In and Out

The Butterfly

One bad feature of having passed one's earlier days in the remote fastnesses of New England, in the era before the automobile and the telephone came to complicate life, is that one's ideas of womanhood are likely to be definite and rooted.

Part of Anthony's boyhood had been spent in a Massachusetts hamlet nine miles from the nearest railroad, and at forty-five he had not fully recovered from some of the effects.

Even after decades of New York, Anthony's notion of woman embodied a prim creature, rather given to talking of her sorrows, able to faint prettily on occasion, and, unless born to the coarser form life, a little fatigued after dusting the parlor.

She was a creature, lovely and delicate, who played croquet as the extreme of exercise and never even watched more violent sports. She did not golf; she did not swim or shoot. She was, in a word, one hundred per cent. feminine—and about the most scandalous thing that could be suggested about her was that she savored, even one per cent., of the masculine.

So, while another type of citizen, possessed of all the facts, might have thrown up his hands in glee and laughed merrily at the sight of Johnson Boller sitting there on the floor, Anthony Fry merely stood frozen.

Minute by minute, he was understanding more fully just what manner of individual his insistence had inducted into his chaste home. She was a female in sex only! She was no timid little thing, swooning and weeping at her terrible predicament; she was the sort that dons trousers and goes to prize-fights—but what was infinitely worse, if one judged by that resounding whack, she was herself a prize-fighter!

Anthony, you see, was a mild enthusiast about the fighting game; when he saw a genuine short-arm jab he recognized it instantly.

And going further—for he could not help doing that—what was to be the end of the mess? Last night, could his addled head but have permitted it, she would have gone away gladly as a boy. Now that the truth was out, she was making no effort to escape; far worse, just at this minute, she seemed bent on continuing the fistic battle, for she stood and fairly glared down at Johnson Boller.

Ten seconds had passed since the resounding thump which proclaimed that heavy gentleman's meeting with the floor, and still he had not risen. Five of them he spent in staring blankly up at David; three he spent in gathering a scowl; the final two found his plump countenance turning to an angry red—and Johnson Boller was struggling to his feet, breathing hard.

"Say, kid——" he began gustily and threateningly.

Anthony Fry came to life and, with a bound, was between them.

"Let this thing stop right here, Johnson!" he said ringingly. "No more of it—do you understand? No more!"

"No more, your eye!" panted Johnson Boller. "Get out of the way before I knock you out!"

"Johnson, I refuse to permit you——" Anthony cried, and with both lean hands pushed back on Mr. Boller's heaving chest.

"Look here, Anthony," said Johnson Boller, with plainly forced calm; "when a dirty little guttersnipe like that hits me a foul blow, something happens!"

"There wasn't anything foul about that blow," David said calmly. "That was a nice clean jab, and nothing like the one you gave me without warning and while I was sitting down."

"That's enough, David!" Anthony said.

"He started it," David submitted.

Anthony pushed on. Johnson Boller was against the bureau now—had been there for some seconds, indeed—and his expression was changing. Young David, to be sure, had rendered him slightly ridiculous for a bit, but getting mad about it was not likely to help in eliminating David.

"It's all right, Anthony," Mr. Boller said with a sudden grim smile. "Don't shove me through the wall. I won't hurt the kid."

"You'll not lay hands on him?"

"No."

"That's a promise?"

"Why, of course it is!" Johnson Boller said heartily.

Anthony Fry heaved a great, shaky sigh and stood back. It had not happened that time. David's wig was still in place, and David was still David. Yet, all other things apart, what if David's wig had slipped? What if, during the thirty or forty years he still had to live, Anthony must have cut out Johnson Boller's really stimulating friendship, or have listened, day in and day out, night in and night out, at every meeting and on every sly occasion, to a recital of what had happened this morning?

The strain was really growing too much. Johnson Boller would have to get out of here now and—although why was Johnson Boller smiling so sweetly?

"Quite a little boxer, kid, aren't you?" he was asking in the most friendly fashion.

"I've boxed with my brother," David said.

"Made a study of it, eh?"

"So-so," said David.

