The Big-Town Round-Up

by Raine, William MacLeod

  "Sho! Folks are mostly reasonable. I'd tell the judge how it come about."

  "No."

  "Well, I can't stay here."

  "Yes—till they've gone."

  Her imperative warmed his heart, but he tried to explain gently why he could not. "I can't drag you into this. Like as not the Swede saw me come in."

  To a manservant standing in the background the young woman spoke. "Jenkins, have Nora clean up the floor and the steps outside. And remember—I don't want the police to know this gentleman is here."

  "Yes, Miss."

  "Come!" said the girl to her guest. She led Clay to the massive stairway, but stopped at the first tread to call back an order over her shoulder. "Refer the officers to me if they insist on coming into the house."

  "I'll see to it, Miss."

  Clay followed his hostess to the stairs and went up them with her, but he went protesting, though with a chuckle of mirth. "He sure ruined my clothes a heap. I ain't fit to be seen."

  The suit he had been so proud of was shrinking so that his arms and legs stuck out like signposts. The color had run and left the goods a peculiar bilious-looking overall blue.

  She lit a gas-log in a small library den.

  "Just a minute, please."

  She stepped briskly from the room. In her manner was a crisp decision, in her poise a trim gallantry that won him instantly.

  "I'll bet she'd do to ride with," he told himself in a current Western idiom.

  When she came back it was to take him to a dressing-room. A complete change of clothing was laid out for him on a couch. A man whom Clay recognized as a valet—he had seen his duplicate in the moving-picture theaters at Tucson—was there to supply his needs and attend to the temperature of his bath.

  "Stevens will look after you," she said; "when you are ready come back to Dad's den."

  His eyes followed to the door her resilient step. Once, when he was a boy, he had seen Ada Rehan play in "As You Like It." Her acting had entranced him. This girl carried him back to that hour. She was boyish as Rosalind, woman in every motion of her slim and lissom body.

  At the head of the stairway she paused. Jenkins was moving hurriedly up to meet her.

  "It's a policeman, Miss. 'E's come about the—the person that came in, and 'e's talkin' to Nora on the steps. She's a-jollyin' 'im, as you might say, Miss."

  His young mistress nodded. She swept the hall with the eye of a general. Swiftly she changed the position of a Turkish rug so as to hide a spot on the polished floor that had been recently scrubbed and was still moist. It seemed best to discover Nora's plan of campaign before taking over the charge of affairs.

  "Many's the time I've met yuh goin' down the Avenoo with your heels clickin' an' your head high," came the rich brogue of Nora O'Flannigan. "An' I've said to myself, sez I, who's the handsome officer that sets off his uniform so gr-rand?"

  The girl leaned on her mop and gave the policeman a slant glance out of eyes of Irish brown. It was not Nora's fault that she was as pretty a colleen as ever came out of Limerick, but there was no law that made her send such a roguish come-hither look at the man in blue.

  He beamed. He was as pleased as a cat that has been stroked and fed cream.

  "Well, an' yuh 're not the only wan that notices, Miss Nora. I'm a noticin' lad mesilf. An' it's the truth that I'd be glad enough to meet yuh some fine evenin' when I'm off duty. But about this strong-arm guy that tied up the janitor. The Swede says he went into wan av these houses. Now here's the wet color from his suit that ran over the steps. He musta come up here."

  "Before he ran down the street. Sure, an' that's just what he done.

  Yuh're a janious, officer."

  "Maybe he got into the house somehow."

  "Now, how could he do that? With all av us upstairs and down."

  "I don't say he did. But if I was to just take a look inside so as to report that I'd searched—"

  "Och! Yuh 'd be wastin' your time, officer."

  "Sure, I know that. But for the report—"

  The young woman in the riding costume chose this moment to open the door and saunter out.

  "Does the officer want something, Nora?" she asked innocently, switching the end of a crop against her riding-boots.

  "Yes, Miss. There's been a ruffian batin' up Swedes an' tyin' 'em to posts. This officer thinks he came here," explained Nora.

  "Does he want to look in the house?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  "Then let him come in." The young mistress took the responsibility on her own shoulders. She led the policeman into the hall. "I don't really see how he could have got in here without some of us seeing him, officer."

  "No, ma'am. I don't see how he could." The patrolman scratched his red head. "The janitor's a Swede, anyhow. He jist guessed it. I came to make sure av it. I'll be sorry for troubling yuh, Miss."

  The smile she gave him was warm and friendly. "Oh, that's all right.

  If you'd care to look around. . . . But there really is no use."

  "No." The forehead under the red thatch wrinkled in thought. "He said he seen him come in here or next door, an' he came up the steps. But nobody could have got in without some of youse seein' him. That's a lead pipe." The officer pushed any doubt that remained from his mind. "Only a muddle-headed Swede."

  "It was good of you to come. It makes us feel safer to have officers like you. If you'll give me your name I'll call up the precinct captain and tell him so."

