"Hood, this is my father," said Billy.
"A great pleasure, I"m sure," Hood responded courteously, extending his hand. "I suppose it was inevitable that we should meet sooner or later, Mr. Deering."
"You--you _are_ Bob--Bob--Tyringham?" asked Deering anxiously.
"Right!" cried Hood in his usual a.s.sured manner. "And I will say for you that you have given me a good chase. I confess that I didn"t think you capable of it; I swear I didn"t! Tuck, I congratulate you; your father is one of the true brotherhood of the stars. He"s been chasing me for a month and, by Jove, he"s kept me guessing! But when I heard that he"d been jailed for speeding, with a prospect of spending Sunday in this hole, I decided that it was time to throw down the mask."
Lights began to dance in the remote recesses of Billy"s mind. Hood was Robert Tyringham, for whom his father held as trustee two million dollars. Tyringham had not been heard of in years. The only son of a most practical father, he had been from youth a victim of the _wanderl.u.s.t_, absenting himself from home for long periods. For ten years he had been on the list of the missing. That Hood should be this man was unbelievable. But the senior Deering seemed not to question his ident.i.ty.
He sat down with a deep sigh and then began to laugh.
"If I hadn"t found you by next Wednesday, I should have had to turn your property over to a dozen charitable inst.i.tutions provided for by your father"s will--and, by George, I"ve been fighting a temptation to steal it!" His arms clasped Billy"s shoulder convulsively. "It"s been horrible, ghastly! I"ve been afraid I might find you and afraid I wouldn"t! I tell you it"s been h.e.l.l. I"ve spent thousands of dollars trying to find you, fearing one day you might turn up, and the next day afraid you wouldn"t.
And, you know, Tyringham, your father was my dearest friend; that"s what made it all so horrible. I want you to know about it, Billy; I want you to know the worst about me; I"m not the man you thought me. When I started away with Constance and told you I was going to California I decided to make a last effort to find Tyringham. I read a d.a.m.ned novel that acted on me like a poison; that"s why I"ve made a fool of myself in a thousand ways, thinking that by masquerading over the country I might catch Tyringham at his own game. And now you know what I might have been; you see what I was trying to be--a common thief, a betrayer of a sacred trust."
"Don"t talk like that, father," began Billy, shaken by his father"s humility. "I guess we"re in the same hole, only I"m in deeper. I tried to rob _you_. I tried to steal some of that Tyringham money myself, but--but----"
Hood, wishing to leave the two alone for their further confidences, walked to the rec.u.mbent Fogarty, roused him with a dig in the ribs, and conferred with him in low tones.
"You took the stuff from my box, Billy?" Mr. Deering asked.
Billy waited apprehensively for what might follow. It was possible that his father had already robbed the Tyringham estate; the thought chilled him into dejection.
"I _had_ stolen it. My G.o.d, I couldn"t help it!" Deering groaned. "I left that waste paper in the box to fool myself, and put the real stuff in another place. I hoped--yes, that was it, I hoped--I"d never find Tyringham and I could keep those bonds. But all the time I kept looking for him. You see, Billy, I couldn"t be as bad as I wanted to be; and yet----"
He drew his hand across his face as though to shut out the picture he saw of himself as a felon.
"Oh, you wouldn"t have done it; you couldn"t have done it!" cried Billy, anxious to mitigate his father"s misery. "If you hadn"t hidden the real bonds, I"d have been a thief! Ned Rans...o...b..was trying to corner Mizpah and needed my help. I put in all I had--that two hundred thousand you gave me my last birthday, and then he skipped. When I get hold of _him_----!"
"You put two hundred thousand in Mizpah?"
"I did, like a fool, and, of course, it"s lost! Ned went daffy about a girl and dropped Mizpah--and my money!"
Mr. Deering was once more a business man. "What did Rans...o...b..buy at?" he asked curtly.
"Seven and a quarter."
"Then you needn"t kick Ned! The Rans...o...b.. put through their deal and Mizpah"s gone to forty!"
Hood rejoined them, and they talked till daylight. He told them much of himself. The responsibility of a great fortune had not appealed to him; he had been honest in his preference for the vagabond life, but realized, now that he was well launched upon middle age, that it was only becoming and decent for him to alter his ways. Billy"s liking for him, that had struggled so rebelliously against impatience and distrust, warmed to the heartiest admiration.
"Of course I knew you were married," the senior Deering remarked for Billy"s enlightenment, "and now and then I got glimpses of you in your gypsy life. Your wife had a fortune of her own--she was one of Augustus Davis"s daughters--so of course she hasn"t suffered from your foolishness."
"My wife shared my tastes; there has never been the slightest trouble between us. Our daughter is just like us. But now Mrs. Tyringham thinks we ought to settle down and be respectable."
"I knew your wife and daughter had come home. I had got that far," Mr.
Deering resumed. "And after I began to suspect that you and Hood were the same person I put my own daughter into your house on the Dempster road as a spy to watch for you."
