Chapter 3

Here the young man lost track of her remark. He was looking up into the shadow of the motoring-cap, discovering things; for the shadow was set at naught by the moon luster that, reflected from the surface of the stream, invested with a gentle and glamorous radiance the face that bent above him. And he caught at his breath sharply, direst fears confirmed: she was pretty indeed--perilously pretty. The firm, resolute chin, the sensitive, sweet line of scarlet lips, the straight little nose, the brows delicately arched, the large, alert, tawny eyes with the dangerous sweet shadows beneath, the glint as of raw copper where her hair caught the light--Maitland appreciated them all far too well; and clutched nervously the rail of the seat, trying to steady himself, to re-collect his routed wits and consider sensibly that it all was due to the magic of the moon, belike; the witchery of this apparition that looked down into his eyes so gravely.

"Of course," he mumbled, "it's too beautiful to endure. Of course it will all fade, vanish utterly in the cold light of day...."

Above him, perplexed brows gathered ominously. "I beg pardon?"

"I--er--yes," he stammered at random.

"You--er--what?"

Positively, she was laughing at him! He, Maitland the exquisite, Mad Maitland the imperturbable, was being laughed at by a mere child, a girl scarcely out of her teens. He glanced upward, caught her eye a-gleam with merriment, and looked away with much vain dignity.

"I was saying," he manufactured, "that I did not mind the wetting in the least. I'm happy to be of service."

"You weren't saying anything of the sort," she contradicted calmly. "However...." She paused significantly.

Maitland experienced an instantaneous sensation as of furtive guilt, decidedly the reverse of comfortable. He shuffled uneasily. There was a brief silence, on her part expectant, on his, blank. His mental attitude remained hopeless: for some mysterious reason his nonchalance had deserted him in the hour of his supremest need; not in all his experience did he remember anything like this--as awkward.

The river purled indifferently about his calves; a vagrant breeze disturbed the tree-tops and died of sheer lassitude; Time plodded on with measured stride. Then, abruptly, full-winged inspiration was born out of the chaos of his mind. Listening intently, he glanced with covert suspicion at the bridge: it proved untenanted, inoffensive of mien; nor arose there any sound of hoof or wheel upon the highway. Again he looked up at the girl; and found her in thoughtful mood, frowning, regarding him steadily beneath level brows.

He assumed a disarming levity of demeanor, smiling winningly. "There's only one way," he suggested--not too archly--and extended his arms.

"Indeed?" She considered him with pardonable dubiety.

Instantly his purpose became as adamant.

"I must carry you. It's the only way."

"Oh, indeed no! I--couldn't impose upon you. I'm--very heavy, you know--"

"Never mind," firmly insistent. "You can't stay here all night, of course."

"But are you sure?" (She was yielding!) "I don't like to--"

He shook his head, careful to restrain the twitching corners of his lips.

"It will take but a moment," he urged gravely. "And I'll be quite careful."

"Well--" She perceived that, if not right, he was stubborn; and with a final small gesture of deprecation, weakly surrendered. "I'm sorry to be such a nuisance," she murmured, rising and gathering skirts about her.

Maitland stoutly denied the hideous insinuation: "I am only too glad--"

She balanced herself lightly upon the step. He moved nearer and assured himself of a firm foothold on the pebbly river-bed. She sank gracefully into his arms, proving a considerable burden--weightier, in fact, than he had anticipated. He was somewhat staggered; it seemed that he embraced countless yards of ruffles and things ballasted with (at a shrewd guess) lead. He swayed.

Then, recovering his equilibrium, incautiously glanced into her eyes. And lost it again, completely.

"I was mistaken," he told himself; "daylight will but enhance...."

She held herself considerately still, perhaps wondering why he made no move. Perhaps otherwise; there is reason to believe that she may have suspected--being a woman.

At length, "Is there anything I can do," she inquired meekly, "to make it easier for you?"

"I'm afraid," he replied, attitude apologetic, "that I must ask you to put your arm around my ne--my shoulders. It would be more natural."

"Oh."

