Part 14

"When I was in college," Merriam continued, "the fraternity I belonged to initiated a freshman who turned out to be goody-goody. He wouldn't play cards, wouldn't dance, wouldn't go to the theater, wouldn't smoke. Even refused coffee and tea. Above all he simply wouldn't look at a girl. All he would do was study and go to class--and to church and Sunday School. To make it worse he was a handsome cuss with loads of money and his own motor car. He got on the fellows' nerves. Then a show came to town with a girl in the chorus that two of the fellows knew. So a bunch of us went to the show, and afterwards the two fellows who knew the girl brought her back to the chapter house in a taxi, with an opera cloak over the black tights which she wore in the last act. We gave her a little supper, and then four of us went upstairs to get the good little boy. He hadn't gone to the show. He was studying his trigonometry. We didn't have to lasso him, of course, because there were four of us. When we brought him into the dining room, the girl stood up and dropped off her cloak. It was worth something to see his face. Then we tied him into a chair, just the same way you're tied now. We set a beer bottle and half-emptied glass handy, and the girl sat on his knees and cocked one black leg over the arm of the chair and put one hand under his chin and put her lips to his cheek. And then we took the flash."

"Oh, goody!" cried Jennie, ecstatically pleased by this climax. But Crockett by this time was staring at the story-teller with really venomous eyes.

Merriam avoided those eyes and addressed himself to Jennie, the appreciative.

"That was all," he said. "We gave the girl a twenty-dollar bill and the roses and sent her back to the hotel in the taxi. We could only show the picture to a few chaps, of course. One of the fellows did finally tell the story to one girl whom a lot of us knew and showed her the picture. It worked fine. The good little boy's reputation was made, and he had to live up to it, to the extent at least of becoming human. He became one of the finest fellows we ever had. The year after he graduated," Merriam finished reflectively, "he married the one girl who had seen the picture, and the chapter gave it to her with their wedding present."

During this sequel Margery had returned with the camera and with some flash-light powder, for which she had had to search, in a dust pan.

"Damn you!" cried the great financier virulently, straining helplessly at the ropes which confined his arms and legs. "If you think it will do you any good to take an indecent picture of me----"

"Cut that!" said Merriam sharply. "Do you want me to tighten that noose again?"

Crockett subsided with a snort that might have made whole boards of directors tremble.

"Indecent!" said Merriam, enjoying himself hugely, as if he were still in college. "Certainly not! Only pretty. Very pretty. Come, Jennie! How about the pose?"

"I'll show you!" cried Jennie. Half dancing on her toes, with skirts fluttering, and eyes sparkling the more, it seemed, because of Crockett's bitterly hostile regard, she tripped around the table and stood by his side, facing the same way he faced. She plucked the rose from her hair and stuck it behind Crockett's ear. It drooped grotesquely over his thin hair. Then, laughing at the rose, she put one bare arm about his neck, her hand extending beyond his face on the other side.

"Give me a cocktail glass in that hand!" she cried. "Never mind what's in it. Anything!"

Merriam filled a glass from the siphon and put it into the hand referred to.

Then Jennie raised a pink leg and put it on the table, stretching straight in front of herself and Crockett towards the center of the board, amid the plates and glasses and crumpled napkins. She put her other hand under Crockett's chin as if about to tickle him, dropped her face close to his, and looked at Merriam with eyes of laughing inquiry.

"Fine!" said Merriam. "Are you ready, Margery?"

Margery was already pointing the camera.

"Not yet," she said.

He addressed himself to the victim:

"Mr. Crockett, you can, of course, wink or twist your face to spoil the picture. If you do, I'll simply have to choke you a little before we try again. So you'd better look pleasant!"

"Ready!" said Margery.

Merriam set the dust pan, with the little heap of powder in the center of it, on a plate on the sideboard beside Margery, lit a match, and, with a last glance at Jennie's extraordinary pose and laughing face, switched off the lights and touched the powder.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*VIRTUE TRIUMPHANT*

Immediately after the flash Merriam switched on the lights, and his eyes sought Crockett. Apparently the man had faced the camera stolidly--a grotesque figure surmounted by the dangling flower and enveloped as it were in Jennie's acrobatic pose.