"My wife wasn"t fooled for a minute," Hood chuckled. "We were having our last fling before we settled down for the rest of our days. We all have the same weakness for a springtime lark: my wife, my daughter, and I."
Billy ran his hands through his hair. "Pierrette! Pierrette is your daughter!"
"Certainly," replied Hood; "and Columbine, the dearest woman in the world, is my wife, and Pantaloon my father-in-law. In my affair with you there was only one coincidence: everything else was planned. It was Pierrette, whose real name is Roberta--Bobby for short, when we"re not playing a game of some sort--Bobby really did lift your suitcase by mistake. And it was stowed away in Ca.s.sowary"s car when I came to your house intending to return it. But when I saw that you needed diversion I decided to give you a whirl. It was an easy matter for Ca.s.sowary to move the suitcase to the bungalow, where you found it. I steered you to the house on purpose to see how you and Bobby would hit it off. The result seems to have been satisfactory!"
Ca.s.sowary turned uneasily on his bench.
"And before we quit all this foolishness," Hood resumed with a glance at the chauffeur, "there"s one thing I want to ask you, Mr. Deering, as a special favor. That chap lying over there is Tommy Torrence, whom you kicked off your door-step for daring to love your daughter. He"s one of the best fellows in the world. Just because his father, the old senator, didn"t quite hit it off with you in a railroad deal before Tommy was born is no reason why you should take it out on the boy. He started for the bad after you made a row over his attentions to your daughter, but he"s been with me six months and he"s as right and true a chap as ever lived.
You"ve got to fix it up with him or I"ll--I"ll--well, I"ll be pretty hard on your boy if he ever wants to break into my family!"
With this Hood rose and drew from his pocket a handful of newspaper clippings which he threw into the air and watched flutter to the floor.
"Those are some of your advertis.e.m.e.nts offering handsome rewards for news of me dead or alive. In collecting them I"ve had a mighty good time.
Let"s all go to sleep; to-morrow night the genial Fogarty will get us out of this. He"s over there now sawing the first bar of that window!"
X
A year has pa.s.sed and it is May again and the last day of that month of enchantment. There has been a house-party at the Deering place at Radford Hills. Constance came from Wyoming to spend May with her father, bringing with her, of course, her husband, sometime known as Ca.s.sowary, who has been elected to the legislature of his State and, may, it is reported, be governor one of these days. The Tyringhams are there, and this includes Robert Tyringham, _alias_ R. Hood, and his wife (whose authorship of "The Madness of May," has not yet been acknowledged) and also her father, Augustus Davis, who continues to find recreation in frequent attacks upon any inoffensive piano that gets in his way. Mr. and Mrs. Edward Rans...o...b.. too, have shared Mr. Deering"s hospitality. Marriage has not interrupted Mrs. Rans...o...b..s career as an artist, though she has dropped ill.u.s.trating, and is specializing in children"s portraits with distinguished success.
The senior Deering, wholly at peace with his conscience, does not work as hard as he used to before his taste of adventurous life gained in the pursuit of Hood. He is very proud of his daughter-in-law, whose brown eyes bring constant cheer and happiness to his table. If she does not hang moons in trees any more, she is still quite capable of doing so, and has no idea of permitting her husband to wear himself out in the banking-house. They are going to keep some time every year for play, she declares, to the very end of their lives.
Hood had been devoting himself a.s.siduously to mastering the details of his business affairs, living as other men do, keeping regular office hours in a tall building with an outlook toward the sea, and taking his recreation on the golf-links every other afternoon.
"Mamma has been nervous all this month about papa," Roberta (known otherwise as Pierrette or Bobby) was saying as she and Billy slowly paced the veranda. "But now May is over and he hasn"t shown any disposition to run away. I suppose he"s really cured." There was a tinge of regret in her last words.
"Yes," Billy replied carelessly. "He hasn"t mentioned his old roving days lately. I think he"s even sensitive about having them referred to."
"But even if he should want to go, mamma wouldn"t break her heart about it. She feels that it"s really something fine in him: his love of the out-of-doors, and adventures, and knowing all sorts and conditions of men. And he has really helped lots of people, just as he helped you. And he always had so much fun when we all played gypsy, or he went off alone and came back with no end of good stories. I"m just a little sorry----"
They paused, clasping hands and looking off at the starry canopy.
Suddenly from the side of the house a man walked slowly, hesitatingly. He stopped, turned, glanced at the veranda, and then, sniffing the air, walked rapidly toward the gate, swinging a stick, his face lifted to the stars.
Bobby"s hand clasped Billy"s more tightly as they watched in silence.
"It"s papa; he"s taking to the road again!" she murmured.
"But he"ll come back; it won"t be for long this time. I haven"t the heart to stop him!"
"No," she said softly, "it would be cruel to do that."
The lamps at the gate shone upon Robert Tyringham as he paused and then, with a characteristic flourish of his stick, turned westward and strode away into the night.