Robert dropped the guitar unheeded to the floor of the verandah as he rose in agitation. “It’s true! I see it must be the truth!” he said; and he paced up and down, running his hands through his hair. “You never spoke in that tone to me before in your whole life! It is this Dade! And you sat there pretending you were thinking of my future, and that I oughtn’t to be ‘hampered’ — oh, Margaret, I should think you’d be ashamed!”
“You — you are so unjust. I couldn’t have believed — I couldn’t — I”
Robert, in his pacing, had reached the other end of the verandah; but, at this faltering in her voice, he turned, came rapidly back to her, and saw that her form was bowed to the arms of her chair and that her handkerchief was pressed upon her eyes by both trembling hands. She was weeping — weeping almost vehemently.
Stricken, the miserable young man threw himself upon his knees beside her, imploring. “Margaret! For God’s sake, don’t cry! I take it back! I didn’t mean it! Don’t! Don’t! Oh, dearest, dearest, please don’t!”
“You’re so — so cruel!” she sobbed. “You — you have no right — it’s not so. You mustn’t call me ‘dearest’ — you said such awful things! There are times in every girl’s life when she doesn’t understand herself; but — but Mr. Dade hasn’t been here since early in the week — he was here one evening — I admit it—”
Robert sprang to his feet. “You do!” he said harshly. “I thought so!” And he broke into bitter laughter. “Fool that I was!” he cried. “Yes; a fool in a fool’s paradise, there at college — believing you loved me—”
“I never told you so,” she protested. “You have no right to charge me with that, Robert!”
“No; you never told me in so many words. It was only the flirt’s way to let a poor fool guess it for himself, while she never signs a document.” And he struck the palm of his left hand a passionate blow with his clenched right fist. “Yes; it’s only the old story of the flirt and one of her fools, one of her playthings!”
Moaning, Margaret lifted imploring hands, caught his arm and clung to it. “You mustn’t, Robert!” she besought him, in a choked voice. “I can’t bear it! You mustn’t charge me with making playthings of men — you can’t dream how miserable I am!” And the moonlight glinted on tears upon the anguished face she lifted to him. “I’ve told you” — she choked— “I’ve told you, Robert, that Mr. Dade was here Tuesday—”
At this moment there came an interruption that produced in both of these young people a condition of shock. A human voice spoke from just on the other side of a large Bath chair that stood against the verandah railing, about four feet away. “It wasn’t either Tuesday,” this voice said, in tones of warmest interest. “It was Wednesday he was here.”
Margaret leaped to her feet. “Penrod!” she shrieked.
“What you want?” Penrod inquired, coming out from the shadow of the Bath chair.
“How long have you been there?”
“Well, just while you and Bob been talkin’,” he replied casually, and continued, “I remember well as anything it was Wednesday and not Tuesday he was here, because Tuesday I and Papa went to the movies and—”
But Margaret remained for no further introduction of corroborative evidence. “Oh!” she cried. With a tumultuous rush, she disappeared into the open front door.
“I guess she feels mad,” Penrod said placidly, turning to Mr. Williams. “Well, anyway, I know I’m right,” he continued, dropping comfortably into Margaret’s chair. “I know I am, because I and Papa—”
He paused as Mr. Williams, gathering up his guitar and a straw hat, seemed to be hardly more in a mood for conversation than Margaret had been.
“Well, you goin’ home?” Penrod inquired, mildly surprised.
But the visitor only muttered something incoherent and descended the steps of the verandah.
Penrod hopped up and, quite unsolicited, accompanied him to the gate. “I know I’m right,” he said, “because, after the movies, I and Papa went to bring Mamma from prayermeeting Wednesday night, and, when we got back, that Dade was here, and Papa heard him call her a Princess or sumpthing and told her so at breakfast next morning until she got up and left the table. Well, after that — well, goodnight.”