They were going to have a little conversation now, which gave Anthony a minute or two for thought. First he would get Johnson Boller out of here on the plea that it was time to dress; then he would have David's man-clothes brought, and, in one way or another, he would persuade David to don them. It could be worked, the calmer Anthony assured himself, and then—

"Well, if you're inclined that way, there's nothing like keeping in shape for it," Mr. Boller was saying as he fumbled at the knot of his bathrobe. "I'll show you my back muscles and then show you how——"

"Johnson!" Anthony exploded.

"Well, what in the name of common sense is the matter with you?" Mr. Boller cried.

"I—that is to say, David—your confounded back muscles don't interest him, Johnson. Not one particle! Do they, David?"

"Not a bit!" David said faintly from the corner toward which he was backing.

"So let this physical-training rot rest!" cried the master of the apartment. "Go and dress and——"

"My dear fellow," Johnson Boller broke in mildly, "you are, so far as physical training goes, a nice old lady. But for Heaven's sake, if you're going to keep this boy, don't try to bring him up along similar lines. Go look over your bean-pole anatomy, and you'll need no further argument. This kid is young and supple, and fit to be whacked into a real man and—say, get out of here for fifteen minutes, Anthony, will you?"

"Why?"

"I'm going to strip this youngster and look him over, and then start him on the right track," Mr. Boller said with an unconscious and affectionate glance at his fist.

"Mr. Fry!" gasped David.

"Well, has this mollycoddle stuff in the air infected you, too?" Johnson Boller asked tartly. "Don't you want to be a man?"

"No!"

Johnson Boller laughed scornfully.

"Anthony, I think your presence is a bad influence," he said. "Will you please get out of here? Shed that bathrobe, kid, and let's see if there's anything to you but pulp!"

"No!" said David.

"Well, I say yes, and I say it for your own good!" Johnson Boller said firmly as he advanced. "I'm going to make a man of you!"

"You can't!" said David thinly.

"I can, boy! Believe me, I can!" Mr. Boller smiled. "Get out of that robe!"

He was advancing. Ten seconds more and he would lay violent hands on David, and Anthony Fry, with a wrench that racked his very soul, hurled back every emotion and contrived a really quiet smile. More, even; when he spoke it was in the tone of one merely amused and slightly tried in patience.

"You mean well, old chap," he said, laying a firm hand on Johnson Boller's arm, "but you're a crank on this gymnastic business. Don't be absurd, please—you're fairly frightening the boy. Later on, perhaps, when he is more accustomed to you and the surroundings, and all that sort of thing, you may take him in hand. Just now it is well past seven o'clock, and I'm hungry. Come to your senses and get dressed, Johnson, if only as a favor."

His eye was firm and steady; and having faced it for a moment, Johnson Boller shrugged his shoulders again. And yet he had not inflicted even one bruise on David, but pressing the matter now was likely to do no more than excite Anthony, and there was still time.

As head of his particular woolen concern, Johnson Boller could well spend the whole morning away from the office, so that it gained him the chance of hammering the boy to a jelly and ousting him from Johnson Boller's temporary home. Mr. Boller, therefore, sighed a little in disappointment as he said:

"If you insist. I'd rather put the kid through his first paces naked, of course, because then one——"

"Yes, some other time, doubtless," Anthony said hastily. "Get along now, Johnson and dress."

They were alone again, Anthony and David.

David's color was decidedly higher, and his eyes burned with a mixture of fright and indignation, while the bathrobe was clutched defensively about his throat. Anthony himself had lost his pallor, and on his high, thoughtful forehead a glistening glaze had come into being. He dabbed it away with his handkerchief and glanced fearfully toward the door.

"This is—er—most embarrassing!" he breathed.

"It is for me!" said the apparent David. "What's the matter with that man?"

"He has his own ideas about most things," Anthony said with a shudder. "However, he is out of the way now and—er—the next thing is to get you out, also."

"Well?"

"I am sorry, Miss Mary, truly sorry if it displeases you," Anthony went on carefully; "but there is really only one way for you to leave quite safely. This house, you see, is rather different from other houses. It would be possible to send for your—ah—proper clothing and have you leave as the doubtless prepossessing young woman that you are; but to do that you would have to pass through the office downstairs, and the elevator men would know that you came from this apartment."

