The Landloper Part 33

Twelve minutes to nine.

It was a long way to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club! And Union Hall was filled with men who were patiently waiting for him to keep his pledged word!

"I hope you'll be all right now," he said to the girl, haste in his tones. "I'm sorry--I must go--I have an important engagement."

Her eyes met his in level gaze, turned scornful glance at the others in the room, and then came back to his.

"Are you going in the direction of the Boulevard?" she asked him.

"Straight there."

"Will you bother with me as far as the Boulevard?"

"If you are a good walker," he informed her. There was strict business in her tone and cool civility in his.

"I'm going along with this gentleman, mother."

Farr ushered her ahead of him through the shattered door.

"But I want to walk home with you, my child," wailed the sobbing woman.

"You'd better ask Mr. Dodd to escort you. And I trust that the talk you and he will have will bring both of you to your senses."

She hurried away up the alley with Farr, after he had unlocked the front door, finding the key on the inside.

"I am sorry I must hurry you," he apologized, "and if you cannot keep up I must desert you when we get to a well-lighted street."

She drove a sharp side glance at him and did not reply. Probably for the first time in her life she heard a young man declare with determination that he was in a hurry to leave her. Even a sensible young woman who is pretty must feel some sort of momentary pique because a young man can have engagements so summary and so engrossing.

He offered her his arm that they might walk faster. Her touch thrilled him. He was far from feeling the outward calm that he displayed to her.

They did not speak as they hurried.

Both were nearly breathless when they came out on the Boulevard. He saw the big clock--its hands were nearly at the right angle.

"Good night!" she gasped, and she put out her hand to him. "I thank you!"

"It was nothing," he a.s.sured her.

When their palms met they looked into each other's eyes. It was a momentary flash which they exchanged, but in that instant both of them were thrilled with the strange, sweet knowledge that no human soul may a.n.a.lyze: it is the mystic conviction which makes this man or that woman different from all the rest of humankind to the one whose heart is touched.

She gave him a smile. "Are you a knight-errant?"

She hurried away before he could reply--and, though all his yearning nature strove against his man's resolution to do his duty, it could not prevail: he did not follow her as he wanted to--running after her, crying his love. But duty won out by a mere hazard of a margin because her face, as she had shown it to him at the moment of parting, possessed not merely the wonderful beauty which had so impressed him when he had first seen her--it shone with a sudden flash of emotion that glorified it.

He turned away and hurried to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club.

He had no time to ponder on the nature of that mystery which he had uncovered in the shabby cottage in Rose Alley nor to wonder what sort of persecution it was that could enlist a mother's aid in that grotesque fas.h.i.+on against her own daughter.

He had not time even to frame a plan of campaign against the man whom the patient waiters in Union Hall were expecting him to capture.

The bell in the tower was booming its nine strokes and the Honorable Archer Converse was coming down the steps from his club, erect, crisp, immaculate, dignified--tapping his cane against the stones.

XVIII

CORRALING A CONVERT

Mr. Converse bestowed only a careless glance at the stranger who was waiting at the foot of the club-house steps.

The young man accosted him, not obsequiously, but frankly.

"I know you always take a turn in the park at this hour, Mr. Converse. I beg your pardon, but may I walk for a few steps with you?"

"Why do you want to walk with me?"

"It's a matter--"

"I never discuss business on the street, sir. Come to my office to-morrow."

He marched on and Farr went along behind him.

"You heard?" demanded the attorney.

"I heard." Farr replied very respectfully, but he kept on.

He had rushed away from the girl and had come face to face with Mr.

Converse, his mind utterly barren of plan or resource. That interim on which he had counted as a time in which he might devise ways and means had been so crowded with happenings that all consideration of plans in regard to Archer Converse had been swept from his mind.

At all events, he had rendered a service in that time; he had made good use of that forty-five minutes--that reflection comforted him even while he dizzily wondered what he was to do now.

That service had demanded sacrifice from him--why not demand something from that service? An idea, sudden, brazen, undefendable, even outrageous, popped into his head. He had no time for sensible planning.

Mr. Converse was glancing about with the air of a citizen who would like to catch the eye of a policeman.

"I know all about you, Mr. Converse, even if you know nothing about me.

I'm making a curious appeal--it's to your chivalry!"

That was appeal sufficiently novel, so the demeanor of Mr. Converse announced, to arrest even the attention of a gentleman who usually refused to allow the routine of his life to be interrupted by anything less than an earthquake. He halted and fronted this stranger.

"A man who wears that," proceeded Farr, indicating the rosette of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion in the lapel of Mr. Converse's coat, "and wears it because it came to him by inheritance from General Aaron Converse is bound to listen to that appeal."

"Explain, sir."

"Do you know a Richard Dodd who is the nephew of Colonel Dodd?"

"I do, sir. You aren't asking me to a.s.sist him, are you? I will have nothing to do with him--no help from me!"