Blacksheep! Blacksheep!, Meredith Nicholson [reading women .txt] 📗

They were both liars; both were practising a deceit that could hardly fail to bring them under sharp scrutiny if they should be caught.

Women were far from being the simple creatures he had believed them to be. The heart of woman was a labyrinth of mystery. Mrs. Congdon, altogether lovely and bearing all the marks of breeding, had lied quite as convincingly as Sally Walker. The ways of Isabel were beyond all human understanding; and yet her contradictions only added to her charm. Isabel's agitation over the affairs of the Congdons led him close to the point of mentioning her name to note its effect upon Mrs. Congdon, but to do this might be an act of betrayal that would only confirm Isabel's opinion of him as a stupid, meddlesome person. Nothing was to be gained by attempting to hasten the culmination of the fate that flung him about like a chip on a turbulent stream. Fiends and angels might be battling for his soul, and Lucifer might take him in the end, but meanwhile he was having a jolly good time.

He looked at her covertly and they laughed with the mirth of children planning mischief in secret.

"The little girl," he ventured; "you are not apprehensive about her?"

"Not in the slightest. My father-in-law is most disagreeably eccentric, but he is very fond of my children. It was quite like him to attempt to carry off the little girl, always a particular pet of his. I was shocked, of course, when it happened. I thought I should be safe in the park for a few hours until I could catch a train. I meant to put the children quite out of my husband's way. I didn't know he was in town; in fact, I don't know now that he is or anything about him. But he's undoubtedly in communication with his father. It's rather a complicated business, you see."

It was much more complex than she knew, and not, all things considered, a laughing matter. He spent an uncomfortable moment pondering a situation which he viewed with the mingled joy and awe of a child watching the fire in a fuse approach a fire-cracker.

"I shall be glad to assist you if I can aid you in any way. You will try to recover the child—?" he suggested.

"It's generous of you to offer, but I think you had better keep out of it. Of course I shall have Edith back; you may be sure of that."

"You have some idea of where they are taking her—?"

"No, I really haven't. But she will be safe, though I hate to think of her being subjected to so hideous an experience. It's rather odd, as I think of it, that my husband didn't personally try to take the child from me."

This, uttered musingly, gave Archie a perturbed moment. But the car had reached the Altmore. He lifted out the boy and accompanied them to the door.

"Thank you, very much," she said in a tone that dismissed him.

Archie drove to another hostelry for a superficial cleaning up, explaining to the brush boy who scraped the oily mud from his trousers that he had been in an automobile accident. He rode downtown in the subway, strolled past the skyscraper in which his office was situated and returned to the Governor's house feeling on the whole well pleased with himself.

IV

Refreshed by a nap and a shower he was dressed and waiting for the Governor at seven. On his way through the hall he ran into a man whose sudden appearance gave him a start. He was not one of the servants but a rough-looking stranger with drooping shoulders and a smear of dirt across his cheek. He would have passed him in the street as a laborer returning from a hard day's work. The man did not lift his eyes but shuffled on to the door of the Governor's room which he opened and then, flinging round, stood erect and laughed aloud.

"Pardon me, Archie, for giving you a scare! I couldn't resist the impulse to test this makeup!"

"You!" cried Archie, blinking as the Governor switched on the light.

"I went and came in these togs; not for a lark, I assure you, but because I had to go clear down under the crust today. Turn the water on in my tub and I'll be slipping into decent duds in a jiffy. Here's an extra I picked up downtown. The scream of the evening is a kidnaping—most deplorable line of business! Have you ever noticed a certain periodicity in child stealing? About every so often you hear of such a case. Despicable; a foul crime hardly second to murder. Hanging is not too severe a punishment. Clear out now, for if we begin talking I'll never get dressed!"

The account of the kidnaping in the park was little more than a bulletin, but Archie soon had it committed to memory. The police had not yet learned that the two most important witnesses had given fictitious names, for both pseudonyms appeared in the article.

In spite of the Governor's frequently avowed assertion that he wished to know nothing about him, Archie felt strongly impelled to make a clean breast of the Bailey Harbor affair, the two encounters with Isabel and his meeting with Mrs. Congdon. His resolution strengthened when the Governor appeared, dressed with his usual care and exhilarated by his day's adventures. At the table the Governor threw a remark now and then at the butler as to the whereabouts and recent performances of some of that functionary's old pals. Baring received this information soberly with only the most deferential murmurs of pleasure or dismay at the successes or failures of the old comrades. Baring retired after the dinner had been served, and the Governor, in cozy accord with his cigar, remarked suddenly:

"Odd; you might almost say singular! I've crossed old man Congdon's trail again! You recall him—the old boy we left to the tender mercies of Seebrook and Walters?"