"Ah?" said Mary, without expression.

"And inasmuch as every one here knows that I'm not married, and that I have no female relatives or even friends of your age, the—ah—very painful inference——"

"I see," said Mary, as he paused and flushed. "Go on."

She was not exactly helpful, sitting there and staring at Anthony with her great, deep-blue eyes. They were very beautiful eyes, doubtless, but they caused Anthony's mind to stagger as he labored on.

"There are the back stairs, of course, but to pass them it would be necessary to meet servants and employees of the house in half a dozen places; I believe there is even a gate-keeper of some sort below and—oh, the back stairs would not be at all possible!" said Anthony as he pushed the button for Wilkins. "I deplore the necessity of sending you out as you came, Miss Mary, but—er—Wilkins! Mr. Prentiss's clothes, if you please."

"What of them, sir?" Wilkins asked blankly.

"Bring them here."

"But I can't do that, Mr. Fry."

"Why not?" Anthony asked crisply.

"You told me to dispose of them last night, sir. I've thrown them out!"

Anthony caught his breath.

"Where have you thrown them?"

"Out with the other refuse of the day, sir—on the dumbwaiter."

"Then—well, never mind. That is all, Wilkins," said Anthony Fry, his voice thickening somewhat.

The invaluable one retired, with a last disapproving glance at the frowsy David, and Anthony's forehead wrinkled. David, the while, sat hunched on the bed and seemed altogether unaffected by the disaster.

"Well, you'll have to make the best of some of my wardrobe, I fear," the master of the apartment smiled.

"Yours?" Mary cried.

"They will be a trifle large, but you'll have to hitch them up in spots and in in other spots and make the best of it," Anthony pursued firmly. "It's too bad, of course, but it is unavoidable. Those togs of yours were decidedly shabby and I had meant, while supposing you to be a boy, that to-day we'd have some shopping done for you. Just a moment, please."

He left the room with a nervous stride altogether unlike his usual dignified glide. He turned, wildly almost, into the nearest closet in the corridor and switched on the light. There was the dark gray suit, which was too loose even for Anthony, and the dark brown suit, which happened to be too long for him; but the old blue suit—ah, that was the one!

Very earnestly, Anthony tried to assure himself that it had been both far too tight and far too short in every detail, at its last wearing; almost pathetically he sought to tell himself that David in the old blue suit would look quite like a young man wearing his own clothes—and with the old blue suit over his arm and a pair of shoes in the other hand, he tip-toed back to David.

"This is the next best thing to the clothes you wore, and I'm sure you'll find them quite all right," said he.

"Me get into those?" Mary murmured with the same strange apathy.

"Most certainly, and I've thought out the rest of it—there while I was locating this suit," Anthony pursued, with what was meant for a reassuring smile and making his jerky way to the little desk in the corner of the guest chamber. "I shall give you a note, David, addressed to a mythical person and unsealed."

"What for?"

"So that, on the remote chance of any one in this house questioning your presence, you can show that you're merely delivering a grip—your own—for me!" smiled Fry, as he scribbled. "Rather clever, that, eh?"

"Horribly clever!" Mary said enigmatically.

Two long minutes the pen scratched on, while Mary watched his back with the same inscrutable, almost unwinking stare. Then Anthony turned with a smile.

"This is to Mr. J. Thurston Phillips at the Astor Hotel," said he. "If I were you, I'd carry it rather conspicuously; it's quite possible that the clerk downstairs may want to know who you are. And, also if I were you, I'd explain that you're the son of an old friend of mine and a stranger in the city and that I put you up overnight—something like that. You understand?"

"I hear you say it," said Mary.

Anthony's countenance darkened a little as he rose.

"Then please pay strict attention to what I say!" he said. "I am doing my best to undo an absurd piece of business. I'm quite ready to admit that it is just that, but the blame isn't quite all my own. You should have told me the truth. Now, when you're dressed and ready—simply leave! Just walk down the corridor to the door, please, open it and go. There's no need of risking another inspection by Mr. Boller; you look decidedly less like a boy in daylight, believe me. Is everything clear?"

"I suppose it is," sighed Mary, with a significant glance at the door.