"All right!" said Merriam, coughing in the smoke which filled the small room. "But we'll take one more. You never can be sure of a single film. Got some more powder, Margery?"

"Yes," said Margery, who had set the camera down and stepped aside to open a window. She passed into the sitting room.

Jennie gingerly removed her leg from the table and her arm from about Crockett's neck. In the latter process she spilled a little of the water from the cocktail glass--unintentionally, let us hope--on Crockett's head.

"Damn!"

Jennie, quite regardless, eased herself on her two legs again.

"Gee!" she said. "I couldn't have held that pose much longer. In another second I'd have split at the waist!"

Merriam laughed. "Look what you've done," he said.

Jennie caught up a napkin and mopped the face and head.

"Sorry!" she cried sympathetically. "I didn't mean to wet him! There!" and she dropped a light kiss on the cleansed cheek and smiled her rosiest smile at the trussed victim.

Crockett answered Jennie's smile with a glare that might have caused a panic on the Stock Exchange.

It had no very serious effect, however, on Jennie. She shrugged her pretty shoulders and daintily chucked him under the chin.

"That isn't a nice look!" she said.

At this point Margery returned with a package of flash-light powder and began to pour a second little pile on the dust pan.

"Take your pose!" said Merriam to Jennie.

"Not that one," said Jennie. "It's too hard. Look!"

She picked the rose from above Crockett's ear and stepped behind his chair. Then she stooped till her chin rested on the top of his head and let her two bare arms drop past his cheeks till her hands came together on his shirt front. In her hands she held the rose pointing upward so that the blossom was just below his chin.

The effect was distinctly comical--Crockett's dour countenance, with its angry eyes, framed above by Jennie's pretty laughing face, resting on the very top of his head, at the sides by her round white arms, and below by the rose under his chin.

"Fine!" Merriam laughed. "It's better than the other. Ready, Margery?"

"Yes."

A second time he switched off the lights and touched a match to the powder.

Again Crockett had not even blinked so far as Merriam could judge. Well satisfied, the latter spoke to Margery:

"Put that camera away, will you, please, where it could not be easily found except by yourself."

Margery picked up the camera and departed into the kitchenette.

Then, "Let him alone, Jennie," he said. For Jennie had left the back of Crockett's chair and perched herself on the edge of the table beside him and was flicking him under the chin with the rose.

"All right," she said. "He's no fun. He's very cross!"

She slid off the table and dropped into a chair, transferring her attention to Merriam, as though in the hope that he might be less obdurately disposed.

But Merriam addressed himself to the other man.

"Now, Mr. Crockett," he said, "this little supper party and entertainment are over, I believe. If you wish to leave, I shall be glad to release you and permit you to do so."

Crockett's reply was a sound between a grunt and a growl.

Merriam walked around the table and picked up the revolver where it had fallen by the wall.

"I don't believe," he continued, "that it will do you any good to start any rough-house when I have freed you. If you do, Jennie and Margery will scream, and I shall fire this revolver. That will bring in neighbours and probably the police, whose testimony would thus be added to that of the pictures we have taken as to your manner of spending your evening. You will understand that while I shall have those pictures developed the first thing in the morning I shall not show them to any one except Mr. Rockwell unless you compel me to do so."

By this time Crockett had become articulate.

"Compel you to do so?" he repeated stiffly. "May I ask what you mean by that?"

"Well," said Merriam, "you see I am an enthusiastic supporter of the Reform League as led by Mr. Rockwell and Senator Norman and Mayor Black. You, I understand, are opposed to the League and its policies. So long as your opposition relates itself only to those policies and involves only open public discussion of their merits, I shall, of course, have no reason to interfere. But if your opposition should take the form of any personal attack, on Senator Norman, let us say, I should feel compelled to retaliate by a personal attack upon you, making use of these pictures we have taken to-night and the story that will readily weave itself about them. Do you see?"

"See!" Crockett cried. "Of course I see. Blackmail! How much do you want for that camera? Name your price."

"It has no cash price," returned Merriam steadily. "Now if I release you, will you leave quietly?"

