Part 10

"All detectives do," said Billy, following Henrietta to the door.

"I'm sorry," whispered the Watermelon in Billy's ear.

Billy laughed. "We have more cars at home," said she. "It doesn't bother me at all. That's the trouble of being rich, you can't be robbed and feel badly about it."

"Batchelor, you say that you were up until after eleven," said the general, feeling that the occasion called for intelligence. "Did you see Alphonse go out?"

"No," said the Watermelon.

"The landlord says, however, that he must have gone before twelve," went on the general. "Then don't you see how Alphonse could not have stolen the money? Those thefts were not committed until after twelve."

"I don't see how you work that out," said Henrietta, puzzling over it with knit brows.

"Don't you see, Henrietta, that if Alphonse stole our money after twelve, he could not have gone out in the car before eleven, so if he went out in the car before twelve, he did not steal the money. He either stole the money or the car."

"Maybe he didn't take the money," said Henrietta, feeling vaguely and disappointedly that she was not a person with detective-like instincts.

"You see," said the general, "if Alphonse took the car, he did not take the money; if he took the money, he did not take the car."

"He certainly did take the money," snapped the farmer.

"And my car," added Bartlett angrily.

"He could not have taken both," declared the general.

"You were robbed last night, weren't you?" demanded the farmer. "Well, then?"

"And my car is gone, isn't it?" demanded Bartlett.

"Yes, yes," acknowledged the general, feeling that every word he said only made the other two angrier, but still clinging to his deductions as to his life's principles. "Yes, of course; but Alphonse could not have done both. He went off with the car before eleven, so he could not have robbed us after twelve--"

"Sir," interrupted the farmer with a quiet dignity that was impressive, "do you accuse any of us of stealing?"

"No, no," protested the general, now hopelessly rattled. "But if Alphonse stole the money--"

"Alphonse swiped both," said the Watermelon, and that settled it as far as the general was concerned, for the general had boundless faith in the young man's deductive abilities. "I went in about eleven. He took the car out, ran it down the road a bit and then came back and sneaked our things."

"Certainly," said Bartlett, who could not help feeling irritated with the general for the fault of his man.

Billy laughed. "All this bother about nothing," said she. "Dad, what's one car, more or less?"

"A car is a car, Billy," said Bartlett coldly, refusing to be comforted for the ruin of his plan to keep Batchelor away from the city over Saturday.

"Yes," agreed Henrietta sympathetically, "any one hates to lose a car."

"But when you have seven," objected Billy.

"We haven't got them here, have we?" asked Bartlett.

"No, but we have one, and that's enough for five," declared Billy, finding the usual difficulty in persuading people to count their blessings. "We didn't need two, anyway."

"Yes, we did," said the Watermelon, thinking of the tonneau with only Billy and him, the general in front completely absorbed with the car.

"Why?" asked Billy.

"Why," stammered the Watermelon, who no longer cared to flirt with Billy and who had spoken without thinking, "why, so the general and your father could each run a car," he explained weakly.

"Oh, yes," chirped Billy. "What will they do now?"

The Watermelon turned and glanced out of the wide doors, down the tree-shaded road, and thought pityingly of the unfortunate Alphonse, gone off at the wrong time, with the whole country-side on the watch for a lone youth in a big red touring car. That the car was of a different make from the one they were hunting for would not impress the sheriffs so forcibly as the fact that the youth also carried a time-piece as big as a clock, along with a cigarette case, cuff links and stick pin, all marked plainly and beyond question, with the damning initials, W.H.B.

The Watermelon laughed softly, and glancing at Billy, laughed again. With Bartlett going directly back to the city, he would not have to confess to make things right. He could leave them at the telegraph office and drift away on some pretext or another, leaving Billy gaily, head up, as became a successful financier, not slink away like a whipped dog, with only the scorn and loathing in her eyes to remember, to obliterate all the other memories of that one nearly perfect week.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*OH, FOR A HORSE*

The farmer forgave the general with lofty dignity and turned to Bartlett with suggestions and offers of help. There was a telephone in the village store. They could telephone Boston or Portland, or they could telephone Harrison and Harrison could telegraph the larger cities. With the police notified promptly, Alphonse would not be able to get far.