Anthony allowed himself a single sigh of relief.

"This, then, is our parting," he said, with a faint, Kindly smile. "I ask your pardon and the best thing I can wish you is a safe return home. Good-by."

"Au revoir," Mary said, with another glance at the door.

She seemed to have accepted the situation, blue suit and all; she was a sensible little thing, Anthony reflected almost comfortably, as he hurried back to his own room and his bath.

And now he would rush through the dressing process himself, as he had never rushed before, and by some means he would manage to keep Johnson Boller in his own room and out of sight of the corridor, until the telltale closing of the door assured him that one of his life's most painful episodes was over.

It had not been entirely without humor. Later on—much later on—Anthony assured himself that he would have many a good laugh in private over the youth upon whom he had tried to thrust opportunity—laughs that would be the richer and more enjoyable because he alone possessed the key to the joke. That would be after the shock had passed, of course; enough for the present to sigh again and again and think gloriously that each second brought David that much nearer to leaving.

Yet David had not departed, even when Anthony had given the last twitch to his morning coat and the last dab to his thin, rather prim hair. He listened, as he entered the living-room, and then risked a quiet trip across and looked down the corridor; David's door was closed tightly and—yes, even though it caused Anthony's hair to rise and his cheek to flush angrily, David was singing a faint little snatch of song in a perfectly indubitable soprano!

The little fool should have had more sense; Anthony listened, started down to halt the song and turned back as quickly, to head for Johnson Boller's room and engage that citizen in conversation, for that was the important thing just now. He turned the knob and would have entered rather breezily, but that Johnson Boller, fully groomed and ready for the day, walked out suddenly and resistlessly and looked around with:

"Where's the kid?"

"Er—dressing," said Anthony.

"Where's breakfast?" Mr. Boller pursued.

Inspiration came swiftly to Anthony.

"I breakfast in here as a rule," said he, "but—just this morning, you know—I thought we might go below. It's not so quiet down there and there's more to see, Johnson, and——"

Johnson Boller sprawled comfortably in a chair near the corridor and grinned.

"Nix!" said he, with a shake of the head. "We'll eat right here; I'm all done with that noisy stuff, Anthony, and this is more homelike. And then, another thing," he added more seriously, "I want to cross-examine that little shaver in private, as it were. This idea of settling him in the house without knowing anything about him is downright crazy. I want to ask him about that French doll and——."

He stopped. The window at the end of the corridor was open and the fresh morning breeze was blowing lightly past him. Also, he sniffed.

"Who's using perfume around here?" asked Johnson Boller.

"What?"

"Strong—rank!" said Anthony's guest. "Don't you smell it?"

"I smell nothing," Anthony said, as an expensive pungence tickled his nostrils suddenly, "but I'll see——"

He started for the corridor and stopped short. David had left his room and was coming down—and still, it did not sound like David! David, in Anthony's shoes, six or seven sizes too large, should have been thumping clumsily; these footsteps were firm little pats, with the sharp rap of a heel once or twice on the polished floor beside the runner. More still, with no regard at all for caution, David, using his soprano voice, was humming the same little tune.

And just as pure premonition had sent Anthony's skin to crawling, just as his scalp was prickling and his eyes narrowing angrily, David was with them.

By way of raiment, David, the grip emptied, wore the daintiest tailored walking-gown, short of skirt and displaying silken stockings and patent leathers, with high, slender French heels. David's slim, round, girl-throat suggested the faintest powdering; David's abundant hair was dressed bewitchingly, with little reddish-blond curls straying down about the temples—and had one spent a morning on Fifth Avenue it would really have been rather difficult to find a more thoroughly attractive or better gowned girl than David!

Yet, in spite of her charms, Johnson Boller, who had bounced instinctively from his chair, could do no more than stare at David with the general expression of a fish new-snatched from water. Second after second he gaped before his thick:

"Who's that?"

"That's David!" Anthony said weakly.

"The—the boy was a girl?"

"It would seem so."

"Then——" Johnson Boller stopped, teeth shutting suddenly. He stared at the young woman and he stared at Anthony Fry, who smiled faintly and hopelessly. His face grew red and then purple and then black.

