"There"ll be regular trouble for the guy, if I ever find out you"ve lied to me."
"What business--"
"Ah, cut that!" snarled Butch. "You"re my sister--see? And you"re a d.a.m.n" little fool, and somebody"s got to look out for you. And that means me. You go ahead and try this stage thing all you like--but duck the men, duck "em every time!"
He eyed her momentarily from a vast and aloof coign of vantage. She was dumb with resentment, oppressed by amazement and a little in awe of the boy, her junior though he was.
"Now, lis"en: got any money?"
"No--yes--fifty cents," she stammered.
"That ain"t goin" to carry you far over the b.u.mps. Who"s goin" to put up for you while you"re lookin" for this job-thing? Your frien" Maizie?"
"I don"t know--I guess so--yes: I"m going to stay with her."
"Well, you won"t last long if you don"t come through with some coin every little while."
Without warning Butch produced a small packet of bills from his trouser-pocket.
"Djever see them before?" he enquired, with his mocking smile.
Joan gasped: "My money--!"
"Uh-huh," Butch nodded. "Fell outa your bag when you side-stepped the Old Man and beat it, last night. He didn"t see it, and I sneaked the bunch while he wasn"t lookin". G"wan--take it."
He thrust the money into her fingers that closed convulsively upon it.
For a moment she choked and gulped, on the verge of tears, so overpowering was the sense of relief.
"O Butch--!"
"Ah, cut that out. It"s your money, all right--ain"t it?"
She began with trembling fingers to count the bills. Butch tilted his head to one side and regarded her with undisguised disgust.
"Say, you must have a swell opinion of me, kid, to think I"d hold out on you!"
She stared bewildered.
"There"s twenty-two dollars here, Butch!"
Her hand moved out as if offering to return the money. With an angry movement he slapped it back and turned away.
"That"s right," he muttered sourly. "I slipped an extra ten in. I guess I gotta right to, ain"t I? You"re my sister, and you"ll need it before you get through, all right."
She lingered, stunned. "But, Butch ... I oughtn"t to...."
"Ah, can that guff--and beat it. The Old Man"s liable to be back any minute."
Seizing her suit-case, he urged her none too gently toward the door.
"It"s awful" good of you, Butch--awful" good--"
"All right--all right. But can the gush-thing till next time."
Overwhelmed, Joan permitted herself to be thrust out of the door; and then, recovering to some extent, masked her excitement as best she could and trudged away across-town, back toward Central Park.
Blind instinct urged her to that refuge where she would have quiet and peace while she thought things out: a necessity which had not existed until within the last fifteen minutes.
Before her interview with Butch she had been penniless and planless.
But now she found herself in circ.u.mstances of comparative affluence and independence. Twenty-two dollars strictly economized surely ought to keep her fed and sheltered in decent lodgings for at least three weeks; within which time she would quite as surely find employment of some sort.
It remained to decide how best to conserve her resources. On the face of the situation, she had nothing to do but seek the cheapest and meanest rooming-house in the city. But in her heart of hearts she had already determined to return to the establishment of Madame Duprat, beyond her means though it might be, ostensibly to await the return of the Dancing Deans, secretly that she might be under the same roof with John Matthias.
And in the end it was to Number 289 that she turned. At half-past four she stood again on the brown-stone stoop, waiting an answer to her ring.
And at the same moment, John Matthias, handsomely garbed in the best of his wardrobe but otherwise invested in a temper both indignant and rebellious, inst.i.tuted a dash from room to train, handicapped by a time-limit ridiculously brief.
As the front door slammed at his back, he pulled up smartly to escape collision with the girl on the stoop. He looked at and through her, barely conscious of her pretty, pallid face and the light of recognition in her eyes. Then, with a murmured apology, he dodged neatly round her, swung down the steps, and frantically hailed a pa.s.sing taxicab.
Joan, dashed and disappointed, saw the vehicle swing in to the curb and heard Matthias, as he clambered in, direct the driver to the Pennsylvania Station with all possible haste.
She stared after the dwindling cab disconsolately. He hadn"t even known her!
In another minute she would have turned her back on the house and sought lodgings elsewhere, but the door abruptly opened a second time, revealing Madame Duprat, a forbidding but imperative figure, upon the threshold.
Timidly in her confusion the girl made some semi-articulate enquiry as to the address of Miss Maizie Dean.
To her astonishment and consternation, the landlady unbent and smiled.
"Ah!" she exclaimed with unction. "Mademoiselle is the friend of Monsieur Matthias, is it not? Very good. Will you not be pleased to enter? It is but this afternoon that the Sisters Dean have returned so altogether unexpectedly."
VII
Alone in the body of a touring-car, Helena Tankerville, a slender and fair woman in white, as cool and fresh to look upon as the day was hot and weary to endure, consulted her bracelet-watch, shrugged recklessly, and lifted her parasol an inch or so to enable her to level an imperious stare at the point where the straight, shining lines of railroad track debouched from the western woodland; as if expecting the very strength of her impatience to conjure into sight the overdue train.
She was very pretty and prettily dressed and sure of herself; there were evidences of temper and determination mixed with disquietude in her manner; and there was no one in her present neighbourhood (except possibly her chauffeur) of whose existence she considered it worth her while to be aware. None the less, she was conscious that she was visible. . . .
A faint puff of vapour bellied above the distant screen of pines.
Immediately a far, mellow, prolonged hoot turned all faces toward the west. A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where, panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in beside the platform.
Incontinently, upwards of two hundred people, the majority of them men in apparently comfortable circ.u.mstances, well dressed to the standards of summer negligence, swarmed out of the cars and ran hither and yon, heedlessly elbowing one another and gabbling vociferously as they sought accommodation in the long rank of station-wagons, "buses, surreys, smartly appointed traps, and motor-cars.
Helena, bending forward, overlooked them all with imperceptible disdain.
The face she sought was not among those that swam in review beneath her.
And presently encountering an overbold glance, she drew back with a little frown of annoyance. Already the throng was thinning; conveyances laden to the guards were drawing out of the rank and rattling and rumbling off through stifling drifts of dust; no more pa.s.sengers were issuing from the coaches; and already the parlour-car porters were picking up their stools and preparing to swing back aboard the train.