For a long moment the financier stared at the younger man who had worsted him. Then:

"At this moment," he said acridly, "I certainly have no other desire than to get away from this place and to be rid of my present companionship."

Merriam was tempted to laugh at the stilted dignity of this phraseology, but he managed to keep a straight face.

"Very well," he said. "Margery,"--for Margery had just returned from the kitchenette minus the camera,--"help me untie him, will you? Feet first."

Margery and Merriam knelt for a moment at the two sides of Crockett's chair and released his two legs. Then Merriam again put the table between himself and Crockett and stood waiting, revolver in hand, leaving to Margery the work of unbinding the arms. He was afraid that his own near presence to Crockett when the latter found himself free might tempt him irresistibly to personal assault.

In the moment during which he stood waiting he became conscious that Jennie, half reclining in the chair into which she had dropped, was smiling at him--a pretty, confidential smile which he did not understand.

But he had no time to consider Jennie just then, for Margery had completed her work. The last piece of rope fell on the floor, and she lifted the slip noose from about Crockett's neck. He had been rather tightly bound and did not instantly have the full use of his limbs. Margery took his arm to assist him.

"My coat and hat!" he said, not looking at Merriam.

"In the sitting room," said Margery.

He turned himself in that direction and in a jerky walk, with some support from Margery, moved towards and through the portieres. He had disdained to cast so much as a glance at either Merriam or Jennie.

Jennie resented this. "Old crosspatch!" she cried.

Merriam stepped hastily to the portieres and peeped through. Crockett had caught up his light overcoat and silk hat from a chair. He refused Margery's offer to help him on with his coat and made, already moving more naturally, for the hall door. Margery followed him. The door opened--closed again. Margery returned from the hallway.

Merriam advanced through the portieres into the sitting room.

"Well!" he exclaimed.

"Well!" returned Margery, with a dry laugh--the first laugh Merriam had heard from her during the whole evening.

"See what he does in the street," she added. "Raise the shade about a foot. I'll turn off the light."

Merriam acted promptly on this excellent hint. In a moment the room was in darkness, and he was kneeling by the window watching the street below, which was fairly well illuminated from arc lights at either corner. Part way down the block on the other side of the roadway a car, presumably a taxi, stood by the curb, with a man walking up and down beside it. Jennie's flat was too high up for Merriam to be able to see the sidewalk immediately below. If, therefore, Crockett on emerging from the building merely walked away, he would see nothing. But this was hardly likely.

Presently, sure enough, the taxi showed sudden signs of life. The man hastily got in, and the car rolled forward, crossing the street diagonally, and stopped directly below Merriam's window. Crockett had come out and signalled it. A moment later it shot away down the block and turned the corner.

Merriam still knelt by the window, peering into the street. He was looking for signs of any remaining watchers, for he had his own exit to think of: Rockwell had wanted him to "come at once to the hotel."

As he knelt there in the dark he suddenly sensed a warm fragrant body close beside his own. A pair of soft bare arms slipped about his neck.

"It was fine!" Jennie's voice whispered in his ear. "You're a nice boy!"

She had crept up behind him in the dark. Margery must have left the room.

For a moment Merriam knelt in fascinated silent rigidity. When he moved it was only to turn his head. And the turning of his head brought his face close to Jennie's, which, with the dim light from the street upon it, smiled at him with a kind of saucy tenderness. It was the face of a pretty child, with the lure of womanhood added, but with nothing else of maturity in it.

Her lips puckered. "Kiss me!" she whispered.

As he still only stared she quickly leaned forward a couple of inches more--her lips rested on his.

I am very much afraid that for an instant Merriam's lips responded. He half turned on one knee. His arms involuntarily closed about the seductive little body. He felt the short silk skirts crush deliciously against his legs.

And then a grotesque sort of composite picture of all the things he ought to remember, including Rockwell, Norman, Mollie June, and the members of the Riceville School Board, rushed across his mind. He struggled to his feet, pushing Jennie not roughly--away.

"Margery!" he called.

"Yes?" came Margery's voice from the dining room.

"Turn on the lights!"