"Hah!" he cried savagely. "I've got it! I've got it, you—you——"

"Hey?" said Anthony.

"I see it now!" Mr. Boller vociferated surprisingly. "You framed this thing up on me!"

Scorned

Anthony's brain, accustomed to the most precise and unexciting of routines, was tired—not nearly so tired as it was destined to become, yet too tired to grasp at once the significance of that flaming countenance. He could no more than stand limply and look at Johnson Boller, as that gentleman, ignoring Mary altogether, strode down upon him with clenched fists.

"You did it, but you'll never get away with it!" he cried.

"Johnson——"

"Never in the world! I've got Wilkins as a witness and——"

"Witness for what?"

Johnson Boller, albeit he trembled with fury, controlled himself.

"Don't try that baby-stare stuff on me, Fry," he said. "I understand now. Last night I thought you were off on one of your eccentric spells, but you were crazy like a fox, you were! But don't think for one minute that Beatrice is fool enough to drop into such a trap!"

Anthony himself did a little controlling.

"What are you talking about?" he cried.

"The thing you've tried to put over, to get me away from Beatrice!" Johnson Boller thundered. "That's enough! Don't deny it! I know you don't approve of matrimony; I know you never wanted me to get married; I know that we haven't traveled around as much this last six months as we did in the twenty years before it—and I suppose you've been lonely, because nobody else in the world would stand for you. But by Heaven, Anthony, I never thought you'd try to break up my family by——"

"Try to do what?"

Johnson Boller dashed the sweat of fury from his eyes.

"I come to stay with you, when Beatrice goes," he said tremblingly. "And although there's no woman in this flat ordinarily, a woman's here last night——"

"Stop there!" Anthony Fry cried savagely. "Do you mean that I brought this woman here deliberately? Do you mean that I knew?"

"Knew!" Johnson Boller jeered.

"Then I tell you that you're an infernal ass, sir, and I decline to defend myself!" Anthony snarled fiercely. "You! You lovesick fool and your crazy imagination! You're too much in love to reason, but—what about me?"

"Well, what about you?" Johnson Boller sneered.

"I," said Anthony, "have borne the reputation of a decent man! No women have ever been in this apartment before, save one or two relatives! No woman of any description has ever passed the night here before. And yet now, when this infernal thing has happened, your poor addled wits—oh, bah! Bah, sir!"

"Don't bah at me!" Mr. Boller said dangerously, although not quite so dangerously, because Anthony's emotion had carried its own conviction.

Then, for a little, these two old friends stood and trembled and glared at each other, Johnson Boller contemplating a swift and terrible uppercut to Anthony's lean jaw, which should stretch him unconscious perhaps for hours—Anthony meanwhile wondering superheatedly whether, once his long fingers had wound about Johnson Boller's plump throat, he could hold on until wretched life was extinct.

They were angry, terribly angry and almost for the first time in their lives, and had they stood and glared for another fifteen seconds it is possible that one or the other might have ended his days in Sing Sing's electric chair—but as it happened Mary's voice came upon the vibrating, pregnant air, clear and cool and full of warranted acerbity.

"While all this talk of reputations is going on," said Mary, "what about mine?"

Anthony Fry's tension snapped. Johnson Boller, it seemed, was of no mind to relinquish his rare fury so easily, for he stood with his fists clenched and trembled a little even now and his color was no lighter than scarlet; but Anthony turned and bowed almost humbly.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Mary," he said bitterly.

"Miss Mary!" echoed Boller. "You know her, hey?"

"She told me to call her Mary," Anthony said stiffly.

"When? When you hired her for this job?" Johnson Boller persisted, although quite weakly.

"When I discovered—not half an hour back—that she was—er—what she is," Anthony said coldly. "And let that be an end to your comments, please. You saw me meet this young woman for the first time, as you will know when you recover your senses. You know for what purpose and under what misapprehension I brought her to this apartment. Don't make a bad matter worse by injecting your personal brand of asininity."

He turned his back on Johnson Boller and walked away.

Johnson Boller, however, turned his whole attention to Mary, perched on the arm of a chair, distressed enough but self-contained, pretty as a picture. And slowly reason climbed upon her throne again in Johnson Boller's brain, possessed though it was by Beatrice, loveliest of wives.