Penrod added this farewell a little breathlessly, owing to the abruptness with which Robert swung out of the gate and closed it after him. Then the little brother watched the tall figure growing quickly dimmer under the shadow of the maple trees that lined the sidewalk; but, moved by a charitable impulse before it passed out of hearing, he leaned over the gate and called loudly, “He’s around here all the time, anyway!”
After that, Penrod waited in silence, expecting the courtesy of a comment, or, at least, a brief expression of gratitude for his information — but nothing came.
CHAPTER IX
THE SCONDREL’S DEN
THIS LACK OF responsiveness on the part of one whom he felt to be fully his equal caused him some surprise, especially as complete cordiality had always existed between them; but, upon reflection, he decided that Margaret’s conduct was responsible. Of course, Bob Williams’s feelings were hurt by the way she switched into the house without saying good-night or anything.
Penrod had liked and admired Bob Williams faithfully, above all other suitors, for more than a year — in fact, ever since the preceding summer when Mr. Williams had given him a dollar, and the seeming curtness of this present departure caused no abatement in the liking and admiration. Besides, in the matter of Margaret, Penrod was firmly on Robert’s side and even more firmly not on Mr. Dade’s side. How a girl “with any sense” could hesitate between these two was a question he answered with too brotherly promptness— “Hasn’t got a grain!” being his permanent decision.
However, she had influence inside the house, and he delayed before entering it, because he gloomily supposed she would be stirring up the authorities there against him, as she usually did when he happened to interrupt one of her conversations with a caller; and her manner had led him to conclude that she was more than ordinarily upset this time.
He was cheerfully surprised, therefore, upon repairing to the library, where his mother and father were engaged at cribbage, to be greeted casually, no reference whatever to Margaret being made. She had gone directly to her own room, and, as Penrod, in the character of George B. Jashber, presently discovered, she had locked her door and preserved a complete silence on the other side of it. Moreover, there gradually came to the great detective a sense of reassurance. He began vaguely to perceive that Margaret had no desire to make the episode of the evening known to her parents, and he was amply content with the mere fact of this reticence, which he did not feel it necessary to comprehend.
George B. Jashber was emphatically present at the Schofield family dinner-table the following evening, though the family and Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade, a guest upon this occasion, were unconscious of the honour. Mrs. Schofield did indeed notice a peculiarity in her son’s manner; but she misinterpreted it.
“Do your eyes hurt you, Penrod?” she whispered to him.
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“You keep making that pucker in your forehead, I’ve noticed lately; and you keep looking out of your eyes sideways, as though it hurt you to look at anything straight in front of you. Does it?”
“No, it don’t.”
“Then don’t do it, Penrod. You will injure your eyes, doing it so much.”
“I won’t either, Mamma.”
“I don’t know, but I think it might; I’m going to ask the doctor. What makes you do it, if they don’t pain you?”
Penrod was annoyed. “Nothin’,” he muttered.
After dinner, he disappeared (as was his summer privilege) until nine o’clock, his bedtime, and presently he was moving slowly on all fours along the latticework below the front verandah. Unfortunately for his mystic purposes, Margaret glanced down over the railing in the course of a little tour she appeared to be making to points of inter
est about the verandah.
“Don’t play around here, Penrod,” she said, and there was a businesslike tone in her voice. “You’ll catch cold from the dew on the grass, and if you don’t find something healthier to do, I’ll have to call Mother.”
Penrod made no audible reply, but rose and sauntered away. However, she seated herself on the railing, and glanced frequently over her shoulder, chatting gaily with Mr. Dade all the while, and George B. Jashber, after watching for some time this exhibition of a vigilance equal to his own, extricated himself noiselessly from a clump of lilac, entered the house by way of the kitchen, went up the back stairs, came down the front stairs, then, after a moment’s debate, tiptoed through the hall and seated himself quietly upon the floor just outside the open door of the library. He had caught words from the two cribbage players that acutely interested him.
“Well, I’d just like to know who he is,” Mr. Schofield was saying. “I don’t like to have every Tom, Dick and Harry to dinner without knowing anything at all about them.”