The monosyllable was heavy with meaning--with any one of a dozen meanings, in truth. Maitland debated the most obvious. Did she conceive he had insinuated that it was his habit to ferry armfuls of attractive femininity over rocky fords by the light of a midnight moon?

No matter. While he thought it out, she was consenting. Presently a slender arm was passed round his neck. Having awaited only that, he began to wade cautiously shorewards. The distance lessened perceptibly, but he contemplated the decreasing interval without joy, for all that she was of an appreciable weight. For all burdens there are compensations.

Unconsciously, inevitably, her head sank toward his shoulder; he was aware of her breath, fragrant and warm, upon his cheek.... He stopped abruptly, cold chills running up and down his back; he gritted his teeth; he shuddered perceptibly.

"What _is_ the matter?" she demanded, deeply concerned, but at pains not to stir.

Maitland made a strange noise with his tongue behind clenched teeth. "_Urrrrgh,_" he said distinctly.

She lifted her head, startled; relief followed, intense and instantaneous.

"I'm sorry," he muttered humbly, face aflame, "but you ... tickled."

"I'm--so--_sorry!_" she gasped, violently agitated. And laughed a low, almost a silent, little laugh, as with deft fingers she tucked away the errant lock of hair.

"Ass!" Maitland told himself fiercely, striding forward.

In another moment they were on dry land. The girl slipped from his arms and faced him, eyes dancing, cheeks crimson, lips a tense, quivering, scarlet line. He met this with a rueful smile.

"But--thank you--but," she gasped explosively, "it was _so_ funny!"

Wounded dignity melted before her laughter. For a time, there in the moonlight, under the scornful regard of the disabled motor-car's twin headlights, these two rocked and shrieked, while the silent night flung back disdainful echoes of their mad laughter.

Perhaps the insane incongruity of their performance first became apparent to the girl; she, at all events, was the first to control herself. Maitland subsided, rumbling, while she dabbed at her eyes with a wisp of lace and linen.

"Forgive me," she said faintly, at length; "I didn't mean to--"

"How could you help it? Who'd expect a hulking brute like myself to be ticklish?"

"You are awfully good," she countered more calmly.

"Don't say that. I'm a clumsy lout. But--" He held her gaze inquiringly. "But may I ask--"

"Oh, of course--certainly: I am--was--bound for Greenpoint-on-the-Sound--"

"Ten miles!" he interrupted.

The corners of her red lips drooped: her brows puckered with dismay. Instinctively she glanced toward the waterbound car.

"What am I to do?" she cried. "Ten miles!... I could never walk it, never in the world! You see, I went to town to-day to do a little shopping. As we were coming home the chauffeur was arrested for careless driving. He had bumped a delivery wagon over--it wasn't really his fault. I telephoned home for somebody to bail him out, and my father said he would come in. Then I dined, returned to the police-station, and waited. Nobody came. I couldn't stay there all night. I 'phoned to everybody I knew, until my money gave out; no one was in town. At last, in desperation, I started home alone."

Maitland nodded his comprehension. "Your father--?" he hinted delicately.

"Judge Wentworth," she explained hastily. "We've taken the Grover place at Greenpoint for the season."

"I see,"--thoughtfully. And this was the girl who he had believed had been in his rooms that evening, in his absence! Oh, clearly, that was impossible. Her tone rang with truth. She interrupted his train of thought with a cry of despair. "What will they think!"

"I dare say," he ventured hopefully, "I could hire a team at some farm-house--"

"But the delay! It's so late already!"

Undeniably late: one o'clock at the earliest. A thought longer Maitland hung in lack of purpose, then without a word of explanation turned and again, began to wade out.

"What do you mean to do?" she cried, surprised.

"See what's the trouble," he called back. "I know a bit about motors. Perhaps--"

"Then--but why--"

She stopped; and Maitland forbore to encourage her to round out her question. It was no difficult matter to supply the missing words. Why had he not thought of investigating the motor before insisting that he must carry her ashore?

The humiliating conviction forced itself upon him that he was not figuring to great advantage in this adventure. Distinctly a humiliating sensation to one who ordinarily was by way of having a fine conceit of himself. It requires a certain amount of egotism to enable one to play the exquisite to one's personal satisfaction; Maitland had enjoyed the possession of that certain amount; theretofore his approval of self had been passably entire. Now--he could not deny--the boor had shown up through the polish of the beau.

