Chapter XV

TEA AND ORDERS

After she had changed her clothes and fed the famished pup with a bowl of warm milk and bread, Dorothy took him down to the library. Gretchen brought a small open basket and a blanket and they made him a bed near the open fire. Professor promptly went to sleep, and his mistress curled up in a deep chair beside him, reading and dozing for the rest of the afternoon. To amuse Gretchen, she had placed a dictionary near the basket, to see if Professor would follow his double’s example and so justify his name. When he awoke, however, about four o’clock, he merely jumped out of his bed on to the book, and up to Dorothy’s lap, where he went to sleep again.

“Good ole pup!” Dorothy rubbed his smooth, warm head between his ears. “You show your intelligence by using the dictionary as a stepping stone to better things, don’t you, Prof!”

She yawned, closed her book, and promptly went to sleep again herself.

She awoke with a start, to find Mrs. Lawson smiling down at her. Tunbridge was laying the tea-things on a table at the other side of the fire. “Well, my dear,” the lady said, her eyes on the fox terrier, “I see you’ve found a new friend.”

“Oh, yes, isn’t he just too darling? I found him out in the blizzard, he was half frozen and almost starved!” She went on to tell Mrs. Lawson about it.

“I’m afraid I’m not very fond of animals, Janet.” Dorothy noticed that she did not attempt to touch the puppy. “I don’t dislike them, you understand, but somehow they never seem to like me.”

“That’s too bad,” said Dorothy. “I do hope you won’t mind my keeping him—at least until we learn who his owner is?”

Laura Lawson looked doubtful. “Well, I don’t mind. But—this is Doctor Winn’s house, you know, and his decision, after all, is the one that counts. You will have to ask him about keeping the dog, Janet.”

“Is Doctor Winn going to have tea with us, Mrs. Lawson?”

“He most certainly is, my dear. That is, if you ladies will pour him a cup.”

Dorothy glanced up, and beside her stood an old gentleman, very tall and spare, but bowed with the weight of his years. She knew that the scientist was well over eighty. Catching up the fox terrier, she rose to her feet.

“How do you do, Doctor Winn?” She smiled and offered him her hand.

The old gentleman bent over it with courtly grace. “Good afternoon, Miss Janet Jordan. Welcome to Winncote.” Merry gray eyes twinkled at her from behind pince-nez attached to a broad black ribbon. An aristocrat of the old school, Dorothy thought, as she studied his handsome, clean shaven face crisscrossed with the tiny wrinkles of advanced age. She had imagined him to be quite a different sort of person. His next words proved that he read her thoughts.

“You expected to see a musty old fellow, with a long white beard, wearing a smock stained by chemicals, eh?” He chuckled softly. “Now, tell me, young lady, isn’t that so? Though I admit these flannel slacks and old Norfolk jacket are hardly fashionable habiliments when one is taking tea with ladies!”

He released her hand and smiled a greeting to Mrs. Lawson. The second footman, he of the plum-colored knee-breeches, set the tea table before that young matron, under the supervision of the stately Tunbridge.

Dorothy liked this gallant old scientist and his courtly ways. Her own eyes sparkled gaily back at him. “Yes, you did surprise me, Doctor Winn,” she confessed. “Please don’t think I’m being forward, but—but you seem much more like the English fox-hunting squires I’ve read about, than the world-renowned chemist you really are, with stacks of letters after your name. But ever so much nicer, and jollier, you know!”

Doctor Winn beamed. “Now that, my dear, is a most charming compliment. Old fellows like me aren’t used to compliments from young ladies, either. Do sit down again, please, and tell me how you like Winncote and our New England snowstorms. We old people need young folks around. I can see that we are going to be good friends.”

He sat down in a chair the butler drew up for him.

“Mrs. Lawson will tell you,” replied Dorothy, “that I love it out here in the country.” She accepted a cup of tea from Tunbridge and added sugar and a slice of lemon. The butler was followed by his liveried assistant, bearing silver platters of hot, buttered scones and tiny iced cakes. Professor immediately began to show interest in the proceedings. Dorothy held him firmly out of harm’s way, and placed her tea and eatables on the broad arm of her chair.

Mrs. Lawson looked up from her place behind the shining silver and old china of the tea table. She smiled graciously. “Oh, yes, Janet loves blizzards, too, Doctor Winn. She went out for a walk this afternoon and acquired a fox terrier puppy, as you see.”

“And naturally, she wants to keep him.” The old gentleman leaned forward in his chair, the better to look at Professor. “You certainly may, Janet. And by the way, I hope you’ll agree that it’s an old man’s privilege to call you by your first name?”

“Oh, that is sweet of you!” Dorothy cried delightedly, and the Doctor’s chuckle echoed her pleasure.

“The dog’s got a fine head—a very fine head, indeed. If anybody advertises for him, or comes to claim him, I’ll take pleasure in buying the puppy for you.”

“Why, you’re nicer every minute,” declared Dorothy. “Isn’t he, Professor?”

The pup yawned with great indifference, which set all three of them laughing. His mistress put him in his blanket where he promptly curled up and fell into slumber once more.

“I sadly fear,” said Doctor Winn, as he polished his pince-nez with a white silk handkerchief, “that you are a good deal of a flirt Janet. But inasmuch as I am old enough to be your grandfather, or great-grandfather, for that matter, you are pardoned with a reprimand.” He chuckled deep in his throat, a habit he had when pleased. “Now tell me, how you happened to find him out in the snow.”