Bartlett meditatively chewed a straw and pondered the suggestion, leaning against the nearest stall and frowning thoughtfully at the general's car, while the others stood around him in a semicircle.

They were ten miles from the nearest railroad, and the train service, when they did strike a road, was decidedly poor in that out-of-the-way locality. Still, by good luck, quick work and prompt connections, Batchelor would be able to reach Boston late that afternoon or evening and New York before ten A.M., Saturday morning, and at ten A.M. Saturday the last fight was to be fought, the last stand made. Without their brilliant young leader, the opponents to the cotton ring would be outnumbered and outclassed, hopelessly beaten. Bartlett's fighting blood was up at the thought. Was he to have his week spoiled by the worthless Alphonse's deviltry? Batchelor should not run the slightest chance of reaching Boston that day, if he could help it. Henrietta had a little money in her bag that would tide them over. Better avoid anything to do with telegraph and telephones as long as possible. They could make an attempt to reach Harrison and get lost. But getting lost wasn't as easy as it appeared, when the general was along, thoroughly determined not to get lost. Bartlett's thoughts were broken in on by the Watermelon in a way that caused him quick alarm. The young man had at last awakened to the gravity of the situation, as Bartlett had been expecting him to do ever since the trip began.

"We had better telephone," said the Watermelon, "as Parker says. We can telephone for money and have it sent to Harrison, and we can ride to Harrison and probably get there the same time as the money does and get the train for Boston. It's time we were back in New York, anyway."

The trip was ended and the sooner he left Billy the better. He could give them the slip at Harrison and once more hit the road.

"Telephoning from here won't help matters at all," objected Bartlett, fighting for that opportunity to get lost again, just for one more day--twelve hours would be enough. "We can drive to Harrison and telegraph from there. It is only a ten-mile drive. We can make it in fifteen minutes."

"No joy-riding," warned Henrietta, "when we haven't any money to pay the fines. I don't want to do my time in the workhouse."

"We will do it in twenty minutes, then," laughed Bartlett, who saw another way to create a delay that might be used with advantage. The Parkers scorned to accept the few dollars Henrietta still had in the dark recesses of her bag.

"You can send it to us," said they, and the farmer added, heaping coals of fire on the general's unfortunate head, "We trust you perfectly."

The Watermelon looked sharply at Bartlett and wondered if he were up to any tricks. The Watermelon had only ten more miles of Billy and he didn't want to shorten the precious time by a confession if there were no need for one.

"Let's hurry," said he. There was no need of prolonging the misery in the thought of the parting.

"Worrying over his affairs," thought Bartlett. "He has come to at last."

The general insisted upon driving, and as it was his car, Bartlett perforce had to be content. He protested, however, that he knew the road thoroughly, and could direct the general with no instructions at all from the farmer, waving them all good-naturedly aside.

They were all quiet as they started down the road. Henrietta was depressed thinking about Alphonse. She had always stood in awe of his superlative virtues, and the fact that he lacked several was a bit of a shock. The general also was grieved. He had trusted Alphonse and Alphonse had failed him. Billy was silent, for she wanted to think, and all her thoughts were of the youth beside her, tall, slim, good-looking, with his merry eyes and devil-may-care indifference.

They could all go to New York together, she planned, and later, when her father and herself went to their summer place on the coast of Maine, they would get him to visit them there in their own home. And in the winter--and Billy's thoughts lost themselves in the hazy rosy glow of the future, with its possibilities and pleasures.

It was after three. The day was intensely warm, even in the shady wooded road on which they found themselves. They had been running through the woods for nearly an hour, and apparently had not reached the end of it. The last abandoned farm-house, gray, weather-beaten, forlorn, had long ago been passed. The birds chattered shrilly in the leafy profusion overhead; somewhere out of sight in the underbrush a brook gurgled refreshingly over its stony bed, and once, far away and very faintly, they heard the wild loon's dismal cry.

The general stopped the car and turned sidewise to face those on the back seat. "We are lost," said he. "Look at the odometer. We have come twenty miles since we left Stoneham and we are no nearer Harrison than when we started."