By the time Margery had stepped through the portieres and pushed the switch Jennie had thrown herself face downward on the davenport, crying.

"Nobody loves me!" she sobbed.

Margery, standing by the switch, looked from Merriam at the window to Jennie on the couch and back again. Her expression indicated no bewilderment--rather a humorously cynical comprehension. She knew her Jennie.

At any rate, that glance steadied the young man. After meeting it for a moment he turned to Jennie. Poor little girl! He felt that he understood her perfectly. There was a side of himself that was like that. Only he had other sides powerfully developed, and Jennie had no other sides. All his young chivalry rose up, in alliance with the missionary spirit of the teacher. He desired greatly to help her.

After an instant's hesitation he crossed the room and drew up a chair beside the davenport.

"Jennie," he said, "listen!"

"Go away!" said Jennie.

"I _am_ going away in a minute. But I want to tell you something first."

Her sobbing ceased, but he waited till she asked:

"Well, what?"

"There _is_ somebody who loves you."

Hopefully Jennie raised her head and turned her face to him--still oddly pretty in spite of the tear-streaked rouge. But after a moment's look she said resentfully:

"It isn't you!"

"No," said Merriam, "it isn't I."

Even at this rate the discussion was apparently interesting enough to rouse her. With a sudden movement she curled herself up, half sitting, half reclining, in a corner of the davenport, and smoothed the crumpled skirts over her knees.

"Do you mean George?" she asked.

"No," said Merriam, "I mean Mr. Simpson."

"_Mister_ Simpson!" She laughed derisively, not prettily at all. "A waiter!"

"Listen, Jennie. Simpson is a fine fellow, with lots of brains and lots of courage. He has shown both within the last twenty-four hours. He's rendered a very important service to Mr. Rockwell and Senator Norman, and they're going to give him a lot of money for a reward. I don't know how much--maybe five thousand dollars. And he's crazy about you. He'll marry you in a minute if you'll let him, in spite of--George. He'll take you away on a fine trip--anywhere you want to go. And afterwards he'll set up in a business of his own--a cafe or whatever he likes. You'll have a real home and a husband and money enough and friends. It'll be a lot better than this stuff--like to-night. It really would. Think it over, Jennie!"

On the last words he rose.

"He's right!" cried Margery, who had drawn near.

"Shut up, Marge!" said Jennie.

But Merriam, looking closely at her with the sharp eye of a teacher to see whether or not his point had gone home, was satisfied. He was sure that she would think it over in spite of herself.

He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes after one.

"I must telephone at once to Mr. Rockwell in Senator Norman's rooms at the Hotel De Soto," he said to Margery.

"Yes," said Margery. "The hotel number is Madison 1-6-8-1."

"Thank you."

Without looking again at Jennie, he went to the telephone in the dining room. In a moment he had the hotel and had asked to be connected with Senator Norman's rooms. It was Rockwell's voice that answered, "Hello!"

"This is Merriam."

"Thank God! Where are you?"

"At Jennie's."

"Still? What the devil was the ruction there when I called up?"

"I'll tell you about that later. Do you still want me to come to the hotel?"

"Certainly. As fast as you can."

"You got the Senator back all right?"

"Yes. But he's pretty sick. Caught more cold, I guess. Hobart's worried about him. You'll have to stay over another day all right. And make that speech."

Merriam groaned.

"Listen!" said Rockwell. "You'll have to be mighty careful about getting into the hotel. You aren't Senator Norman just now, you know. The Senator has already returned to the hotel, openly, with me, three hours ago, and is sick in his rooms. We'll have to smuggle you in without any one's seeing you. But I have a plan--or rather Simpson has. You'd better come down on the Elevated. That'll be better than a taxi this time. No chauffeur to tell on you. Be sure you get away from there without being followed. Margery'll show you a way. Get off at Madison and Wabash. Simpson will meet you there and smuggle you in the back way. You can come right away?"

"Yes."

"Then for Heaven's sake come! We'll talk after you get here." He hung up.