He smiled suddenly, because Beatrice in far-off Montreal would never know; he even grinned after a few seconds; and then, the enormity of the joke on Anthony Fry overcoming him suddenly, Johnson Boller opened his mouth and laughed—not a mere, decent expression of mirth, but a roar which suggested a wild bull in acute agony.

A Niagara of sound left Johnson Boller and ended in a deep, happy wheeze—and the torrent broke loose again and he hugged his fat sides and rocked and roared again, until Wilkins, genuinely startled, entered the living-room, and stopped, more genuinely startled, and regarded the altered David with mouth wide open.

"God bless my soul!" Wilkins said frankly. "What——"

"Wilkins!" Anthony snapped.

"I—I beg pardon, sir!" the faithful one choked. "The young lady——"

"The young lady," said his master, and his voice had the edge of a razor blade, "is—here by accident, Wilkins. She came here last night, under a misapprehension, while masquerading as a boy. You will forget immediately that I have told you this."

"Very good, sir," Wilkins said; and being one of those rare, model creatures we read about but rarely meet, he straightened up and forced his tone back to the matter-of-fact mumble. "As to breakfast, sir?"

Anthony glanced at Mary.

"Yes, I'm quite human," she said crisply. "I eat breakfast."

"For three, Wilkins," said Anthony.

And now, with Wilkins moving incessantly in and out, a peculiar, almost silent constraint came upon them. Anthony, at the window gazed at the distant street and tried his best to think; there was just one awful thought that obtruded itself upon his mind and, although he thrust it away again and again, the thought came back and mocked at him. Mentally, he lashed at it—yet ever and anon it returned and mocked a little more and made impish faces at him.

Johnson Boller, recovering in a long, delighted series of wheezes, merely ambled to a corner and gazed at Mary, who affected to read unconcernedly. She was certainly pretty and watching a pretty girl had never wearied Mr. Boller; but far beyond her prettiness was the terrific joke on old Anthony.

This was Anthony who, year in and year out, avoided even social gatherings where women predominated. This was Anthony, who abominated the whole sex and could be goaded into actual rage by repeated suggestions that one of his wealth and standing should marry! This was Anthony, who had threatened to leave the Lasande that day, long ago, when the pretty little woman canvasser had flitted past the office and made her way to this very living-room.

Well, it was one on Anthony! Nay, it was a million on Anthony! From this day forth, Johnson Boller reflected in the depths of his perverted, amusement-loving mind, he had such a grip on Anthony Fry that, should he order that distinguished citizen to walk down Fifth Avenue with a lump of sugar on his nose, he would have no choice but obedience.

And how Anthony would writhe and how that austere countenance could be colored with the blush of helpless anger! A quantity of the savage, merciless little boy had survived in Johnson Boller and this wait for breakfast was really one of the happiest periods of his life.

Wilkins, quite himself again, worked deftly. The service elevator from the pantry, one of the Lasande's features, whined softly to the Fry apartment and stopped, and presently, silently, Anthony motioned them to the table.

Johnson Boller came shaking pleasantly, albeit with countenance grave enough. Mary came daintily and thoughtfully. But Anthony Fry came as one going to his doom—because the inescapable thought had fastened in his brain and every new, terrible second held less hope than had the one before.

Coffee was poured then and food served and Wilkins moved out.

"Is he gone now?" Mary asked quietly.

"Yes," sighed Anthony.

"Then, without wasting any more time, wouldn't it be as well to decide just what we are going to do?"

Anthony sighed bitterly.

"Now that you have elected to change into a very charming young woman, I have no idea of what we're going to do, if you mean by way of getting you out unnoticed."

Mary's head went a little higher.

"That's exactly what I mean, of course," said she. "As for my getting into my own clothes, what else was there to do? I couldn't wear those ridiculous things you gave me; nothing in the world could have tempted me to go on the street in them, even if I could have worn them. I telephoned for Felice and had her bring my things because I—I wanted to feel sane again, I think, and if she hadn't made such a wretched disturbance, poor child, I'd have been into them and out of here long ago."

"And I," escaped Anthony, "should have had to explain."