"Lost again," wailed Henrietta. "How very stupid we are!"

"It's my fault," admitted Bartlett truthfully, but with contrition. "I said to take this turn back there near that barrel factory."

"We can go back," suggested Billy.

"Parker told me last night," said the general gloomily, "that there was no settlement north of here for forty miles. We have probably come north."

"If we have come twenty miles, we can go twenty more without dying," said Bartlett.

"I don't know," laughed Henrietta. "I am famished now."

"So am I," wailed Billy. "Henrietta, haven't we a thing to eat?"

"Not a thing," said Henrietta.

"Hit her up," cried Bartlett jovially. "We will break some more speed laws, by George. I want something to eat."

"We have heard nothing from father," teased Henrietta, her laughing eyes on the Watermelon's face, full of tender amusement. He was so young and looked so serious and almost unhappy that she was unhappy herself.

The Watermelon was unhappy. By this time they should have been in Harrison, with the parting over, and he wanted it over. The thought that they would probably be together a day longer did not please him. The sooner he took to the road again and became a bum and a hobo, the better. Billy did not care for him. He was the only one who would suffer, and every moment he was with her only made the suffering worse. He turned to Henrietta with relief from the thoughts that were insistently bothering him and would not let him alone.

"Father was never in a motor-car," said he. "He used to say that his funeral would be just another irony of fate. The only chance he had to ride, he wouldn't be able to appreciate it."

"I know that it is terrible to be poor," said Henrietta, "but I think people ought to enjoy other things than just those that money can give."

"What things?"

"Why, the woods and fields, a beautiful day--"

"Rent day, probably, and no rent money. Father used to say when you're poor, every day is rent day."

"We're nearing the end of the woods," cried Bartlett. "And I think I see a house."

And then the car stopped.

"Gid ap," chirped Bartlett.

Henrietta leaned forward. The general was hastily trying all the brakes, slipping one lever then the other, fussing here and fussing there, and Henrietta knew the symptoms of approaching trouble.

"Father, is there anything the matter?"

"Oh, no," pleaded Billy. "Not here?"

The Watermelon leaned forward and opened the door. "Every one get out," he ordered. "We can walk to the house. We mustn't monkey with the car unless we want a pile of junk on our hands."

He stepped out and turned to help the girls.

"Not at all," declared the general. "I know all about a car. I can fix it directly." He alighted and started to raise the bonnet. The Watermelon intervened.

"Look in the gasolene tank first," he begged.

The general was already deep in the mechanism, oblivious to all else. "It's the carburetor--"

"Carburetor nothing," pleaded the Watermelon. "It's the gasolene."

"Yes," agreed Henrietta indiscreetly, "maybe it is."

"That won't help us any," snapped the general angrily. "Where can we get more? Much better to have something else wrong--"

"Not for the car," said the Watermelon. "None of us would be able to fix it."

"My dear sir," said the general warmly, "I have owned this car for a year--"

"I know," murmured the Watermelon. "I think it marvelous."

"I am perfectly capable--"

"Will you bet with me," interrupted the Watermelon, "that it's the gasolene? Alphonse may have filled the other car at the expense of this one."

It was the gasolene, or rather the lack of gasolene, that had stopped the car.

"That's where a horse beats a car," lamented Henrietta. "You don't have to keep bothering with their works."

She sat down on the car step and clasped her hands in her lap. "We could spend the night here, but in the morning we wouldn't be any nearer gasolene than we are now."

"I'm not fretting about gasolene," said Bartlett. "I want something to eat. Let's all go to that house--"

"We can't leave the car," objected the general.

"No one could go off with the car," argued Henrietta.

"And we can get them to send a horse," added Bartlett. "I am starving."

"I feel like the car," said Billy. "I have no gasolene."

"I can not leave the car," reiterated the general, and Henrietta realized that that settled it as far as the general was concerned, and that it would take her greatest tact to unsettle it.

"I will go and get a farmer and a horse," said the Watermelon, unexpectedly siding with the general. "We would have to be here anyway, to see that they towed it in right."