Merriam stared at the instrument as he slowly replaced his own receiver. Another day. "And make that speech!" Would this kaleidoscopic, unreal phantasm of adventures never end? When would he wake up? He perceived suddenly that he was very tired. But he must brace up sufficiently to get back to the hotel. There doubtless he would be permitted to go to bed and snatch at least a few hours' sleep--before the speech!

He turned and found Margery standing between the portieres, watching him.

"Well!" she said sharply.

"I must--must--get dressed," he finished, realising for the first time since he had leapt out of bed with his revolver to divert Crockett from the telephone that he was attired only in pajamas. "Rockwell says you can tell me a way to get away from here without being seen by any watchers."

"Yes," said Margery. "Go and dress. I'll attend to that."

He went into the bedroom and began to get into his clothes, working mechanically.

Presently he was ready--though with such a loose and rakish bow as he had never before disported--and emerged into the dining room.

There he encountered a cheering spectacle. Margery was seated at the table between a coffee percolator, efficiently bubbling, and an electric toaster. She was buttering hot toast. Jennie sat at one side of the table. A pale blue kimono now covered her dancing costume, and she looked quite demure. She raised her eyes almost shyly as Merriam entered.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "This is grand. Margery, you certainly are a trump!"

Margery's rather sallow cheeks flushed slightly. "You'll need it," was all she said, and proceeded to fill a cup for him from the percolator.

"How do I get away?" Merriam asked as he sipped.

"Back stairs," said Margery succinctly. "I'll show you."

Munching toast, he enquired the whereabouts of the nearest Elevated station and was duly instructed.

He had a second cup of the black coffee. Margery did not take any and would not give Jennie any.

"We go straight to bed," she said decidedly.

From time to time Merriam cast an unwilling glance at Jennie, sitting downcast and out of it on Margery's other side. About the third time Jennie intercepted his glance and answered it with a small wistful smile. After that he would not look again. In a few minutes, of course, this very early breakfast--it was somewhere around two o'clock--was over, and Merriam rose.

"I must be off," he said, and hesitated. "I am very much indebted to both of you for--all the help you have given me this evening!" (Inwardly he abused himself for his stiltedness; it was like his telling Mollie June he was glad to have helped her in algebra.)

Jennie rose too and came around the table towards him. She had suddenly summoned back a smile, and she moved daintily inside the blue kimono. Above the stalk of that straight, demure, Japanesy blue, her head nodded like a bright blossom--with its fair, wavy hair, blue eyes, and childishly rounded cheeks, still gaudy with the remains of rouge.

She tripped forward till she was almost touching Merriam, stopped, and suddenly raised her eyes to him.

"Kiss me good-bye!" she said.

We may suspect that it was a sort of point of honour with Jennie to retrieve the rebuff she had received in the sitting room. As for Merriam, in spite of the obvious deliberateness of this assault, I am not perfectly sure I could answer for him if it had not been for Margery. But Margery's presence saved him from serious temptation.

Instead of stooping to kiss the lifted lips he caught Jennie's hand that hung at her side, and, stepping back half a step, raised the hand and kissed it.

Sometimes the inspirations of youth are singularly happy. It seems to me that this one was of that kind: it involved neither yielding nor discourtesy.

Jennie was somewhat taken aback, yet she could not be hurt by a gesture so gallant.

"Good-bye, Jennie," he said. "I hope to be the best man at your wedding before long."

"Oh!" she said, and withdrew her hand. Then: "Good-bye!"

After a moment's hesitation and a last quite shy glance at Merriam she suddenly gathered up the skirts of the kimono and ran into the sitting room.

"Are you ready?" said Margery dryly.

"My coat. I haven't a hat," he added, remembering that under Rockwell's instructions he had left this article in the taxi in which they had come to the flat.

"Your coat's in the hall," said Margery. "I can get you a hat too."

The dining room was connected directly with the hallway, and in a moment Margery had returned with Merriam's light overcoat and with a man's derby--probably Norman's property.

"Thank you," said Merriam, taking them.

"This way," she replied, moving towards the kitchenette.

In the kitchenette he was momentarily surprised to see Margery opening a tin box labeled "Bread." Was she going to equip him with a lunch? But she drew out, not a loaf, but the camera.