The Perils of Pauline.
by Charles G.o.ddard.
CHAPTER I
THE BREATH OF DEAD CENTURIES
In one of the stateliest mansions on the lower Hudson, near New York, old Stanford Marvin, president of the Marvin Motors Company, dozed over his papers, while Owen, his confidential secretary, eyed him across the mahogany flat-topped desk. A soft purring sound floated in the open window and half-roused the aged manufacturer. It came from one of his own cars--six cylinders chanting in unison a litany of power to the great modern G.o.d of gasoline.
These things had been in his mind since the motor industry started. He had lived with them, wrestled with them during his meals and taken them to his dreams at night. Now they formed a rhythm, and he heard them in his brain just before the fainting spells, which had come so frequently of late. He glanced at the secretary and noted Owen"s gaze with something of a start.
"What are you thinking about, Raymond?" he queried, with his customary directness.
"Your health, sir," replied Owen, who, like all intelligent rascals, never lied when the truth would do equally well. As a matter of fact, Owen had wondered whether his employer would last a year or a month.
He much preferred a month, for there was reason to believe that the Marvin will would contain a handsome bequest to "my faithful secretary."
"Oh, bosh!" said the old man. "You and Dr. Stevens would make a mummy of me before I"m dead."
"That reminds me, sir," said Owen, smoothly, "that the International Express Company has delivered a large crate addressed to you from Cairo, Egypt. I presume it is the mummy you bought on your last trip.
Where shall I place it?"
Mr. Marvin"s eye coursed around the walls of the handsome library, which had been his office since the doctor had forbidden him to visit his automobile works and steel-stamping mills.
"Take out that bust of Pallas Athene," he ordered, "and stand the mummy up in its place."
Owen nodded, poised his pencil and prompted:
"You were just dictating about the new piston rings."
Mr. Marvin drew his hand across his eyes and looked out the window.
Within the range of his vision was one of the most charming sights in the world--a handsome youth and a pretty girl, arrayed in white flannels, playing tennis.
"Never mind the letters. Tell Harry and Pauline I wish to see them."
Alone, the old man opened a drawer and took a dose of medicine, then he unfolded Dr. Stevens"s letter and read its final paragraph, which prescribed a change of climate, together with complete and permanent rest or "I will not answer for the consequences."
There was little doubt that no primer mover in a great industry was better able to leave its helm than Standford Marvin. His lieutenants were able, efficient and contented. The factories would go of their own momentum for a year or two at least, then his son, Harry, just out of college, should be able, perhaps, to help. His lieutenants had proved Marvin"s unerring instinct in judging character. Not one single case came to the old employer"s mind of a man who had failed to turn out exactly as he expected. Yet the most trusted man of all, Raymond Owen, the secretary, was disloyal and dishonest.
This one exception was easily enough explained. When Owen came to Marvin"s attention, fifteen years before, he was a fine, honest, faithful man. It was born and bred in him to be straight. During the first five" or six years in the Marvin household the older man took pains to keep watch on this quiet, tactful youth until he knew all his ways and even his habits of thought. There was no doubt that Owen was as upright and clean as the old man himself.
At the age of forty the devil entered into Owen. It came in the form of insomnia. Loss of sleep will make any man irritable and unreasonable, but hardly dishonest. With the sleeplessness, however, came the temptation to take drugs. Owen shifted from one narcotic to another, finally, settling down upon morphine. Five years of the opiate had made him its slave. Every physician knows that morphine fiends become dishonest.
The secretary had speculated with his modest savings and lost them. He had borrowed and lost again, and now, for some time, had been betting on horse races. This last had made him acquainted with a certain Montgomery Hicks, who lived well without visible source of income.
Through Hicks, Owen had betrayed one of his employer"s guarded secrets. Hicks, armed with this secret, promptly changed from a friendly creditor to a blackmailer.
Owen, on his way to summon Pauline and Harry, descended to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where the butler, gardener, and a colored man were uncrating the Egyptian mummy. He told them to stand it in place of the bust of Pallas Athene in the library, and then went out, crossing the splendid lawns, and graveled roads to the tennis court. There was no design in Owen"s mind against the two players, but of late the instinct of both the hunter and the hunted were showing in him, and it prompted him to approach quietly and under cover. So he pa.s.sed along the edge of a hedge and stood a moment within earshot.