"A horse would do," said Billy gravely. "We don't need the farmer."

"I have hopes of Billy sometimes," said Bartlett, regarding his daughter quizzically. "I sometimes even think that she may grasp the difference between sunshine and rain and realize it's best to keep out of the latter."

Billy looked hurt. "Father doesn't like me any more," said she, adding shrewdly, "He thinks I'm getting rather too old for him, anyway."

Bartlett blushed, Henrietta laughed and the general roared.

"You grown-up daughters are so hard to explain," said he. "Not once do you offer to be a sister to us."

"I wouldn't be a sister to father for anything," protested Billy. "He must be fifty, at least."

Bartlett flushed angrily. He dared not glance at Henrietta. "I am forty-five," said he coldly, which was at least two years and a half as near the truth as Billy's rash statement.

"Yes," sneered Billy. "And I'm only eighteen."

Henrietta changed the subject. When one is eighteen one can announce the fact loudly and cheerfully. When one is thirty-five, one prefers to talk of other things.

"Why not all go for the horse? The car will be all right, father; and I am so hungry," she added pathetically.

*CHAPTER XIX*

*A BROKER PRINCE*

"I am going," said Billy with determination.

"We can't leave the general alone," objected Bartlett.

"I don't see how I would be able to help the general any," returned Billy in injured accents.

"I thought you could push him in the car," explained Bartlett with gentle sarcasm.

"You all wait here," said the Watermelon. "I will go and get you something to eat and see about having the car towed, also about rooms for the night."

"Why not all go?" pleaded Henrietta. "Why wait here starving--"

"I can go faster alone," answered the Watermelon.

"Certainly, certainly," seconded the general. "We would have to help you girls over every wooden fence and under every barb wire one we came to. You would probably even then get stuck on one or under the other."

"I never get stuck on anything," contradicted Billy perversely.

Henrietta laughed. "Billy, cheer up. The worst is yet to come."

"That house may be empty," said the Watermelon. "Then we would be all over there and have to come back."

"We've been in empty houses before," said Henrietta crossly.

"But what good would that do, to be over there without food?" asked the Watermelon.

"What good to be here without gasolene?" retorted Henrietta.

"I can not leave the car," reiterated the general.

"Father," exclaimed the exasperated Henrietta, "some night I will find that you have taken the car to bed with you."

"Suppose we leave the car here--" began the general argumentatively.

"We can't," sighed Henrietta. "Such a supposition would be impossible with you the owner of the car."

The Watermelon laughed. "Aw, cut out the conversation," said he. "I will be right back."

"So will I," said Billy.

Now the Watermelon objected. He did not feel equal to a _tete-a-tete_ with the adorable Billy, adorable still, though a bit cross.

"Cut out the conversation," mimicked Billy, and scrambled with more speed than grace under the broken bars of the worm-eaten fence.

The Watermelon leaped the fence after her. Henrietta slipped under the fence after the Watermelon. Bartlett hesitated one moment, glanced guiltily at the deserted general and then followed Henrietta.

Billy and the Watermelon were young and light of foot and soon outdistanced the stout Bartlett, who did his gallant best to keep up with the nimble Henrietta, but found that the years of good living told against him.

Henrietta waited politely for him at the stone wall which Billy had just scaled and the Watermelon jumped.

"What are we hurrying for?" asked Bartlett, removing his hat to wipe his heated brow.

"I am sure I don't know," laughed Henrietta. "Monkey see, monkey do, I suppose. That is why there is such a thing as style. No one thinks."

"If we waited here," suggested Bartlett, "our dinner would come to us."

"As the office to the man," agreed Henrietta.

"Precisely."

Henrietta sat down on the wall and Bartlett leaned beside her, gazing over the field to the distant woods. He felt thoroughly comfortable and contented. No matter what happened now, Batchelor could not reach the city by Saturday. The cotton ring was saved.

The scene before them was a typical Maine landscape, rugged, hilly, beautiful, with the long shadows of approaching evening creeping across the fields. From where they rested, the farm seen from the road was hidden from sight. The whole place seemed desolate, primeval, with a beauty and a charm that were all its own.

