CHAPTER VIII.
A FORCED MATCH.
PETER took his “prisoner” to the end of the block, and, dismissing the policeman, called a taxicab. He pushed the other inside and followed him, and when the taxi was moving, he said:
“Now, Mr. Alwin, perhaps you'll tell me what it is all about.”
Frank Alwin sat back in the taxi and laughed almost hysterically.
“I'm sorry to weep on your shoulder,” he said, “but the fact is, I've been chased for the greater part of twenty-four hours, and if I'm not drunk I am at least starving.”
Peter realized that this was not the moment for publicity, and he drove his charge to his own apartments and produced from a near-by restaurant sufficient food to satisfy the famished man. Frank, lying on Peter Correlly's bed, handed back the last tray with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Now I'll tell you the story,” he said.
For half an hour Peter listened, never interrupting, to the amazing narrative.
“It sounds like a lie,” he said, “and if anybody else told me I shouldn't have believed it. Did you see the faces of the men?”
Frank shook his head.
“And you have no clew by which you could identify them?”
“None, except—just as I was getting over the wall, one of the men made a grab at me and I hit at him with my bar. It just missed his head and caught his hand. I imagine it smashed his thumb, by something I heard him say.”
He looked at Peter oddly.
“Out with it,” said Peter. “You've something on your mind—something you haven't told me. What did you mean when you told me I should get a headache if I went into Cavan's car?”
The unshaven man on the bed shut his eyes.
“Good night,” he said, and was almost instantly asleep.
Chief Sharpe had finished his dinner and had already called for his bill when Peter reappeared, laden with news.
“Nothing short of an electric battery would have kept that fellow awake,” said the disgusted detective. “Now just listen, chief, and I'll tell you the only fairy story that I've ever believed in.”
He narrated, with his own irrepressible commentaries, the story as he had heard it. Sharpe was nonplused.
“It is certainly like something out of a play. You don't think he dreamed it?”
Peter shook his head. “He's not that kind of fellow—he's human. Besides, he spent two or three years in the secret service during the war.”
“I forgot that,” said Sharpe. “Now that you recall the fact, I remember that they spoke very highly of him. Well, The Golden Hades should be tracked down, with three men like you and Alwin and Wilbur Smith on the trail. Here comes your dinner party.”
“Not mine,” said Peter, interested nevertheless, as Professor Cavan and Bertram, the banker, came from the inner room.
The professor was in excellent spirits, and if George Bertram was gloomy it was a gloom consistent with his general attitude toward life.
“Where is the girl?” asked Sharpe.
Peter was asking the same question himself, and the party waited at the main door of the restaurant some three minutes before she appeared. Peter made a little noise in his throat.
“Hullo!” he said, half to himself.
If José Bertram had not been crying, then he had no knowledge of women. Her eyes were red, there was dejection in her gait, a certain listlessness which told of her distress. The party passed out together, and Peter, leaving his chief without an apology, walked into the inner room and interviewed the head waiter.
“What's the trouble, Luigi?” he asked.
“With the young lady?” the little Italian asked, smiling. “Some love affair. It was with her father she quarreled—only slightly, and then she left the table and did not come back. It did not matter much,” said the little Italian philosophically, “the dessert was not the happiest effort of our chef.”
This was all the information Peter could get, and by the time he returned Sharpe had disappeared. He remembered his engagement with the girl and determined to keep it the next morning.
That a girl should weep at dinner, especially an emotional girl and one who had already demonstrated her electric temperament, was not amazing, not even a matter for regret, unless she happened to be to you a shade different from all other girls. It was just that with Peter, who, being neither impressionable nor ardent, could not be affected as other men were affected.
José Bertram did not impress him as she would impress others. To say that Peter had fallen in love with her at first sight is hardly to state a fact. It is true that the sight of the girl, whom he had seen only once before, and then in circumstances which did not arouse his passionate admiration, was sufficient to bring him to his feet, and that all the time he was speaking to Sharpe one-half of his mind was running after her. But that was not love; that was just extraordinary interest.
Nor did Peter groan within himself because she was above his station or because her father was very wealthy, and therefore she was inaccessible. In fact, he did not regard her as being above his station. He did not look upon her father's wealth as anything more remarkable than if he were possessed of any other eccentricity such as a weakness for yellow waistcoats or a fondness for caviar.
The Bertrams had three houses—one in New York proper, which was seldom used; one on Long Island, and an estate in New Jersey. It was to the latter house that Peter made his way on the following morning, having discovered that the family was in residence at Holywood.
George Bertram's family consisted of himself and his daughter, and it is true to say that the household was in reality two households, since the girl, though on excellent and affectionate terms with her father, had a suite which occupied one wing of the building, while her father lived practically alone in the other.
As his car hummed up the long tree-shaded drive, Peter found himself wondering how far he could revive the unpleasant memories of her detention on a serious charge. He was anxious to know the cause of her weeping, but doubted his ability to bring the conversation to that incident.