Pauline was about to "serve," but paused to look down at the loosened laces of her small white shoe. She heard Harry"s racquet drop and saw him hurdle the net. In another instant he was at her feet tying the tiny bow.
"You needn"t have done that, Harry," she said.
"Oh, no!" Harry affirmed, as he vainly tried to make his bow as trim as its mate. "I suppose not. I don"t suppose I need to, think, about you all the time either, or follow you around till that new c.o.c.ker spaniel of yours thinks I"m part of your shadow. Perhaps I don"t need to love you."
"Harry, get up! Someone will see you and think you"re proposing to me."
"Think? They ought to know I"m proposing. But, Pauline, talking about "need," there isn"t any need of your being so pretty. Your eyes are bigger and bluer than they really need to be. You could see just as well if you didn"t have such long, curly lashes, and there isn"t any real necessity for the way they group together in that starry effect, like Nell Brinkley"s girls. Is there any need of fifteen different beautiful shades of light where the sun strikes your hair just back of your ear?"
"Harry, stop this! The score is forty-fifteen."
"Yes, all these things are entirely unnecessary. I"m going to have old Mother Nature indicted by the Grand jury for willful, wasteful, wanton extravagance unless--unless--" Harry paused.
"Now, Harry, don"t use up your whole vocabulary--promise what?"
"Promise to marry me at once."
"No, Harry, I can"t do that--that is, right away. I must have time."
"Why time? Pauline, don"t you love me?"
"Yes, I think I do love you, Harry, and you know there is n.o.body else in the world."
"Then what do you want time for?"
"Why, to see life and to know what life really is."
"All right. Marry me, and I"ll show you life. I"ll lead you any kind of a life you want."
"No, that won"t do. As an old, settled-down, married woman I couldn"t really do what I want. I must see life in its great moments. I must have thrills, adventures, see people, do daring things, watch battles.
It might be best for me even to see someone killed, if that were possible. As I was telling Harley St. John last night--"
"Harley St. John? Well, if I catch that fop taking you motoring again you"ll get your wish and see a real nice aristocratic murder. He ought to be put out of his misery, anyway; but where did you get all these sudden notions about wild and strenuous life?"
Pauline did not answer. They both heard a discreet cough, and Owen rounded the corner of the hedge. He delivered his message, and the three walked slowly toward the house.
Advancing to meet them came a dashy checked suit. Above it was a large Panama hat with a gaudy ribbon. A red necktie was also visible, even at a considerable distance. Between the hat and the necktie a face several degrees darker in color than the tie came into view as the distance lessened. It was Mr. Montgomery Hicks, whose first name was usually p.r.o.nounced "Mugumry" and thence degenerated into "Mug." Mug"s inflamed and scowling face and bulging eyes usually conveyed the general impression that he was about to burst into profanity--a conjecture which frequently proved correct. In this case he merely remarked in a sort of "newsboy" voice:
"Mr. Raymond Owen, I believe?"
The secretary"s sallow face flushed a little as he stepped aside and let Harry and Pauline pa.s.s out of earshot.
"See here, Mug," complained Owen, "I haven"t a cent for you. You will get me discharged if you come around here like this."
"Well, I"ll get you fired right now," growled Mug, "if you don"t come across with the money." And he started toward the front steps. Owen led him out of sight of the house and finally got rid of him. For a blackmailer knows he can strike but once, and, having struck, he loses all power over his victim. So Hicks withheld the blow, collected a paltry thirty dollars, and consented to wait a little while for Marvin to die.
Harry and Pauline pa.s.sed on into the house. He had the straight backbone and well poised head of the West Pointer, but without the unnatural stiffness of the soldier"s carriage; the shoulders of the "halfback," and the lean hips of a runner were his, and he had earned them in four years on his varsity football and track teams. The girl beside him, half a head shorter, tripped along with the easy action of a thoroughbred. Both bore the name of Marvin, yet there was no relationship.
Harry"s mother, long dead, had adopted this girl on Mr. Marvin"s first trip to Egypt. Pauline was the daughter of an English father and a native mother.