"That I will not tell you, because it will involve several poor devils I"ve hired in connection with this mad affair," said Anthony. "But if you will permit me, I will go for the young lady myself--stipulating only that I shall not be followed--and I will return her to your house before three o"clock this afternoon. After that, Dalton," said Anthony, drawing himself up, "I"m willing to take my medicine. I know that it"s coming and I"m willing----"
"You"ll get it, never fear," snarled Mary"s father. "But about Mary!
Tell me the name of this town or----"
"I shall tell you nothing whatever!" Anthony said firmly. "I shall tell you only that, under the conditions I have named, I will very gladly go to Jersey and get her."
"You"re sure she"s there now?" Robert said hoa.r.s.ely.
"I am absolutely sure," said Anthony, "that she is now in New Jersey under guard."
And now, with Dalton"s murderous impulses stilled at least, with many things fairly well explained and new minutiae coming into his head every second should this, that or the other question be asked, just as Anthony leaned back, two new quant.i.ties must needs enter. The first was Hobart Hitchin. The second was a strong breeze, which always came through the living-room when Wilkins left open the door and the window of his pantry.
"Fry," said the crime-student, and if a snake owned a voice it would be as slithery and oily as the voice of Hobart Hitchin just then, "Fry, you say that Boller came in several hours after you came in last night?
Didn"t I see you both downstairs?"
"Eh?" Anthony said.
"And Fry," the reptilian voice added, "you haven"t told us what was in the trunk you sent to Dalton"s house, you know."
Anthony straightened up again. Two seconds were pa.s.sed, and still he had not the answer; three, and he was still silent; four, and he had not yet spoken. And the playful breeze saved him all the trouble of speaking.
The latch of Anthony"s bedroom door was not caught, and the breeze, striking it squarely, sent it open suddenly and cleanly as if jerked back by a wire!
And leaning forward in her chair, even now listening intently, Mary Dalton was revealed!
Anthony Fry did not move; this was because he could not. But with a single motion Theodore Dalton and Robert Vining, Johnson Boller and Johnson Boller"s wife, were on their feet and staring at her. With a single plunge, Dalton and Vining went forward, and the former winning, he s.n.a.t.c.hed Mary to him and wrapped the great arms around her, mouthing and mumbling and shouting all at once!
Still Anthony did not move. He had not moved when, through the swirl that was before his eyes, Mary and her father came into the room. The girl had disengaged herself and she was rather pale--ah, and she was speaking to her father.
"Dad," she said very quietly, "have I ever told you a lie?"
"You"d be no daughter of mine if you had," Dalton said simply.
"Then what happened is just this: I wanted to go to that fight last night and Bob wouldn"t take me. He was so awfully uppish about it that I decided to go myself; I like a good fight, you know. I didn"t dare go as a girl, so I put on d.i.c.ky"s fishing suit--the old one--and sneaked out the back door, after you thought I was in bed. Then I got a messenger boy and managed to find a ticket for the fight. And I went," said Mary, "and I happened to sit next to Mr. Fry."
"You went alone to a prize fight?" her father gasped.
"It was horribly tame," said Mary, "but some men started a fight behind us, because Mr. Fry spoke to me, I think, and that wasn"t tame at all.
For a minute it scared my wits out, because I thought we were all going to be arrested. So when Mr. Fry and Mr. Boller decided to escape in a taxicab, I was mighty glad to go with them. After that Mr. Fry--turned queer," Mary dimpled. "He thought I was a boy and he wanted to offer me the opportunity of a lifetime.
"I don"t know just what it meant, but I was curious enough to come up here and listen; and when I didn"t appreciate what he was offering, Mr.
Fry got mad. He told me he"d keep me here until I did, so I--I just went to bed and counted on getting out overnight, somehow. I tried it and I missed fire, and this morning he discovered that I was a girl. That"s the whole story; we"ve all been trying to get me out of here ever since--and I"m still here!"
