The Perils of Pauline Part 36

SOPHIE MCALLAN'S WEDDING

A few days after their return from Montana Pauline sat reading by the library window. They had come late to the country this Summer and the park of Castle Marvin had had time to leave and bloom into utter splendor. It was like a flowery kingdom in the Land of Faery, and as her eyes were lifted listlessly now and then from the printed page, they roamed over the garden which lay like some vast and radiant Oriental rug in Nature's palace hall. The distant forest was the palace wall, tapestried in green; its dome, a sky of tender blue; its lamp, the morning sun; its Prince, her Harry standing in the garden.

"He should always stand in the garden," thought Pauline tenderly. "The flowers are such a splendid foil for him."

She shut her eyes in sheer satiety of beauty. Not even the shabby man mopping his hot forehead as he came along the road, marred the picture. She was a little surprised to see him, a moment later, talking in an easy way with Harry but there was no false pride in her lover--brother and all men were his friends until they proved themselves his enemies. All except Owen.

The shabby man, holding his hat between his nervous hands, was evidently an applicant for work. Harry pointed to the flower beds and the rose trees with a nod of inquiry. The man a.s.sented vaguely. And they came on up the path together, making their way towards the servants' quarters over the garage. Harry paused at the window:

"I have hired a new gardener, who does not know his own name," he said as they pa.s.sed on.

Pauline turned back to the pages of the Cosmopolitan. A picture in an article on the motor races caught her eye and held it for some reason that she did not at first understand. It was a picture of a man in auto-racer's costume, with a helmet tight upon his head and the keen features and daring eyes peculiar to those who live by peril. She had started to read the caption when she was interrupted by Bemis bringing her letters. With a little flutter of pleasure, womanlike, she began to read the letters from their postmarks before opening them. She hit upon one that brought a little peal of laughter from her, and she opened it eagerly and read:

"Walter and I want you and Harry to be with us at the wedding. Don't faint. We decided only yesterday, and it's going to be very quiet, with just the few people whom we can reach with informal notes like this. You can motor over in an hour. Tell Harry our lions arrived last Thursday from Germany, and after the wedding the keeper will exhibit them. If Harry won't come to see me married, he'll come to see the lions.

"Yours in a flurry, Sophie McAllan."

Pauline laughed again. It was like her unconventional chum, Sophie, to arrange her wedding with the same startling haste that had marked all the breathless events of her life. The lions she mentioned were typical of her original ideas. She had suddenly announced to her parents one day that she was tired of domestic animals and was going to keep lions instead. And her amused and amazed father had not only been forced to yield, but to keep his eye out all over Europe, Asia and Africa for new bargains in well bred lions ever since.

It was also typical of Sophie that she had selected from among all the das.h.i.+ng wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy. Their engagement had been long announced. It was only in its high-handed abruptness that the wedding was a surprise.

Pauline dropped the letter on the table and hurried from the room to look for Harry.

He had head her first call and was coming in from the garage. Pausing at the door of the library, where he had last seen her, he narrowly avoided a collision with Owen, who was hurrying out. The look of covert guilt on the secretary's face aroused his latent suspicion. But Owen, quickly recovering himself, bowed, apologized and pa.s.sed on.

Harry stepped into the library. He saw the open letter on the table, looked at the envelope and saw that, he was included in the address.

He read the letter, and the old look of trouble came into his eyes as he turned to see if Owen were watching.

As he stepped into the hall he saw the secretary leaving the house. He stood in the doorway and watched Owen depart in his own machine, driven by his own chauffeur, a sullen young fellow whom the other employees held in aversion.

"He's up to something. I wonder what harm he could do at the McCallan wedding," muttered Harry, as he moved down the steps and out to where the new gardener was working. The man had been greatly improved as to cleanliness and clothes, but there was still the strange distant look in his eyes as he got up from a flower bed to speak to Harry.

Pauline, after circling the house in vain search of her brother, had returned to her unread letters and her magazine.

As she lifted the latter from the table, the picture of the man in racing costume again struck her eye, and this time she read the caption:

"Ralph Palmer, whose skull was fractured in the Vanderbilt Cup Race and who disappeared from a hospital six weeks ago."

She studied the face again. It seemed the living likeness of one whom she had seen dead. Suddenly her thoughts crystallized and she sprang up. She rushed again to the front door, carrying the magazine open and saw Harry and the gardener talking on the path. She ran down to them.

The gardener took off his hat, but Pauline looked at him with such piercing scrutiny that he hurried to resume his work. Harry, after a brief affectionate greeting, turned to give some last instructions, and, behind his back, Pauline stole another look at the magazine.

"It is; I am sure it is," she said half aloud.

Harry turned quickly. "What is, dear G.o.ddess of the garden?" he asked cheerily.

Pauline closed the magazine abruptly.

"Oh! I--I was dreaming," she answered, with a little nervous laugh.

"You can't have a dream when you are one," he said, putting his arm about her waist as they moved back towards the house.

"I have news," she exclaimed, remembering the wedding invitation.

"Sophie McCallan is to be married tonight--just like that--without telling till the last minute."

"I read the letter in the library."

"Did you tell Farrell to have the car ready?"

"I will, dearest. But I am not sure that I can go."

"But you must go."

"I got a telegram this morning, and I must go into town."

"To New York! Oh, Hairy, I simply hate your old business. Haven't we got enough money without trying to make all there is in the world?

Aren't we..."

"No, not to New York--just into Westbury, Miss Firebrand. I must use the wire direct to the office."

"Absurd. Why don't you telephone your message?"

"Code messages, dear. They can't be talked."

"But you'll be back in time to go with me?"

"I'll do my best. I'm starting directly. There's Farrell with the machine now."

"But Farrell must get my car ready."

"He will. Farrell isn't going with me."

Her threats and pretty pleadings followed him as he drove away. But Harry did not drive towards Westbury farther than the first crossroads. Instead, he swerved out across country towards Windywild, the great McCallan estate. Only a vague purpose moved him. His suspicions were groping. But he was forming dimly in his mind a plan to keep Pauline away from the McCallan wedding. Premonition whispered that even among the nuptial gayeties there might be danger.

On the crest of Winton's Hill, from which the road slopes down to beautiful Windywild through parked forests, but from which the rambling white villa, with its barns and garage can be seen in striking bird's-eye view, Harry stopped his machine.

To his far vision there was no unusual stir about the McCallan house, in spite of the wedding day. Owen's car was not at the gate nor in the yard, and he certainly would not have sent it to the garage if he were making a business visit to the manager of the estate.

With a hateful sense of spying on the innocent and the sincere dread of being met there by anyone--even by Owen--he was about to turn around, go back and agree to take Pauline to the wedding, when the movement of a figure through the distant garage yard made him stiffen to attention and strain his gaze.

In an instant he had whipped his binoculars from under the seat of the runabout and was staring through them at the establishment below. A few moments afterwards he carefully replaced the gla.s.ses, and drove away.

Owen had left the Marvin place in haste, seemingly intent upon a direct and important errand, but if any one had seen where the car stopped an hour later, both the haste and the errand would still have been unexplained.

They were in the loneliest stretch of woods a half mile beyond the McCallan house when Owen leaned forward and said to his driver: "You may stop here."

"Yes, sir," answered the young man with a respect that he showed to no one else. He drew the machine to the roadside and then asked: "Am I to go with you or stay here?"

"Stay here," answered Owen. "But don't sit there lolling in the seat.