask a favor. Whether he was leading up to an immediate loan, or in
+New York would ask for a card to a club, or an introduction to a
+banker, I could not tell. But in forcing himself upon me, except in
+self-interest, I could think of no other motive. The next evening I
+discovered the motive.
+
+He was in the smoking-room playing solitaire, and at once I recalled
+that it was at Aix-les-Bains I had first seen him, and that he held a
+bank at baccarat. When he asked me to sit down I said: "I saw you last
+summer at Aix-les-Bains."
+
+His eyes fell to the pack in his hands and apparently searched it for
+some particular card.
+
+"What was I doing?" he asked.
+
+"Dealing baccarat at the Casino des Fleurs."
+
+With obvious relief he laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes," he assented; "jolly place, Aix. But I lost a pot of money
+there. I'm a rotten hand at cards. Can't win, and can't leave 'em
+alone." As though for this weakness, so frankly confessed, he begged me
+to excuse him, he smiled appealingly. "Poker, bridge, chemin de fer,
+I like 'em all," he rattled on, "but they don't like me. So I stick to
+solitaire. It's dull, but cheap." He shuffled the cards clumsily. As
+though making conversation, he asked: "You care for cards yourself?"
+
+I told him truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a
+spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been
+wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even
+of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had
+hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them
+I saw in them distress. For the moment I believe of my presence he
+was utterly unconscious. His hands lay idle upon the table; like a man
+facing a crisis, he stared before him. Quite improperly, I felt sorry
+for him. In me he thought he had found a victim; and that the loss of
+the few dollars he might have won should so deeply disturb him showed
+his need was great. Almost at once he abandoned me and I went on deck.
+When I returned an hour later to the smoking-room he was deep in a game
+of poker.
+
+As I passed he hailed me gayly.
+
+"Don't scold, now," he laughed; "you know I can't keep away from it."
+
+From his manner those at the table might have supposed we were friends
+of long and happy companionship. I stopped behind his chair, but he
+thought I had passed, and in reply to one of the players answered:
+"Known him for years; he's set me right many a time. When I broke my
+right femur 'chasin,' he got me back in the saddle in six weeks. All my
+people swear by him."
+
+One of the players smiled up at me, and Talbot turned. But his eyes met
+mine with perfect serenity. He even held up his cards for me to see.
+"What would you draw?" he asked.
+
+His audacity so astonished me that in silence I could only stare at him
+and walk on.
+
+When on deck he met me he was not even apologetic. Instead, as though we
+were partners in crime, he chuckled delightedly.
+
+"Sorry," he said. "Had to do it. They weren't very keen at my taking a
+hand, so I had to use your name. But I'm all right now," he assured me.
+"They think you vouched for me, and to-night they're going to raise the
+limit. I've convinced them I'm an easy mark."
+
+"And I take it you are not," I said stiffly.
+
+He considered this unworthy of an answer and only smiled. Then the smile
+died, and again in his eyes I saw distress, infinite weariness, and
+fear.
+
+As though his thoughts drove him to seek protection, he came closer.
+
+"I'm 'in bad,' doctor," he said. His voice was frightened, bewildered,
+like that of a child. "I can't sleep; nerves all on the loose. I don't
+think straight. I hear voices, and no one around. I hear knockings at
+the door, and when I open it, no one there. If I don't keep fit I can't
+work, and this trip I got to make expenses. You couldn't help me, could
+you--couldn't give me something to keep my head straight?"
+
+The need of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob
+our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly
+dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him
+to the ship's surgeon.
+
+"But I don't know HIM," he protested.
+
+Mindful of the use he had made of my name, I objected strenuously:
+
+"Well, you certainly don't know me."
+
+My resentment obviously puzzled him.
+
+"I know who you ARE," he returned. "You and I--" With a deprecatory
+gesture, as though good taste forbade him saying who we were, he
+stopped. "But the ship's surgeon!" he protested, "he's an awful bounder!
+Besides," he added quite simply, "he's watching me."