A liveried servant took his card.
“Miss Bertram is expecting you, I think, sir,” said the man, “and told me to show you into the drawing-room. Will you come this way?”
Peter was not a little astonished but followed in the man's wake.
“A gentleman to see you, miss,” announced the servant, and the girl came forward and stopped dead at the sight of Peter. On her face was such a mixture of consternation and surprise—yes, and even fear—that Peter permitted himself to smile.
“You weren't expecting me, I think?” he said.
“I—I” began the girl in confusion, “No, I was expecting—do you want anything particular?” she asked suddenly.
Peter saw it was his turn to be concerned, that in the brief time the salutations had taken, the girl had gone deathly white. She sat down, too, in the nearest chair so suddenly that Correlly, who had seen these symptoms before in less highly placed circles, was filled with a sense of dismay. She recovered herself instantly and rose with a little smile.
“I asked you to come, didn't I?” she said. “I'm so sorry I'm such a fool, but I've had a bad headache all morning. Won't you sit down?”
Peter found a chair and seated himself, feeling mighty uncomfortable. There was an unexpected hostility in her tone, and her face had suddenly become a mask from which all expression had vanished. She was holding herself in consciously and for a purpose. What that purpose was, the detective could not even guess. He decided to make the interview as short as possible; but he would not have been Peter Correlly if he had not proceeded in his characteristically direct way.
“You're mighty scared about some thing, Miss Bertram,” he began.
“Indeed, I'm not,” she said rather stiffly, sitting a little more erect. “What should I be scared about? Do you imagine that I'm afraid of your arresting me or something of that sort?”
“You're scared about something,” said Peter again, speaking slowly, “and it's a pretty big something, too.”
He pursed his lips and looked at her with solemn eyes. She met the glance bravely for a moment, then her glance fell.
“Really, Mr. Correlly—that is your name, isn't it?—I do not see why you should worry your head about matters which do not in the slightest concern you. I am very glad you called, of course, because I invited you, but it is rather embarrassing to me that you should be so—so” she hesitated for a word, then added: “intimate.”
“You're scared worse than anybody I ever knew,” said Peter, “and I'd just give my right hand if I could help you get rid of that feeling, that panicky fear which, I know, is sitting on you at this very moment.”
She looked up sharply, alarm in her eyes. A little frown gathered on her forehead, and for the first time a touch of color tinged her cheeks.
“You'd give your—your right hand,” she stammered, “to help me? How absurd!”
But her “how absurd!” was half-hearted. He thought he detected a plea in her voice.
“Of course I am not in trouble. How could you help me?”
She looked through the window.
“I am expecting somebody very soon,” she said. “I hope you will not think I am inhospitable if I cut this interview short.”
He rose and crossed to her. “Miss Bertram,” he said quietly, “I came here to-day with no other idea than just to renew your acquaintance under more pleasant circumstances, and maybe to ask you a few questions. I don't know you. I have seen you only for five minutes in my life, and I have no right at all, not even the right of a friend, to interfere in your private affairs. I have no authority to question you or to urge my confidence upon you, but I want to say just this, that there isn't any kind of difficulty you may be in that I wouldn't and couldn't help you with.”
She rose quickly and walked past him to the window, turning her back to him.
“Go away now, please,” she said in a low voice, and shook a little. “I—I think you are kind, but unfortunately you cannot help me. Good-by!”
Peter hesitated a moment, then picked up his hat and walked to the door, and his hand was on the handle when she called him. She was holding out her hand and he hastened to take it.
“Good-by,” she said. “Perhaps when I am in really serious trouble I will ask you to” she stopped and shrugged her shoulders. “What is the use?” she cried passionately. “My trouble is nothing—nothing! Besides, what does it matter, Mr. Correlly?” she went on.
He felt something of the strain, of the tension under which she was speaking.
“What does it matter! I suppose I shall have to marry sooner or later, and one man is as good or as bad as another—you know enough of men, Mr. Correlly, to know that.”
Peter nodded.
“So you're going to be married? That explains it then. Would it be an impertinence on my part if I asked who is the fortunate man?”
She looked at him and her lips curled.
“The chosen of the gods,” she said bitterly.
Peter drew a long breath. “The Golden Hades?” he suggested, and she started back as if he had struck her, and again the pallor left her face.
“Good Heavens!” she whispered. “Do you know that? Do you know that?”
Without another word she brushed past him out of the room, and he waited until he heard the thud of a closing door, then he, too, went out.
The car swept down the drive and passed a man who was walking up. It was Professor Cavan's butler.
“Good lord!” thought Peter, with a sudden spasm of dismay. “She's never going to marry that old runt!”
“I hit his thumb,” said a cell in his brain and Peter half rose to check the driver but sat back again.
For quickly as he had passed the professor's butler, he had observed the bandaged hand.