“But Mr. Dade seems to be a very pleasant young man,” Mrs. Schofield said mildly. “He has nice manners—”
“‘Manners’!” Mr. Schofield interrupted. “Anybody can have good manners. Why, I knew a horse-thief once that had beautiful manners.”
A low vocal flutter, soprano, betokened Mrs. Schofield’s amusement. “Mr. Dade isn’t a horse-thief, I fancy,” she murmured.
“There’s something a little slick about him,” her husband grumbled. “I’d like to know more about him if he’s going on coming to the house this much.”
“Why, Margaret met him at the church fair last month,” Mrs. Schofield explained.
“Anybody can go to a church fair; that’s what they’re for.”
“But he knows all the girls of Margaret’s set.”
“Met ’em all at the church fair?”
Mrs. Schofield laughed again. “They’re all excited about him, because he’s so godd-looking and different. You’re worse than Penrod. As soon as a young man shows the slightest interest in Margaret, you decide there’s something queer about him. Mr. Dade has good manners; he dresses, well; he’s very good-looking — in fact, he’s handsome — and he’s travelled, because he speaks familiarly of every city in the country; but—”
“But we don’t know,” he took her up emphatically, “what business he’s in, where he comes from, or even where he stays in this town. He hasn’t mentioned—”
“But he did! The last time he was here, he told me he, came from Gosport, Illinois.”
“Well, where does he live here in town?”
“I don’t know.”
“No,” Mr. Schofield said grimly. “And what business is he in?”
Mrs. Schofield, a little piqued, replied, with satire: “He didn’t happen to mention that either, so I suppose that leaves us no option. Probably you’re right; he must be a professional horse-thief.”
Naturally, she had little expectation that this remark would be accepted at its face value; but it was not the habit of George B. Jashber to take sarcasm into account, except when uttered in either a savage or a mocking tone of voice; and he forthwith came to the simple conclusion that both his parents suspected Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade’s business, or profession, to be that of stealing horses. This conclusion, coinciding with the trend of his own impressions, gave him a great moment. He rose in silence; his fingers stole to his jacket pocket and took therefrom a well-whittled object of wood — the sketchy likeness of an ottomatick. He returned it to his pocket, and, after the proper heave of his shoulders, moved silently toward the open front door.
He halted, hearing his name spoken from the verandah.
“You mean Penrod?” Margaret said.
“If that’s what you call your little brother — yes.”
“Why, no; I don’t think he goes downtown often. I think he plays around the neighbourhood here, most of the time. Why?”
“I didn’t know,” Mr. Dade replied carelessly. “It just struck me that I’ve run across him downtown almost every time I go out lately. I wondered if your mother knew about it; that’s all. I thought possibly she wouldn’t want him to be—”
“She wouldn’t,” Margaret agreed decidedly. “I’ll tell her about it. Of course, a child of his age shouldn’t be wandering around down there among street-urchins and newsboys.”
At this, Penrod’s expression became so scornful, and continued in that contortion so long, that he was forced to relax it because his nose hurt him. Meantime, after a silence and some murmured words, the verandah was the scene of a departure.
Margaret spoke regretfully. “It’s awfully mean of you to go so soon!”
And Mr. Dade replied airily from the foot of the steps: “Too bad! But I’ve got to be on long-distance at eight-thirty sharp, Princess.”
“Telephoning to — to someone in another town?”
Mr. Dade had a rich voice and a rich laugh, musically barytone and perhaps a shade conscious; he protracted his laugh now, as if he heard it with some pleasure, himself. “It’s only business — but important in spite of that, Princess.”
She made a small exclamation, half smothered but impatient; he laughed again, and then his voice came from near the gate. “Good-night! Good-night, Princess!”