+
+"As a doctor," I asked, "or watching you play cards?"
+
+"Play cards," the young man answered. "I'm afraid he was ship's surgeon
+on the P. & O. I came home on. There was trouble that voyage, and I
+fancy he remembers me."
+
+His confidences were becoming a nuisance.
+
+"But you mustn't tell me that," I protested. "I can't have you making
+trouble on this ship, too. How do you know I won't go straight from here
+to the captain?"
+
+As though the suggestion greatly entertained him, he laughed.
+
+He made a mock obeisance.
+
+"I claim the seal of your profession," he said. "Nonsense," I retorted.
+"It's a professional secret that your nerves are out of hand, but that
+you are a card-sharp is NOT. Don't mix me up with a priest."
+
+For a moment Talbot, as though fearing he had gone too far, looked at me
+sharply; he bit his lower lip and frowned.
+
+"I got to make expenses," he muttered. "And, besides, all card games
+are games of chance, and a card-sharp is one of the chances. Anyway," he
+repeated, as though disposing of all argument, "I got to make expenses."
+
+After dinner, when I came to the smoking-room, the poker party sat
+waiting, and one of them asked if I knew where they could find "my
+friend." I should have said then that Talbot was a steamer acquaintance
+only; but I hate a row, and I let the chance pass.
+
+"We want to give him his revenge," one of them volunteered.
+
+"He's losing, then?" I asked.
+
+The man chuckled complacently.
+
+"The only loser," he said.
+
+"I wouldn't worry," I advised. "He'll come for his revenge."
+
+That night after I had turned in he knocked at my door. I switched on
+the lights and saw him standing at the foot of my berth. I saw also that
+with difficulty he was holding himself in hand.
+
+"I'm scared," he stammered, "scared!"
+
+I wrote out a requisition on the surgeon for a sleeping-potion and sent
+it to him by the steward, giving the man to understand I wanted it for
+myself. Uninvited, Talbot had seated himself on the sofa. His eyes were
+closed, and as though he were cold he was shivering and hugging himself
+in his arms.
+
+"Have you been drinking?" I asked.
+
+In surprise he opened his eyes.
+
+"I can't drink," he answered simply. "It's nerves and worry. I'm tired."
+
+He relaxed against the cushions; his arms fell heavily at his sides; the
+fingers lay open.
+
+"God," he whispered, "how tired I am!"
+
+In spite of his tan--and certainly he had led the out-of-door life--his
+face showed white. For the moment he looked old, worn, finished.
+
+"They're crowdin' me," the boy whispered. "They're always crowdin'
+me." His voice was querulous, uncomprehending, like that of a child
+complaining of something beyond his experience. "I can't remember when
+they haven't been crowdin' me. Movin' me on, you understand? Always
+movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris,
+and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very
+quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too--a flat in Berkeley
+Street--roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out;
+anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on
+this. It's my last chance!"
+
+"This trip?"
+
+"No; my family in New York. Haven't seen 'em in ten years. They paid me
+to live abroad. I'm gambling on THEM; gambling on their takin' me back.
+I'm coming home as the Prodigal Son, tired of filling my belly with the
+husks that the swine do eat; reformed character, repentant and all that;
+want to follow the straight and narrow; and they'll kill the fatted
+calf." He laughed sardonically. "Like hell they will! They'd rather see
+ME killed."
+
+It seemed to me, if he wished his family to believe he were returning
+repentant, his course in the smoking-room would not help to reassure
+them. I suggested as much.
+
+"If you get into 'trouble,' as you call it," I said, "and they send a
+wireless to the police to be at the wharf, your people would hardly--"
+
+"I know," he interrupted; "but I got to chance that. I GOT to make
+enough to go on with--until I see my family."
+
+"If they won't see you?" I asked. "What then?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and sighed lightly, almost with relief, as
+though for him the prospect held no terror.
+
+"Then it's 'Good-night, nurse,'" he said. "And I won't be a bother to
+anybody any more."