"Yes; go on!" exclaimed Archie so impatiently that the Governor eyed him in surprise.

"It's remarkable how my theory that every man is a potential crook finds fresh proof all the time. Now old Congdon is rich and there's no reason on earth why he shouldn't live straight; but, bless you, it's quite otherwise! He's a victim of the same aberration that prompts people apparently as upright as a flagstaff to drop hotel towels into their trunks, collect coffee spoons in popular restaurants, or steal flowers in public gardens when they have expensive conservatories at home. You never can tell, Archie."

Archie, with the Congdons looming large on his horizon, was not interested in the philosophical aspects of petty pilfering.

"Stick to Eliphalet," he suggested.

"Oh, yes! Well, I met today one of the most remarkable of all the men I know who camp outside the pale. Perky is his name in Who's Who in No Man's Land. A jeweler by trade, he fell from his high estate and went on the road as a yegg. The work was too rough for him for one thing, and for another it was too much of a gamble. Opening safes only to find that they contained a few dollars in stamps and the postmaster's carpet slippers vexed him extremely and he then entered into the game of boring neat holes in the rim of twenty-dollar gold pieces, leaving only the outer shell and filling 'em up with a composition he invented that made the coin ring like a marriage bell. While he was still experimenting he ran into old Eliphalet sitting with his famous umbrella on a bench in Boston Common. Perky thought Eliphalet was a stool pigeon for a con outfit, but explanations followed and it was a case of infatuation on both sides. The old man was as tickled with the scheme as a boy with a new dog. He now assists Perky to circulate the spurious medium of exchange. Perky says he's a wonderful ally, endowed with all the qualities of a first class crook."

"You'll appreciate that better," said Archie, "when you hear what I know about the Congdon family. You've been mighty decent in not pressing me for any account of myself but you've got to hear my story now. We'll probably both be more comfortable if I don't tell you my name, but you shall have that, too, if you care for it. So many things have happened since I left Bailey Harbor that you don't know about, things that I haven't dared tell you, that I'm going to spout it all now and here. If you want to chuck me when you've heard it, well enough; but I don't mind saying that to part with you would hurt me terribly. I never felt so dependent on any man as I do on you; and I've grown mighty fond of you, old man."

"Thank you, lad," said the Governor.

He listened patiently, nodding occasionally or throwing in a question. When Archie finished he rose and clapped him on the shoulder.

"By Jove, you've tossed my stars around like so many dice! I've got to consult the oracles immediately."

He darted from the room and when Archie reached his study the Governor was poring over a map of the heavens.

"Your Isabel's all tangled up in our affairs!" declared the Governor with mock resentment. "It's she who has upset the calculations of all star-gazers from the time of Ptolemy!"

"Isabel!" cried Archie excitedly. "I don't catch the drift of this at all!"

"I should be surprised if you did! Note that countless lines converge upon my diagram. Isabel will dawn upon your gaze again very soon—I feel it coming. Our next move was clearly outlined to me before we came to town, but I must verify the figures in the light of this pistol practice at Bailey." He covered many sheets of a large tablet with figures and threw down his pencil with a satisfied sigh.

"Rochester!" he muttered. "Rochester of all places!"

"Would you mind telling me just what Rochester has to do with all this?" Archie demanded testily.

"My dear boy, Rochester is one of the suburbs of Paradise! The commerce and manufactures of that city are nothing; it's an outpost of Romance, like Bagdad and Camelot, a port of call on the sea of dreams, like Carcassonne! You may recall that I told you of a certain tile in a summer house where my adored promised to leave a message for me if her heart softened or she needed me. Well, the secret post-office is at Rochester; there the incomparable visits her aunt and about this time of year she's likely to be there. And if you knew the way of the stars and could understand my calculations you'd see that your Isabel is likely to have some business in that neighborhood just about now."

"Rubbish! I happen to know that her business was all to be in northern Michigan this summer. Your stars have certainly made a monkey of you this time!"

"Cynic! The thought seems to please you! You want to see me discomfited and defeated. Very well; you can drop me right here if you like, but I'll wager something handsome that you'll regret your skepticism all the rest of your days. Resistance to the course of events marked by the stars is bound to result in confusion. And here's another striking coincidence: You mentioned casually that Isabel spoke of buried treasure in the far north. I'm overpowered by that. The sweet influences of Pleiades have long beguiled me with the promise of a quest for hidden gold; for years, Archie, the thing has haunted me."

"You talk like a nonsense book! How much luggage are we taking?"

"Take everything you've got! This is going to be the most important of all my enterprises, Archie. It's just as well to be fully prepared."

He rang for Timmons to do their packing and fell upon