Intolerable thought! "Cad!" exclaimed Maitland bitterly. This all was due to hasty jumping at conclusions: if he had not chosen to believe a young and charming girl identical with an--an adventuress, this thing had not happened and he had still retained his own good-will. For one little moment he despised himself heartily--one little moment of clear insight into self was his. And forthwith he began to meditate apologies, formulating phrases designed to prove adequate without sounding exaggerated and insincere.

By this time he had reached the car, and--through sheer blundering luck--at once stumbled upon the seat of trouble: a clogged valve in the carbureter. No serious matter: with the assistance of a repair kit more than commonly complete, he had the valve clear in a jiffy.

News of this triumph he shouted to the girl, receiving in reply an "Oh, thank you!" so fervently grateful that he felt more guilty than ever.

Ruminating unhappily on the cud of contemplated abasement, he waded round the car, satisfying himself that there was nothing else out of gear; and apprehensively cranked up. Whereupon the motor began to hum contentedly: all was well. Flushed with this success, Maitland climbed aboard and opened the throttle a trifle. The car moved. And then, with a swish, a gurgle, and a watery _whoosh!_ it surged forward, up, out of the river, gallantly up the slope.

At the top the amateur chauffeur shut down the throttle and jumped out, turning to face the girl. She was by the step almost before he could offer a hand to help her in, and as she paused to render him his due meed of thanks, it became evident that she harbored little if any resentment; eyes shining, face aglow with gratitude, she dropped him a droll but graceful little courtesy.

"You are too good!" she declared with spirit. "How can I thank you?"

"You might," he suggested, looking down into her face from his superior height, "give me a bit of a lift--just a couple of miles up the road. Though," he supplemented eagerly, "if you'd really prefer, I should be only too happy to drive the car home for you?"

"Two miles, did you say?"

He fancied something odd in her tone; besides, the question was superfluous. His eyes informed with puzzlement, he replied: "Why, yes--that much, more or less. I live--"

"Of course," she put in quickly, "I'll give you the lift--only too glad. But as for your taking me home at this hour, I can't hear of that."

"But--"

"Besides, what would people say?" she countered obstinately. "Oh, no," she decided; and he felt that from this decision there would be no appeal; "I couldn't think of interfering with your ... arrangements."

Her eyes held his for a single instant, instinct with mischief, gleaming with bewildering light from out a face schooled to gravity. Maitland experienced a sensation of having grasped after and missed a subtlety of allusion; his wits, keen as they were, recoiled, baffled by her finesse. And the more he divined that she was playing with him, as an experienced swordsman might play with an impertinent novice, the denser his confusion grew.

"But I have no arrangements--" he stammered.

"Don't!" she insisted--as much as to say that he was fabricating and she knew it! "We must hurry, you know, because.... There, I've dropped my handkerchief! By the tree, there. Do you mind--?"

"Of course not." He set off swiftly toward the point indicated, but on reaching it cast about vainly for anything in the nature of a handkerchief. In the midst of which futile quest a change of tempo in the motor's impatient drumming surprised him.

Startled, he looked up. Too late: the girl was in the seat, the car in motion--already some yards from the point at which he had left it. Dismayed, he strode forward, raising his voice in perturbed expostulation.

"But--I say--!"

Over the rear of the seat a grey gauntlet was waved at him, as tantalizing as the mocking laugh that came to his ears.

He paused, thunderstruck, appalled by this monstrosity of ingratitude.

The machine gathered impetus, drawing swiftly away. Yet in the stillness the farewell of the grey girl came to him very clearly.

"Good-by!" with a laugh. "Thank you and good-by--_Handsome Dan!_"

III

"HANDSOME DAN"

Standing in the middle of the road, watching the dust cloud that trailed the fast disappearing motorcar, Mr. Maitland cut a figure sufficiently forlorn and disconsolate to have distilled pity from the least sympathetic heart.