  The man in uniform turned beet red. "McGuffey, Miss, and it's a pleasure to serve the likes of yuh," he said, pleased and embarrassed.

  He bowed himself out backward, skidded on the polished floor, and saved himself from going down by a frantic fling of arms and some fancy skating. When he recovered, his foot caught in a rug and wadded it to a knot.

  Nora giggled behind her fingers, but her mistress did not even smile at the awkwardness of Patrolman McGuffey.

  "Thank you so much," she said sweetly.

  CHAPTER V

  A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SALVATION ARMY

  While Beatrice Whitford waited in the little library for the Arizonan to join her, she sat in a deep chair, chin in hand, eyes fixed on the jetting flames of the gas-log. A little flush had crept into the oval face. In her blood there tingled the stimulus of excitement. For into her life an adventure had come from faraway Cattleland.

  A crisp, strong footstep sounded in the hall. Her fingers flew to pat into place the soft golden hair coiled low at the nape of the neck. At times she had a boylike unconcern of sex; again, a spirit wholly feminine.

  The clothes of her father fitted Lindsay loosely, for Colin Whitford had begun to take on the flesh of middle age and Clay was lean and clean of build as an elk. But the Westerner was one of those to whom clothes are unimportant. The splendid youth of him would have shone through the rags of a beggar.

  "My name is Clay Lindsay," he told her by way of introduction.

  "Mine is Beatrice Whitford," she answered.

  They shook hands.

  "I'm to wait here till my clothes dry, yore man says."

  "Then you'd better sit down," she suggested.

  Within five minutes she knew that he had been in New York less than three hours. His impressions of the city amused and entertained her. He was quite simple. She could look into his mind as though it were a deep, clear well. There was something inextinguishably boyish and buoyant about him. But in his bronzed face and steady, humorous eyes were strength and shrewdness. He was the last man in the world a bunco-steerer could play for a sucker. She felt that. Yet he made no pretenses of a worldly wisdom he did not have.

  A voice reached them from the top of the stairs.

  "Do you know where Miss Whitford is, Jenkins?"

  "Hin the Red Room, sir." The answer was in the even, colorless voice of a servant.

  The girl rose at once. "If you'll excuse me," she said, and stepped out of the room.

  "Hello, Bee. What do you think? I never saw such idiots as the po
lice of this town are. They're watching this house for a desperado who assaulted some one outside. I met a sergeant on our steps. Says he doesn't think the man's here, but there's just a chance he slipped into the basement. It's absurd."

  "Of course it is." There was a ripple of mirth in the girl's voice. "He didn't come in by the basement at all, but walked in at the front door."

  "Who are you talking about?"

  "The desperado, Dad."

  "The front door!" exploded her father. "What do you mean? Who let him in?"

  "I did. He came as my guest, at my invitation."

  "What?"

  "Don't shout, Dad," she advised. "I thought I had brought you up better."

  "But—but—but—what do you mean?" he sputtered. "Is this ruffian in the house now?"

  "Oh, yes. He's in the Red Room here—and unless he's very deaf he hears everything we are saying," the girl answered calmly, much amused at the amazement of her father. "Won't you come in and see him? He doesn't seem very desperate."

  Clay rose, pinpoints of laughter dancing in his eyes. He liked the gay audacity of this young woman, just as he liked the unconventional pluck with which she had intruded herself into his affairs as a rescuer and the businesslike efficiency that had got him out of his wet rags into comfortable clothes.

  A moment later he was offering a brown hand to Colin Whitford, who took it reluctantly, with the same wariness a boxer does that of his opponent in the ring. His eyes said plainly, "What the deuce are you doing here, sitting in my favorite chair, smoking one of my imported cigars, wearing my clothes, and talking to my daughter?"

  "Glad to meet you, Mr. Whitford. Yore daughter has just saved my life from the police," the Westerner said, and his friendly smile was very much in evidence.

  "You make yourself at home," answered the owner of a large per cent of the stock of the famous Bird Cage mine.

  "My guests do, Dad. It's the proof that I'm a perfect hostess," retorted Beatrice, her dainty, provocative face flashing to mirth.

  "Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I'd like to know, young man, why the police are shadowing this house?"

  "I expect they're lookin' for me."

  "I expect they are, and I'm not sure I won't help them find you.

  You'll have to show cause if I don't."

  "His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay, just as though her father were not present.

  "Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young fellow."

  Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I. Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me."

  Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years before. The sound of Clay's drawling voice was like a message from home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to be true. It wasn't possible that anybody could come to the big town and import into it so naïvely such a genuine touch of the outdoor West. It was not possible, but it had happened just the same. Of course Manhattan would soon take the color out of him. It always did out of everybody. The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself, that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens. Whitford had long since become a conformist. He was willing to bet a hat that this big brown Arizonan would eat out of the city's hand within a week. In the meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of taming the wild man took place. Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay's admirers. He was ready to hide him from all the police in New York.

  Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he could gloat over it. He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its still sodden appearance. He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of mirth.

  "Guaranteed not to fade or shrink," murmured Clay sadly.

  He managed to get the coat on with difficulty. The sleeves reached just below his elbows.

  "You look like a lifer from Sing Sing," pronounced Whitford joyously. "Get a hair-cut, and you won't have a chance on earth to fool the police."

  "The color did run and fade some," admitted Clay.

  "Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the Swede got busy with it—and he let you have it at a sacrifice for fifty-five dollars!" The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of his rapture. He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the back by his daughter.

  "Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me? I'm goin' to have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein," said Clay with mock mournfulness.

  "When?" asked Whitford promptly.

  "Never you mind when, sah. I'm not issuin' any tickets of admission.

  It's goin' to be a strictly private entertainment."

  "Are you going to take a water hose along?"

  "That's right," reproached Clay. "Make fun of me because I'm a

  stranger and come right from the alfalfa country." He turned to

  Beatrice cheerfully. "O' course he bit me good and proper. I'm green.

  But I'll bet he loses that smile awful quick when he sees me again."

  "You're not going to—"

  "Me, I'm the gentlest citizen in Arizona. Never in trouble. Always peaceable and quiet. Don't you get to thinkin' me a bad-man, for I ain't."

  Jenkins came to the door and announced "Mr. Bromfield."

  Almost on his heels a young man in immaculate riding-clothes sauntered into the room. He had the assured ease of one who has the run of the house. Miss Whitford introduced the two young men and Bromfield looked the Westerner over with a suave insolence in his dark, handsome eyes.

  Clay recognized him immediately. He had shaken hands once before with this well-satisfied young man, and on that occasion a fifty-dollar bill had passed from one to the other. The New Yorker evidently did not know him.

  It became apparent at once that Bromfield had called to go riding in the Park with Miss Whitford. That young woman came up to say good-bye to her new acquaintance.

  "Will you be here when I get back?"

  "Not if our friends outside give me a chance for a getaway," he told her.

  Her bright, unflinching eyes looked into his. "You'll come again and let us know how you escaped," she invited.

  "I'll ce'tainly do that, Miss Whitford."

  "Then we'll look for you Thursday afternoon, say."

  "I'll be here."

  "If the police don't get you."

  "They won't," he promised serenely.

  "When you're quite ready, Bee," suggested Bromfield in a bored voice.

  She nodded casually and walked out of the room like a young Diana, straight as a dart in her trim slenderness.

  Clay slipped out of the house by the back way, cut across to the subway, and took a downtown train. He got out at Forty-Second Street and made his way back to the clothing establishment of I. Bernstein.

  That gentleman was in his office in the rear of the store. Lindsay walked back to it, opened and closed the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

  The owner of the place rose in alarm from the stool where he was sitting. "What right do you got to lock that door?" he demanded.

  "I don't want to be interrupted while I'm sellin' you this suit, Mr. Bernstein," the cowpuncher told him easily, and he proceeded to unwrap the damp package under his arm. "It's a pippin of a suit. The color won't run or fade, and it's absolutely
unshrinkable. You won't often get a chance at a suit like this. Notice the style, the cut, the quality of the goods. And it's only goin' to cost you fifty-five dollars."

  The clothing man looked at the misshapen thing with eyes that bulged. "Where is it you been with this suit—in the East River, my friendt?" he wanted to know.

  "I took a walk along Riverside Drive. That's all. I got a strong guarantee with this suit when I bought it. I'm goin' to give you the same one I got. It won't shrink or fade and it will wear to beat a 'Pache pup. Oh, you won't make any mistake buyin' this suit."

  "You take from me an advice. Unlock that door and get out."

  "I can give you better advice than that. Buy this suit right away.

  You'll find it's a bargain."

  The steady eyes of the Westerner daunted the merchant, but he did not intend to give up fifty-five dollars without a murmur.

  "If you don't right avay soon open that door I call the police. Then you go to jail, ain't it?"

  "How's yore heart, Mr. Bernstein?" asked Clay tenderly.

  "What?"

  "I'm askin' about yore heart. I don't know as you're hardly strong enough to stand what I'll do to you if you let a single yelp out of you. I kinda hate to hurry yore funeral," he added regretfully, still in his accustomed soft drawl.

  The man beside the stool attempted one shout. Instantly Clay filled his mouth with a bunch of suit samples that had been lying on the desk. With one arm he held the struggling little man close to his body. With his foot and the other hand he broke in two a yardstick and fitted the two parts together.

  "Here's the programme," he said by way of explanation. "I'm goin' to put you over my knee and paddle you real thorough. When you make up yore mind that you want to buy that suit for fifty-five dollars, it will be up to you to let me know. Take yore own time about it. Don't let me hurry you."

  Before the programme had more than well started, the victim of it signified his willingness to treat with the foe. To part with fifty-five dollars was a painful business, but not to part with it was going to hurt a good deal more. He chose the lesser of two evils.