"But the trunk----" Hobart Hitchin put in doggedly.
"I was in the trunk," said Mary. "We thought I could get to Felice"s room that way, but Felice was gone, so Wilkins brought me back." She looked at her father steadily and almost confidently. "That weird tale about having me drugged was just to save me, dad, and maybe if the door hadn"t blown open I"d have been home about three and swearing to it.
That"s all. Mr. Fry--Mr. Boller, too--have been too nice for words,"
concluded Mary, stretching a point. "There isn"t a thing to blame them for--and I never could have believed that Mr. Fry was capable of a lovely lie like that."
Since seven that morning, at which time Mary"s absence had been discovered, Theodore Dalton had been breathing in terrible, spasmodic gasps. Now, as he faced Anthony, he breathed deeply--breathed deeply again--and turned Anthony"s tottering world quite upside down by suddenly thrusting out his hand.
"Well, by gad, Fry!" he bellowed. "I knew you were crazy, but I never suspected you were man enough for that! I"d swallowed that tale almost whole and I"d made up my mind to wipe you and your bottled mess off the map together."
"I know," said Anthony.
"But if there"s one thing that hits me right where I live," vociferated Dalton, "it"s a man who will chuck his own every earthly interest aside to save a woman"s name and--put it there, Fry! You"re a man!"
A little uncertainly, because he was dazed and dizzy, Anthony grasped the hairy hand. It was not so, because it was impossible, but--he and Dalton were friends!
Beatrice was within a yard of her husband.
"Then there was--was nothing----" she faltered.
"There was nothing to get excited about--no," Johnson Boller said stiffly. "Not at any time."
"Pudgy!" Beatrice said chokily, because her volatile nature was whizzing breathlessly down from the exalted murder-state to the depths of contrition.
"Well? What?" Johnson Boller said coldly.
"Pudgy-wudgy, can you ever forgive me?" Beatrice cried, burying her head on his shoulder.
"I don"t know," Johnson Boller said frigidly, and did not even put an arm around her. "I don"t know, Beatrice. You have wounded me more deeply this day than I have ever been wounded in all my life before. I shall try in time to forgive you, but--I do not know."
They were all gone now, all but Anthony and his old friend, Johnson Boller.
It was in fact nearly noon, for with the tension removed Mary had gone into the details of last night; and after a little even Robert Vining had laughed. He at least knew Anthony Fry and he believed Johnson Boller to be one of the most harmless fat men in existence, so that when he had heard it all even Robert fell to chuckling.
And now they were gone with Mary, leaving behind a conviction in Anthony"s bosom that Mary was really a very charming young girl; leaving an impression, too, that, could twenty years have been swept from his forty-five, he might even have undertaken to win her away from Robert!
This last impression was transitory in the extreme, however; it endured for perhaps forty-five seconds.
Hobart Hitchin was gone; he had vanished somewhere about the middle of the session, leaving Richard"s trousers, and for a long time n.o.body even noticed that he was among the missing. To the best of Johnson Boller"s memory, he left just after Richard answered the long distance call and a.s.sured his father that all was well.
Beatrice was gone, too. She had left all wreathed in smiles, since the idiot that was her husband could not maintain his chilliness for more than five minutes. In a dusky corner, Johnson and his cyclonic lady had kissed eighteen times, lingeringly, and then she had left him to pack up and follow, while she went personally to the five-thousand-dollar apartment to prepare the things he most liked for luncheon.
And now Johnson Boller had packed the grip, while Anthony lounged, tired out, weak in knees and hands, trembling every now and then and gazing into the blue cigar smoke above him.
"The next time I come to stay with you I"m going to bring a chaperon,"
Boller mused.
"Do."
"You came pretty near wrecking my home that time, Anthony."
"Pah!" snarled Anthony.
Johnson Boller pursued the strain no further. Instead, with a shrug of the shoulders, he picked up a book from the top of the case and turned its pages idly. After which he smiled suddenly and said, with the utmost alertness.