"You're very precious of that good name of yours, aren't you?" Mary asked tartly.

"I have always been," said Anthony.

And then, all unaware that Mary's pretty lips had compressed and that her eyes were flashing opinions which caused Johnson Boller fairly to quake with glee, Anthony's head dropped lower and he stared at his untouched plate. The thought was there still—the awful, menacing thing, coming nearer each instant, growing stronger and stronger.

"It must be lovely to be such a thoroughly good and proper man," Mary said sweetly. "Couldn't you possibly forget yourself for a moment and tell me how you plan to get me out of here? Couldn't you spend just five minutes trying to think just what I'm going to tell my people?"

"Eh?" gasped Anthony.

"Oh, yes, I have people—a mother and a father and then some more," Mary informed him. "Nice people, almost as proper in their notions as you are."

Anthony merely stared at her numbly. Unconsciously, perhaps, she had driven the last, long nail into his coffin. Her people! Momentarily, he had forgotten that she might have people and might have to explain to them just where last night had been passed. But now that she mentioned a father, it seemed to Anthony that he could see a mighty man, a man of wrath and muscle and perhaps a man who could slay with one blow and—oh, there was no other way!

All his life, Anthony had shied from woman. All these last twenty-five years he had thanked his lucky stars that one of them had never snared him! He had been alone, to live as he pleased and act as he pleased and think as he pleased; married men do not do that, as witness Johnson Boller, ensnared by Beatrice, a decent enough young woman but his ruler.

Yes, up to the age of forty-five he had been alone and contented, year in and year out, indulging every little foible without a soul to question, going as he liked and coming as he liked.

But that was over now! That was over and done with, forever! Anthony Fry, with a tiny groan, looked up from his plate and faced Mary.

"Young woman," said he deeply, solemnly enough to cause Johnson Boller to stop quaking and take to staring, "I have avoided women all my life."

"Yes?" Mary said.

"I have done so," Anthony went on steadily, marching to the gallows as a brave man should, with never a falter once he was started, "because to my—possibly eccentric—mind, matrimony has no attractions. The bachelor state, I fondly imagined, was to be my chosen state until death."

Mary looked him over rather too critically, examining the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and considering the extreme width of his part.

"That was a good enough idea," she said heartily. "What has it to do with getting me out of here?"

"It has a great deal to do with it, as you will see," Anthony said, with a great, quivering sigh. "For the fact of your presence I alone will take the blame."

"Thanks," said Mary.

"And since the blame is mine, I will make what amends I can," Anthony Fry concluded, and nerved though he was, his voice broke. "I will consent to marry you!"

"Huh?" cried John Boller.

Mary, for the moment, said nothing at all. The intake of her breath was audible, though, and her color rose—not in embarrassment, plainly in anger. Mary's eyes snapped, too, and she leaned a little toward him questioningly, as if incredulous of her own hearing.

"You'll do what?" said Mary.

"I will consent to marry you!" Anthony repeated, and it seemed to him that his voice was coming hollowly and from a great distance, presumably from the caverns of a matrimony-infested Hades. "It will be simple—painfully simple. The ceremony can be performed this morning and in New Jersey. We will leave at once and without notifying either your friends or mine, on an extended wedding tour—I should say of six months' duration at the least," Anthony went on brokenly, while Johnson Boller gazed at him in pure fascination. "In a week or so we can write everywhere, giving the impression that it has been an elopement, the ceremony having been performed yesterday. Then——"

"Stop!" Mary cried. "Stop that—that planning!"

"Eh?"

The girl was sitting bolt upright, eyes snapping, and Anthony regarded her in astonishment. Also, she thumped the table with her small clenched fist as she looked straight at him and gasped:

"Why, I—I wouldn't marry you if you were ten times the last man in the world!"

"But——"

"No!" Mary said quite wildly.

"There is not another thing to do," Anthony informed her, with a forlorn, heart-broken smile. "Your good name——"

"You'll find some other way of preserving my good name!" Mary said warmly. "I'm engaged now to the very finest man in the whole world!"

"You're engaged!" Anthony cried intelligently.