+
+I told him his nerves were talking, and talking rot, and I gave him the
+sleeping-draft and sent him to bed.
+
+It was not until after luncheon the next day when he made his first
+appearance on deck that I again saw my patient. He was once more a
+healthy picture of a young Englishman of leisure; keen, smart, and fit;
+ready for any exercise or sport. The particular sport at which he was so
+expert I asked him to avoid.
+
+"Can't be done!" he assured me. "I'm the loser, and we dock to-morrow
+morning. So tonight I've got to make my killing."
+
+It was the others who made the killing.
+
+I came into the smoking-room about nine o'clock. Talbot alone was
+seated. The others were on their feet, and behind them in a wider
+semicircle were passengers, the smoking-room stewards and the ship's
+purser.
+
+Talbot sat with his back against the bulkhead, his hands in the
+pockets of his dinner coat; from the corner of his mouth his long
+cigarette-holder was cocked at an impudent angle. There was a tumult
+of angry voices, and the eyes of all were turned upon him. Outwardly
+at least he met them with complete indifference. The voice of one of
+my countrymen, a noisy pest named Smedburg, was raised in excited
+accusation.
+
+"When the ship's surgeon first met you," he cried, "you called yourself
+Lord Ridley."
+
+"I'll call myself anything I jolly well like," returned Talbot. "If I
+choose to dodge reporters, that's my pidgin. I don't have to give my
+name to every meddling busybody that--"
+
+"You'll give it to the police, all right," chortled Mr. Smedburg. In the
+confident, bullying tones of the man who knows the crowd is with him, he
+shouted: "And in the meantime you'll keep out of this smoking-room!"
+
+The chorus of assent was unanimous. It could not be disregarded. Talbot
+rose and with fastidious concern brushed the cigarette ashes from his
+sleeve. As he moved toward the door he called back: "Only too delighted
+to keep out. The crowd in this room makes a gentleman feel lonely."
+
+But he was not to escape with the last word.
+
+His prosecutor pointed his finger at him.
+
+"And the next time you take the name of Adolph Meyer," he shouted, "make
+sure first he hasn't a friend on board; some one to protect him from
+sharpers and swindlers--"
+
+Talbot turned savagely and then shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil!" he called, and walked out into the night.
+
+The purser was standing at my side and, catching my eye, shook his head.
+
+"Bad business," he exclaimed.
+
+"What happened?" I asked.
+
+"I'm told they caught him dealing from the wrong end of the pack," he
+said. "I understand they suspected him from the first--seems our surgeon
+recognized him--and to-night they had outsiders watching him. The
+outsiders claim they saw him slip himself an ace from the bottom of the
+pack. It's a pity! He's a nice-looking lad."
+
+I asked what the excited Smedburg had meant by telling Talbot not to
+call himself Meyer.
+
+"They accused him of travelling under a false name," explained the
+purser, "and he told 'em he did it to dodge the ship's news reporters.
+Then he said he really was a brother of Adolph Meyer, the banker; but it
+seems Smedburg is a friend of Meyer's, and he called him hard! It was
+a silly ass thing to do," protested the purser. "Everybody knows Meyer
+hasn't a brother, and if he hadn't made THAT break he might have got
+away with the other one. But now this Smedburg is going to wireless
+ahead to Mr. Meyer and to the police."
+
+"Has he no other way of spending his money?" I asked.
+
+"He's a confounded nuisance!" growled the purser. "He wants to show us
+he knows Adolph Meyer; wants to put Meyer under an obligation. It means
+a scene on the wharf, and newspaper talk; and," he added with disgust,
+"these smoking-room rows never helped any line."
+
+I went in search of Talbot; partly because I knew he was on the verge of
+a collapse, partly, as I frankly admitted to myself, because I was sorry
+the young man had come to grief. I searched the snow-swept decks, and
+then, after threading my way through faintly lit tunnels, I knocked at
+his cabin. The sound of his voice gave me a distinct feeling of relief.