His hands were thrust stiffly at full arm's length into his trousers pockets: a rumpled silk hat was set awry on the back of his head; his shirt bosom was sadly crumpled; above the knees, to a casual glance, he presented the appearance of a man carefully attired in evening dress; below, his legs were sodden and muddied, his shoes of patent-leather, twin wrecks. Alas for jauntiness and elegance, alack for ease and aplomb!

"Tricked," observed Maitland casually, and protruded his lower lip, thus adding to the length of a countenance naturally long. "Outwitted by a chit of a girl! Dammit!"

But this was crude melodrama. Realizing which, he strove to smile: a sorry failure.

"'Handsome Dan,'" quoted he; and cocking his head to one side eyed the road inquiringly. "Where in thunder d'you suppose she got hold of _that_ name?"

Bestowed upon him in callow college days, it had stuck burr-like for many a weary year. Of late, however, its use had lapsed among his acquaintances; he had begun to congratulate himself upon having lived it down. And now it was resurrected, flung at him in sincerest mockery by a woman whom, to his knowledge, he had never before laid eyes upon. Odious appellation, hateful invention of an ingenious enemy!

"'Handsome Dan!' She must have known me all the time--all the time I was making an exhibition of myself.... 'Wentworth'? I know no one of that name. Who the dickens can she be?"

If it had not been contrary to his code of ethics, he would gladly have raved, gnashed his teeth, footed the dance of rage with his shadow. Indeed, his restraint was admirable, the circumstances considered. He did nothing whatever but stand still for a matter of five minutes, vainly racking his memory for a clue to the identity of "Miss Wentworth."

At length he gave it up in despair and abstractedly felt for his watch-fob. Which wasn't there. Neither, investigation developed, was the watch. At which crowning stroke of misfortune,--the timepiece must have slipped from his pocket into the water while he was tinkering with that infamous carbureter,--Maitland turned eloquently red in the face.

"The price," he meditated aloud, with an effort to resume his pose, "is a high one to pay for a wave of a grey glove and the echo of a pretty laugh."

With which final fling at Fortune he set off again for Maitland Manor, trudging heavily but at a round pace through the dust that soon settled upon the damp cloth of his trousers legs and completed their ruination. But Maitland was beyond being disturbed by such trifles. A wounded vanity engaged his solicitude to the exclusion of all other interests.

At the end of forty-five minutes he had covered the remaining distance between Greenfields station and Maitland Manor. For five minutes more he strode wearily over the side-path by the box hedge which set aside his ancestral acres from the public highway. At length, with an exclamation, he paused at the first opening in the living barrier: a wide entrance from which a blue-stone carriage drive wound away to the house, invisible in the waning light, situate in the shelter of the grove of trees that studded the lawn.

"Gasoline! Brrr!" said Maitland, shuddering and shivering with the combination of a nauseous odor and the night's coolness--the latter by now making itself as unpleasantly prominent as the former.

Though he hated the smell with all his heart, manfully inconsistent he raised his head, sniffing the air for further evidence; and got his reward in a sickening gust.

"Tank leaked," he commented with brevity. "Quart of the stuff must have trickled out right here. Ugh! If it goes on at this rate, there'll be another breakdown before she gets home." And, "Serve her right, too!" he growled, vindictive.

But for all his indignation he acknowledged a sneaking wish that he might be at hand again, in such event, a second time to give gratuitous service to his grey lady.

Analyzing this frame of mind (not without surprise and some disdain of him who weakly entertained it) he crossed the drive and struck in over the lawn, shaping his course direct for the front entrance of the house.

By dead reckoning the hour was two, or something later; and a chill was stealing in upon the land, wafted gently southward from Long Island Sound. All the world beside himself seemed to slumber, breathless, insensate. Wraith-like, grey shreds of mist drifted between the serried boles of trees, or, rising, veiled the moon's wan and pallid face, that now was low upon the horizon. In silent rivalry long and velvet-black shadows skulked across the ample breadths of dew-drenched grass. Somewhere a bird stirred on its unseen perch, chirping sleepily; and in the rapt silence the inconsiderable interruption broke with startling stress.