Margaret came in, looking pink and perplexed and cross; but Penrod did not see her — nor did she see Penrod. He had slipped into an unlit room adjacent to the hall, had slid down from a window and was now crossing the front lawn, hot on the trail. Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade had indeed become the bandit selected by George B. Jashber for a ruthless running to earth; but this was the first opportunity Penrod had found to shadow him except in the daytime, and daytime shadowing had so far failed to reveal (on account of Penrod’s various engagements to lunch and dine at home) the whereabouts and nature of Mr. Dade’s dwelling-place. George B. meant to discover the secret lodging of the scondrel this very night; and, not only that, but where he kept his stolen horses.
Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade walked down the street, humming thoughtfully to himself and lightly swinging from a hand gloved in chamois a polished yellow cane that flashed streaks of high light as he passed the street-lamps. Surely no detective could have wished for a more easily shadowed scondrel, and, since Mr. Dade not once glanced over his shoulder to ascertain if he were followed, many of George B. Jashber’s precautions to avoid being seen might have struck an observer as unnecessary.
George B. took advantage, so to speak, of every bit of cover; he flitted from the trunk of one shade-tree to the next; anon, stooping low, he darted into the mouths of alleys and out again; several times he threw himself full-length upon the grass-plots beside the pavement and crawled a few feet before rising; and in these various alarums and excursions he covered almost as much ground as if he had been an inquisitive poodle out walking with his master.
Not less ingenious was he when the marts of the town were reached. In this illuminated region he sheltered himself among groups of citizens, or walked behind strolling couples, or flattened himself in entryways, not forgetting to put frequently into practise that detectivest of street devices, the affectation of interest in a shop window; but never letting his eye wander, for more than three or four seconds at a time, from the flashing yellow walking-stick and the yellow chamois glove that held it.
Proceeding in this manner, he traced the sinister peregrinations of Herbert Hamilton Dade for more than an hour. Mr. Dade went into a hotel lobby, purchased a package of cigarettes at the news-stand (as Penrod was able to observe from the entrance to the lobby) and then spoke to the telephone operator. After this, he took a seat near by, and lit a cigarette and smoked it. Presently, the telephone operator spoke to him in a low voice, and Mr. Dade went into one of the booths. He remained therein for almost a quarter of an hour and came out looking annoyed and perspiring suspiciously. He gave the telephone operator a sum of money, left the hotel and crossed the street to a drug store, where he purchased a glass (with spoon
) of soda-water, ice-cream and a flavouring sirup not to be identified from outside the show-window. Then he left the drug store, walked to the next corner and stood there for several minutes, apparently thinking. Suddenly, he decided to go on again, and walked twice round the block with no object discernible to Penrod, whose feet were beginning to be painful. Yet he would not give up. He was determined to see this thing through to the end.
At last, he uttered a low exclamation — that is to say, he uttered a moral exclamation in a low voice — and quickened his pace; for Mr. Dade, having yawned audibly, had quickened his own pace and had turned into a dark and silent side street that led away from the main thoroughfare of the town. Before he had gone a dozen paces in this direction, he encountered a man whose lower features were wholly curtained behind a black beard, as easily supposed false as real, and both Mr. Dade and this bearded man came to a halt. Every word of their conversation was audible to George B. Jashber, who was sitting below the level of the pavement upon some steps leading down to a basement barber-shop.
“Well, good-evening,” said the bearded man.
“Hello!” Mr. Dade returned.
“Any news?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Well, it’s warm weather.”
“Yes, it is,” said Mr. Dade. “I’m going home to bed. Good-night.”
And the other, passing onward, called back, in a voice not perceptibly muffled by his whiskers, “Well, good-night.”
Breathlessly, Penrod waited until the black-bearded man was safely beyond the entrance to the barber’s stairway; then he crept forth upon the pavement and once more took up the trail. Dade had distinctly said, “I’m going home to bed.” Very well! George B. Jashber might have to defer to another occasion the discovery of where the stolen horses were kept; but at least he was certain of one thing: a short time — perhaps only a few minutes — would reveal the location of the scondrel’s den. He was going there now!
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 441