+But he would not admit me. Through the closed door he declared he was
+"all right," wanted no medical advice, and asked only to resume the
+sleep he claimed I had broken. I left him, not without uneasiness,
+and the next morning the sight of him still in the flesh was a genuine
+thrill. I found him walking the deck carrying himself nonchalantly
+and trying to appear unconscious of the glances--amused, contemptuous,
+hostile--that were turned toward him. He would have passed me without
+speaking, but I took his arm and led him to the rail. We had long passed
+quarantine and a convoy of tugs were butting us into the dock.
+
+"What are you going to do?" I asked.
+
+"Doesn't depend on me," he said. "Depends on Smedburg. He's a busy
+little body!"
+
+The boy wanted me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I
+saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke
+in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident
+no longer was of interest.
+
+"They were watching me," he said. "But I knew they were, and besides, no
+matter how close they watched I could have done what they said I did and
+they'd never have seen it. But I didn't."
+
+My scepticism must have been obvious, for he shook his head.
+
+"I didn't!" he repeated stubbornly. "I didn't have to! I was playing
+in luck--wonderful luck--sheer, dumb luck. I couldn't HELP winning. But
+because I was winning and because they were watching, I was careful not
+to win on my own deal. I laid down, or played to lose. It was the cards
+they GAVE me I won with. And when they jumped me I told 'em that. I
+could have proved it if they'd listened. But they were all up in the
+air, shouting and spitting at me. They believed what they wanted to
+believe; they didn't want the facts."
+
+It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling
+the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather
+harshly, I said:
+
+"They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer,
+either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?"
+
+Talbot did not answer.
+
+"Why?" I insisted.
+
+The boy laughed impudently.
+
+"How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?" he protested. "It was
+a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are
+Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by
+me."
+
+"But you," I retorted impatiently, "are not a Jew!"
+
+"I am not," said Talbot, "but I've often SAID I was. It's helped--lots
+of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer,
+instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew." He smiled and
+turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the
+police, he began to enumerate:
+
+"Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic,
+according to taste. Do you see?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But it didn't work," he concluded. "I picked the wrong Jew."
+
+His face grew serious. "Do you suppose that Smedburg person has
+wirelessed that banker?"
+
+I told him I was afraid he had already sent the message.
+
+"And what will Meyer do?" he asked. "Will he drop it or make a fuss?
+What sort is he?"
+
+Briefly I described Adolph Meyer. I explained him as the richest Hebrew
+in New York; given to charity, to philanthropy, to the betterment of his
+own race.
+
+"Then maybe," cried Talbot hopefully, "he won't make a row, and my
+family won't hear of it!"
+
+He drew a quick breath of relief. As though a burden had been lifted,
+his shoulders straightened.
+
+And then suddenly, harshly, in open panic, he exclaimed aloud:
+
+"Look!" he whispered. "There, at the end of the wharf--the little Jew in
+furs!"
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. Below us on the dock, protected
+by two obvious members of the strong-arm squad, the great banker,
+philanthropist, and Hebrew, Adolph Meyer, was waiting.
+
+We were so close that I could read his face. It was stern, set; the face
+of a man intent upon his duty, unrelenting. Without question, of a bad
+business Mr. Smedburg had made the worst. I turned to speak to Talbot
+and found him gone.
+
+His silent slipping away filled me with alarm. I fought against a
+growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It
+seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and
+dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose
+Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other
+empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one
+gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no
+one was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the
+gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck
+to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced
+blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men,
+pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought,
+only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the
+last of the passengers was leaving it.
+
+I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
+white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
+why I was wanted.
+
+"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to hurry to
+the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!"
+
+On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
+eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
+Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
+darkened.
+
+I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
+
+"It was HE sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you.
+Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"
+
+The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
+
+"I was so tired," he whispered. "Always moving me on. I was so tired!"
+
+Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar
+them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to
+one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable
+coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
+
+For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
+staring at the face on the pillow.
+
+Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand
+of the card-sharp.
+
+"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
+little brother Adolph!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Red Cross Girl, by Richard Harding Davis
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