In time,--not long,--the house lifted into view: a squat, rambling block of home-grown architecture with little to recommend it save its keen associations and its comfort. At the edge of the woods the lord and master paused indefinitely, with little purpose, surveying idly the pale, columned facade, and wondering whether or not his entrance at that ungodly hour would rouse the staff of house servants. If it did not--he contemplated with mild amusement the prospect of their surprise when, morning come, they should find the owner in occupation.

"Bannerman was right," he conceded; "any------" The syllables died upon his lips; his gaze became fixed; his heart thumped wildly for an instant, then rested still; and instinctively he held his breath, tip-toeing to the edge of the veranda the better to command a view of the library windows.

These opened from ceiling to floor and should by rights have presented to his vision a blank expanse of dark glass. But, oddly enough, even while thinking of his lawyer's warning, he had fancied.... "Ah!" said Maitland softly.

A disk of white light, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, had flitted swiftly across the glass and vanished.

"Ah, ah! The devil, the devil!" murmured the young man unconsciously.

The light appeared again, dancing athwart the inner wall of the room, and was lost as abruptly as before. On impulse Maitland buttoned his top-coat across his chest, turning up the collar to hide his linen, darted stealthily a yard or two to one side, and with one noiseless bound reached the floor of the veranda. A breath later he stood by the front door, where, at first glance, he discovered the means of entrance used by the midnight marauder; the doors stood ajar, a black interval showing between them.

So that, then, was the way! Cautiously Maitland put a hand upon the knob and pushed.

A sharp, penetrating squeak brought him to an abrupt standstill, heart hammering shamefully again. Gathering himself to spring, if need be, he crept back toward the library windows, and reconnoitering cautiously determined the fact that the bolts had just been withdrawn on the inside of one window frame, which was swinging wide.

"It's a wise crook that provides his own quick exit," considered Maitland.

The sagacious one was not, apparently, leaving at that moment. On the contrary, having made all things ready for a hurried flight upon the first alarm, the intruder turned back, as was clearly indicated by the motion of the light within. The clink of steel touching steel became audible; and Maitland nodded. Bannerman was indeed justified; at that very moment the safe was being attacked.

Maitland returned noiselessly to the door. His mouth had settled into a hard, unyielding, thin line; and a dangerous light flickered in his eyes. Temporarily the idler had stepped aside, giving place to the real man that was Maitland--the man ready to fight for his own, naked hands against firearms, if it need be. True, he had but to step into the gun-room to find weapons in plenty; but these must be then loaded to be of service, and precious moments wasted in the process--moments in which the burglar might gain access to and make off with his booty.

Maitland had no notion whatever of permitting anything of the sort to occur. He counted upon taking his enemy unawares, difficult as he believed such a feat would be, in the case of a professional cracksman.

Down the hallway he groped his way to the library door, his fingers at length encountering its panels; it was closed, doubtless secured upon the inside; the slightest movement of the handle was calculated to alarm the housebreaker. Maitland paused, deliberating another and better plan, having in mind a short passageway connecting library and smoking-room. In the library itself a heavy tapestry curtained its opening, while an equally heavy portiere took the place of a door at the other end. In the natural order of things a burglar would overlook this.

Inch by inch the young man edged into the smoking-room, the door to which providentially stood unclosed. Once within, it was but a moment's work to feel his way to the velvet folds and draw them aside, fortunately without rattling the brass rings from which the curtain depended. And then Maitland was in the passage, acutely on the alert, recognizing from the continued click of metal that his antagonist-to-be was still at his difficult task. Inch by inch--there was the tapestry! Very gently the householder pushed it aside.

An insidious aroma of scorching varnish (the dark lantern) penetrated the passage while he stood on its threshold, feeling for the electric-light switch. Unhappily he missed this at the first cast, and--heard from within a quick, deep hiss of breath. Something had put the burglar on guard.

Another instant wasted, and it would be too late. The young man had to chance it. And he did, without further hesitation stepping boldly into the danger-zone, at the same time making one final, desperate pass at the spot where the switch should have been--and missing it. On the instant there came a click of a different caliber from those that had preceded it. A revolver had been cocked, somewhere there in the blank darkness.