Dorothy recounted the story in detail. When she came to the part about Gretchen’s fear of the wildcat and the fox, even Mrs. Lawson, who was none too sure she liked the turn things were taking, broke into a merry peal of laughter.

“Capital, capital!” Doctor Winn beamed. “I only wish I’d been there to see it. But why, may I ask, do you call him Professor?”

Dorothy explained about the dictionary and Gretchen’s idea of the pup’s resemblance to Dorothea Gutmann’s fox terrier.

“Better and better,” exclaimed the Doctor. “This is the jolliest tea we’ve had in this house for ages. We need young people around us to be really happy. You and I and Martin, Laura, have been working too hard of late. ‘All work and no play’—We’ve been bothering too much about things scientific, and neglecting things personal. Well now, we can rest a while, and become human beings again.”

Mrs. Lawson leaned forward eagerly. “Then, the formula is complete?” she asked in a low voice, in which Dorothy detected the barely controlled tremor of excitement.

“Yes, indeed. Finished and locked in my safe. I added the final figures and quantities three-quarters of an hour ago. Tomorrow, or if the weather doesn’t clear by then, the next day at latest, I shall take it on to Washington.”

“I congratulate you, Doctor. And I know that once it is in the hands of the government, a great load will be taken off your mind.”

“You’re right, my dear, you are right. I’ve been jumpy as a cat with eight of its lives gone for the past year.” He turned to Dorothy. “Thank goodness, you’re young and without responsibilities, Janet. There are so many unscrupulous people about nowadays. If those papers were lost or stolen, there is no telling what would happen. I dare not think of it. The whole world might suffer if that formula got into the wrong hands!”

Dorothy could not help thinking that the world at large would be much better off if the formula were destroyed. She, therefore, merely nodded and looked impressed. How this gentle, kindly old man could have brought himself to invent such a ghastly menace to life, she found it difficult to understand.

Laura Lawson stood up. “Doctor Winn likes to dine early, Janet, so if we are to be dressed by six-thirty, we had better start upstairs.”

“My word, yes!” The old gentleman snapped open the hunting case of his repeater and got stiffly to his feet. “Time flies when one is enjoying oneself. It’s nearly six o’clock. This has been very pleasant indeed, the first of many afternoons, I hope.” He snapped the watch shut and returned it to his pocket. “You ladies will excuse me, I’m sure.” He bowed to them both, and holding himself much more erect than he had formerly, walked stiffly from the room.

“He’s simply darling,” exclaimed Dorothy in a hushed voice.

“Yes, he’s a very simple and a very fine old gentleman,” said Laura Lawson. She seemed lost in her thoughts and evidently unaware that she uttered them aloud. “Sometimes—I hate to hurt him so.”

“Why—why, what do you mean?” Dorothy could have bitten her own tongue out for speaking that sentence.

“Mean—? Oh, nothing, child. Run along now, and change. But take your dog with you. I’ll see that one of the men gives him a run in the stables while we’re at dinner.”

“Thank you very much,” said Dorothy. She turned the sleeping pup out of his bed, caught up the basket, and with Professor at her heels, ran lightly from the room.

Just outside the door she collided with Tunbridge, and Professor’s basket was jerked from her grasp.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry, Miss Jordan!” His acting was perfect. Dorothy knew that Mrs. Lawson was close behind them. Then as they both stooped to retrieve the basket their heads came close together. “Under your pillow!” It was hardly more than the breath of a whisper, but Dorothy caught the words, nodded her understanding, and stood up.

“I’m afraid I’m to blame, Tunbridge. I didn’t see you coming.”

“Not at all, Miss. It was my fault, entirely. Very clumsy of me I’m sure!”

From the corner of her eye Dorothy caught a glimpse of Laura Lawson watching them from the doorway.

“Don’t let it worry you, Tunbridge. I’m not hurt, neither is the basket. Professor will probably park himself on my _pillow_ tonight, anyway. Puppies have a way of doing such things, you know. So it really wouldn’t matter much if you had smashed it.”

She gave him a nod, and picking up the dog made for the staircase.

“So instructions are waiting under my pillow,” she mused, as she slowly mounted the broad stair. The afternoon had been a pleasant one, but the evening, with those instructions ahead of her, portended to be something quite different. It had been so nice and cheerful, chatting round the tea table; so cozy sitting before the glowing logs, just talking of jolly things and forgetting all worry and responsibility. Of course, beyond the curtained windows, the blizzard howled. And it whipped the swirling snowflakes into disordered clouds with its arctic lash before it let them seek the shelter of their fellows in the drifts. She felt very much as though she too were a snowflake, tossed hither and thither on the storm of circumstance, to be whipped forward by the secret lash of underlying crime.

If she could only drop down on to her bed and sleep—and awake to find it all a bad dream! She sighed and went toward her door on the gallery. Her pillow held no peace for her tonight—nothing more nor less than detailed instructions as to how Tunbridge wished her to rob a safe. Why didn’t the man do his own stealing? Her part was to take Janet’s place out here, and kill suspicion in Laura Lawson. Well, she’d done that, hadn’t she? And now they loaded this other job on to her. It wasn’t fair. She had done enough—she’d—

“Oh, shucks!” She pulled herself up mentally as her hand fell on the doorknob. “I’ll be losing my nerve altogether, if I let my thoughts run on this way. D. Dixon, you just _must not_ funk it!”

She turned the knob and entered her room.