The Unspeakable Perk Part 38

The foreigner bowed, and swung his horse toward a Caracunan who had pressed forward a little too near. But, for the moment the fight had oozed out of the mob.

Without mishap the group got across the street, Perkins still clinging to the flag.

Suddenly, from the rear rank, came a shower of stones, followed by the final rush. Galpy and Perkins went down. Von Plaanden tottered in his saddle, but quickly recovered. Instantly Perkins was up again, the blood streaming from the side of his head. He was conscious of brown hands clutching at the cricketer, to drag him away. He himself seized the c.o.c.kney's legs and braced for that absurd and deadly tug of war. Then Von Plaanden's saber descended, and he was able to haul Galpy back into safety.

The situation was desperate now. Mr. Brewster was pinned against the wall and disarmed, but still fighting with fist and foot. Half a dozen peons were struggling with Cluff across the bodies of as many more whom he had knocked down. Sherwen, almost under the cavalryman's mount, was protecting his rear with the fallen Galpy's cricket bat, and the two other cricketers were fighting back to back on the other side. Carroll was clubbing his way toward Mr. Brewster, but his weapon was now in his left hand. Matters looked dark indeed, when there shrilled fiercely from above them the whirring peal of a silver whistle.

Polly Brewster had remembered Raimonda. It seemed a futile signal, for as she ran to the railing and gazed across at the Club Amicitia, she saw all its windows and doors tight closed, as befits an aristocratic club that has no concern with the affairs of the rabble. But there is no way of closing a patio from the top, and sounds can enter readily that way, when all other apertures are shut. Long and loud Miss Polly blew the signal on the silver hunting-whistle.

In the club patio, Raimonda was chafing and wondering, and a score of his friends were drinking and waiting. That signal released their activities and terminated the battle of the American Legation most ingloriously for the forces of Urgante. For the gilded youth of Caracuna bears a heavy cane of fas.h.i.+on, and carries a ready revolver, also, although not so admittedly as a matter of fas.h.i.+on. Furthermore, he has a profound contempt for the peon cla.s.s; a contempt extending to life and limb. Therefore, when some two dozen young patricians sallied abruptly forth with their canes, and the mob caught sight, here and there, of a glint of nickel against the black, it gave back promptly. Some desultory stones rattled against the walls. There were answering reports a few, and sundry yells of pain. The army of Urgante broke and fled down the side streets, leaving behind its broken and its wounded. Most of the bullet casualties were below the knee. The Caracunan aristocrat always fires low--the first time.

Shortly thereafter, Miss Polly Brewster appeared upon the balcony of the American Legation, and performed an illegal act. Upon a day not designated as a Caracunan national holiday, she raised the flag of an alien nation and fixed it, and the gilded youth of Caracuna in the street below cheered, not the flag, which would have been unpatriotic, but the flag-raiser, which was but gallant, until they were hoa.r.s.e and parched of throat.

XI

PRESTO CHANGE

After the battle, Miss Brewster reviewed her troops, and took stock of casualties, in the patio. None of the allied forces had come off scatheless. Galpy, whose injuries had at first seemed the most severe, responded to a stiff dose of brandy. A cut across the scientist's head had been hastily bandaged in a towel, giving him, as he observed, the appearance of a dissipated Hindu. To Von Plaanden's indignant disgust, his military splendor was seriously impaired by a huge "hickey" over his left eye, the memento of a well-aimed rock. Cluff had broken a finger and sprained his wrist. Mr. Brewster was anxious to know if any one had seen two teeth of his on the pavement or whether he was to look for later digestive indications of their whereabouts. Both of the young cricketers had been battered and bruised, though it was nothing, they gleefully averred, to what they had meted out. And Carroll had a nasty-looking knife-thrust in his shoulder.

All of them were disheveled, dilapidated, and grimy to the last degree, except the Hochwaldian, who still sat his horse, which he had ridden into the patio. But Miss Polly said to herself, with a thrill of pride, that no woman need wish a more gallant and devoted band of defenders.