Henrietta drew a quick sigh of pleasure and fell silent, with dreaming eyes wandering into the mysterious shades of the distant woodland, her hunger for the time forgotten. The place, the time of day, just at eventide, suggested romance, the one man and the one woman, and the world not lost, but just attained. She wished she was Billy, young and foolish and pretty, and that Bartlett was the Watermelon, long-limbed, broad-shouldered, with the glory of youth that sees only glory down the pathway of the future.

Bartlett broke in upon her reveries. "See that hill?" and he waved toward the slope ahead of them.

Henrietta nodded, still wrapped in her dream. "The hill of life," said she, "with glory at its top."

"A railroad," said Bartlett, prosaically matter-of-fact, "a railroad has been cut through the hill. See, there go the children, suddenly out of sight."

Henrietta came back to earth. "How do you know? Maybe there is just a steep incline the other side and that is why they disappeared so quickly."

"No, there is a cut up there. Don't you notice how abrupt it looks, and there are no trees or bushes. They haven't had time to grow since the cut was made. And those big lumps, see, covered with grass, they are the earth thrown up out of the cut. It's the Grand Trunk. It runs through Maine, you know, into New Hampshire."

Henrietta nodded and frowned. "There is no more romance," and she threw out her hands with a graceful gesture of hopeless disappointment. "It went when the first steam-engine came."

Bartlett looked at her, amused, with a man's tolerance. "What do you want romance for? A railroad pays better."

"Pays, pays, pays," cried Henrietta. "I want something that doesn't pay--that isn't associated with returns. You men have nothing but a bank-book for a heart. It's so lovely here, so quiet. Don't you feel it? With the shadows creeping across the pasture? I was young and beautiful--"

"And a princess."

"No, a goose maid. My hair was brown and thick and hung over each shoulder in two long braids. I was bare-headed, with sleeves rolled to the elbows of my shapely arms--"

"You would have got malaria," said Bartlett. "It's very damp here. I think there must be a pond over there in the woods. You can hear the frogs."

"Oh, yes," agreed Henrietta. "I would have had malaria and rheumatism, but I wouldn't have cared, then--for you see, I had come after the geese, and down here in the tiny glen, with the hush of evening over all, I had met him--"

"Who? Me?"

"My lover," said Henrietta.

"Me," said Bartlett softly, and to Henrietta's surprise he laid his hand gently on hers.

Henrietta blushed and looked away. Her lover, this stout, grim, hard-eyed man of business? She raised her hands to her cheeks and her heart fluttered so she could hardly breathe, while before her startled gaze swam the vision the years had been unconsciously forming. Had romance come to her thus late, in this guise? Was a middle-aged member of the New York Stock Exchange her prince?

"Henrietta," he asked gently, leaning toward her, "shall I finish the story?"

"Why no," said Henrietta, "there was no finish. It had just begun."

"Just begun," whispered Bartlett, and took her suddenly into his arms.

"Oh, please," begged Henrietta, feeling that modesty called for some remonstrance.

"Please," he taunted. "When you were the goose girl and I was the prince, you didn't say please."

Henrietta laughed. "And neither did the prince," she dared him.

"No decent lover would," said Bartlett, bending and kissing her full on her whimsical mouth.

After some little time they saw the others reappear over the top of the hill. Henrietta had returned to her seat on the fence and Bartlett was beside her, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder with a simplicity truly bucolic. So might the Parkers' shifty-eyed stable-boy be wooing the slatternly maid-servant in some secluded place behind the barn.

Henrietta straightened quickly and blushing crimson after the manner of the maid-servant, raised her hands to her hair so that one side of her coiffure might not appear unnecessarily flattened before the sharp eyes of the youthful Billy.

"Aren't we silly?" said she, glancing at Bartlett with the same expression with which the maid-servant would have glanced at the stable-boy.

"Why silly?" demanded Bartlett. "We love each other, don't we? Why shouldn't I put my arm around you?"

"Oh," said Henrietta, "you should, but--er--er we seem so old for such things."

"Old?" Bartlett laughed. "Love is the oldest thing in the world."

"I know," agreed Henrietta, "but not before people."