Whitney Barnes guiltily jumped and barely missed swallowing his cane.
Volplaning to earth, he looked for the source of this dismaying interruption. He recognized with a start one of the past season"s debutantes whose mamma had spread a maze of traps and labyrinths for him--Miss Sybil Hawker-Sponge of New York, Newport, Tuxedo and Lenox.
Before he could even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her most winning smile and repeated:
"Why, Mr. Barnes, what are you doing here?"
Her big doll eyes rolled a double circuit of coquetry and slanted off with a suggestive glance at the ma.s.sive doorway of the Hawker-Sponge mansion, one of the most aristocratically mortgaged dwellings in America.
"It is rather late for a call," she gushed suddenly, "but I know mamma"----
"Impossible!" cried Barnes. "That is--I beg your pardon--I should be charmed, but the fact is I was looking for a friend--I mean a policeman. Er--you haven"t seen a good looking policeman going by, have you, Miss Sybil?"
All the coquetry in Miss Hawker-Sponge"s eyes went into stony eclipse.
"You are looking for a policeman friend, Mr. Barnes?" she said icily, gathering up her skirts and beginning to back away. "I hope you find him."
She gave him her back with the abruptness of a slap in the face.
In another moment he was again a lone wayfarer in the bleak night wilderness of out-of-doors Fifth avenue.
Indubitably he had committed a hideous breach of good manners and could never expect forgiveness from Miss Hawker-Sponge. She had really invited him into her home and he had preferred to hunt for a "policeman friend." Yet the tragedy of it was so grotesquely funny that Whitney Barnes laughed, and in laughing dismissed Miss Hawker-Sponge from his mind.
He must find Travers Gladwin, and off he went at another burst of speed.
He covered about three blocks without pause.
A second and far more sensational interruption came from a side street, and again of the feminine gender.
It was a tall, weird looking figure wound in a black shawl and it b.u.mped squarely into Whitney Barnes and brought him up sharply, spinning on one foot.
Before he stopped spinning he felt himself seized by the arm.
Without warning a bundle was thrust into his arms and he had to clutch it. In another instant the weird figure had fled up the avenue, turned a corner and vanished.
Instantly the bundle that Whitney Barnes held awkwardly and painfully, as if it were a firebrand, emitted an anguished wail.
If that wasn"t a pretty pickle for Whitney Barnes! His cane had clattered to the pavement and he did not dare stoop to pick it up. The anguish from the bundle he held increased terrifically in volume. He could feel beads of perspiration running down his face.
What in desperation was he going to do with that awful bundle? He knew intuitively that the tall, shawled figure would never return.
"My G.o.d!" he cried, "I"ll be arrested as the father of it, and what will Sadie say to that?"
It was no wonder that the son and heir of Old Grim Barnes sweated. It wasn"t perspiration. One doesn"t perspire in such awful straits--one sweats, like a navvy.
It seemed ages before he could form the impulse to move in any direction for any definite purpose. He was on the point of making up his mind to lay the bundle on the doorstep when he sensed a heavy step from behind and was paralyzed by the gruff e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n:
"Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned!"
Barnes twisted his head and beheld a big, deep-chested policeman--a haughty domineering policeman--who showed in every inch of him that the G.o.ds had anointed him above the mere ranks of mortal patrolmen.
"Take it! take it!" cried Barnes, extending the bundle toward the uniformed presence. "It"s not mine," he almost shrieked. "A woman gave it to me--and I have a very important engagement and must hurry."
Sergeant McGinnis--for "twas none other--drew back and waved the bundle from him.
"Just a minute, my young friend," he spoke through one side of his large mouth. "You"ll hold that infant till its mother comes or you"ll go with me to the police station and tell your story to the captain."
"But I can"t wait," wailed Barnes. "I"ve got to find a policeman."
"A policeman, eh? Well, here"s one for you, and a sergeant at that."
"I mean a friend. It"s horribly important. I"ll give you anything you ask if you"ll only take this howling bundle."
"None o" that, young feller," McGinnis snapped him up. "You"ll give me nothing and you"ll come sharp and straight to the station. Now I know there"s something back o" this."
"But I haven"t time," Barnes objected. "It"s most horribly important that I should find"----
"Chop it! Chop it! You"ll come with me, and you"ll lug that infant. If you won"t come quiet I"ll slip the nippers on you."
Barnes realized the hopelessness of the situation and looked about him wildly.
"Stop that taxicab, officer," he urged, as he saw one of the vehicles approaching. "I can"t walk like this. I"ll pay the fare--I"ll pay everything."
McGinnis consented to this arrangement. The taxicab stopped. A few minutes later it bore the sergeant, his prisoner and the still howling infant to the threshold of the East Eighty-eighth street police station.
McGinnis consented to carry the infant as they got out and once inside the station lost no time in turning it over to the matron.
"h.e.l.lo, McGinnis," said Lieut. Einstein from the desk; "what"s all this?"
McGinnis explained in a few crisp sentences.
"Is the captain in, Lieutenant?" he asked. "This young fellow is after trying to bribe me."
Barnes protested that such a thought had never entered his head.
"I simply told him," he declared hotly, "that I had an important engagement"----
"Looking for a policeman, he says."
"For a friend. I may have said policeman--I may have said anything in such a beastly situation. I am sure that when the captain hears me he will understand immediately."
"That may be true, sir," said the lieutenant politely, "but the captain is out at present and won"t be back till after midnight. If you want to, you can sit in the back room and wait for him."
Further protestations were unavailing. With a sigh of despair Barnes permitted himself to be led to the back room, where he dropped down on a chair and looked savagely about him.
The room was empty and there was nothing to gaze at save four blank walls and a black cat sitting in a corner idly washing its paws. Now and then a door opened, a face peered in and the door shut again.
Somewhere a clock ticked dolefully.