Leaning over them from the inner railing of the balcony, she surveyed them with sparkling eyes.

"It was magnificent!" she cried. "Oh, I'm so proud of you all! I could hug you, every one!"

"Better come down from there, Polly," said her father anxiously. "Some of those ruffians might come back."

"Not to-day," said Sherwen grimly. "They've had enough."

"That is correct," confirmed Von Plaanden. "Nevertheless, there may be disorder later. Would it not be better that you go to the British Legation, Fraulein?"

"Not I!" she returned. "I stay by my colors. And now I'm going to disband my army."

Stretching out her hand to a vase near her, she drew out a rose of deepest red and held it above Von Plaanden.

"The color of my country," said Von Plaanden gravely. "May I take it for a sign that I am forgiven?"

"Fully, freely, and gladly," said the girl. "You have put a debt upon us all that I--that we can never repay."

"It is I who pay. You will not think of me too hardly, for my one breach?"

"I shall think of you as a hero," said the girl impetuously. "And I shall never forget. Catch, O knight."

The rose fell, and was caught. Von Plaanden bowed low over it. Then he straightened to the military salute, and so rode out of the door and out of the girl's life.

"Men are strange creatures," mused the philosopher of twenty. "You think they are perfectly horrid, and suddenly they show their other side to you, and you think they are perfectly splendid. I wish I knew a little more about real people."

She confessed to no more specific thought, but as she descended the stairs to bid farewell to the blus.h.i.+ng and deprecatory Britons, she was eager to have it over with, and to come to speech with her beetle man, who had so strangely flamed into action. The Unspeakable Perk! As the name formed on her lips, she smiled tenderly. With sad lack of logic, she was ready to discard every suspicion of him that she had harbored, merely on the strength of his reckless outbreak of patriotism. She looked about the patio, but he was not there. Sherwen came out of a side door, his face puckered with anxiety.

"Where is Mr. Perkins?" she asked.

"In there." He nodded back over his shoulder. "Your father is with him.

Perhaps you'd better go in."

With a chill at her heart, Polly entered the room, where Mr. Brewster bent a troubled face over a head swathed in reddened bandages.

Very crumpled and limp looked the Unspeakable Perk, bunched humpily upon the little sofa. His goggles had fallen off, and lay on the floor beside him, contriving somehow to look momentously solemn and important all by themselves. His face was turned half away, and, as Polly's gaze fell upon it, she felt again that queer catch at her heart.

"Wouldn't know it was the same chap, would you?" whispered Mr. Brewster.

The girl picked up the grotesque spectacles, cradling them for an instant in her hands before she put them aside and leaned over the quiet form.

"Came staggering in, and just collapsed down there," continued her father huskily. "Lord, I wouldn't lose that boy after this for a million dollars!"

"Why do you talk that way?" she demanded sharply. "What has happened?

Did he faint?"

"Just collapsed. When I tried to rouse him, he kicked me in the chest,"

replied the magnate, with somber seriousness.

"Oh, you goose of a dad!" There was a tremulous note in Polly's low laughter. "That's all right, then. Can't you see he's dead for sleep, poor beetle man?"

"Do you think so?" said Mr. Brewster, vastly relieved. "Hadn't I better go out for a doctor, and make sure?"

She shook her head.

"Let him rest. Hand me that pillow, please, dad."

With soft little pushes and wedges she worked it under the scientist's head. "What a dreadful botch of bandaging! He looks so pale! I wonder if I couldn't get those cloths off. Lend me your knife, dad."

Gently as she worked, the head on the pillow began to sway, and the lips to move.

"Oh, let me alone!" they muttered querulously.

The eyes opened. The Unspeakable Perk gazed up into the faces above him, but saw only one, a face whose tender concern softened it to a loveliness greater even than when he had last seen it. He tried to rise, but the hands that pressed him back were firm and quick.

"Lie still!" bade their owner.

A thin film of color mounted to his cheeks.

"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered. "I--I--d-didn't know--"

"Don't be a goose!" she adjured him. "It's only me."