"Yes, and he's a sane man, too, and he doesn't cry over the prospect of marrying me!" the young woman hurtled on. "He's a real man, and if he ever finds out that you made me stay here all last night, he'll ignore the circumstances and shoot you just as sure as you're sitting there!"

She stopped, breathing hard, and shook her head at Anthony Fry, so that the red-gold curls tumbled about quite riotously. Anthony, blinking, said nothing at all, but his friend Johnson Boller took to muttering, rather like a perturbed hen.

As a matter of fact, Boller was downright fond of Anthony, and the prospect of having him slain in cold blood was very distressing. Turning helpful for the first time, Johnson Boller was on the point of trying to think up ways and means of getting Mary out—but Mary herself was speaking again.

"And don't think that that ridiculous proposal lifts any responsibility from your shoulders, either!" she said, energetically. "It doesn't!"

"I had not meant to imply that it did," Anthony said dully.

"You got me here and you've kept me here," said Mary, and it was plain that her even temper had not yet returned. "You'll have to devise the way to get me out of here and what to say when I do get home."

"Yes," murmured Anthony.

"And if it will help any in rousing you out of that apathetic state," the girl concluded, "you may as well know that there isn't the slightest doubt in the world that the police have a general alarm for me long before this!"

"Wow!" said Johnson Boller.

"I am—trying to think!" Anthony said with difficulty.

So far as posture went, he looked it. His lean hands were gripping the edges of the table nervously, and his head was bent again; he scowled and then shook his head as if to dispel the scowl. He cleared his throat repeatedly; he glanced at Johnson Boller, whose expression was divided between irrepressible amusement and some concern—and he cleared his throat once more and stared his fried egg fixedly in its lone eye.

Thus he was sitting after five silent minutes, which both Mary and Boller had improved gastronomically, when Wilkins entered.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Fry," said he. "A gentleman to see you."

"I can't see him," Anthony said quickly.

Wilkins smiled.

"But this gentleman's on his way up now, sir," he said. "He's one of your friends, and the office allowed him to come up and merely 'phoned that he was coming. It is Mr. Robert Vining, sir!"

Anthony shook his head.

"Well, I cannot see even Mr. Vining this morning," he said. "Say, when he comes to the door, that—good gracious!"

This last being quite justified, because Mary, with one small shriek, had bounded from her chair like a frightened fawn! The chair, toppling over, bumped about the floor for a bit until Wilkins caught it, and Mary, both hands clutched upon her bosom, stood poised for a full second, eyes round and horrified, lips parted.

Then, as the lightning flashes, Mary had turned, and it seemed that she floated through the air to the corridor and into the corridor and down the corridor. In rather less than another second the door of the recent David's chamber closed with a slam.

At the door the buzzer was buzzing.

"Will you see him, sir?" asked Wilkins.

"What? Yes," said Anthony. "Take away that chair and that extra plate before you open the door."

Johnson Boller stood with lips pursed gravely until Wilkins was gone.

"Are you going to let him—er—know?"

"Hardly," said Anthony. "Although—I don't know. Bob's level-headed and resourceful and reliable. Do you suppose it would be possible to—ask his aid?"

"Think of the girl!" said Johnson Boller. "Think what——"

He stopped, for Mr. Robert Vining was with them—a tall, broad-shouldered, person of a year or so past thirty, bright and steady of eye, and with the flush of health upon his carefully shaven cheek. He entered like the muscular paragon he was, lithely and easily as a tiger; and it seemed to Anthony that, if he did nothing else, fifteen minutes of his conversation might serve to restore normal thought.

Robert Vining was all of the pleasant every day that had been before their visit to the fight, and the very sight of him was stimulating.

So he clasped Vining's hand and said heartily:

"Good morning, Bob! You've breakfasted?"

"Long since," grinned young Mr. Vining. "I—who uses perfume around here?"

"No one," Anthony said, paling slightly. "Possibly——"

Vining's eyes twinkled.

"Guess I imagined it," he said. "There's a reason! Well, it's early, but I thought I'd drop in for a moment in passing and see what you thought of the alleged battle last night. Hello, Johnson! Heard you were here. Did you go, too?"

"Yep," said Johnson Boller, gazing at his old friend and wondering whether Anthony thought he was looking and acting like himself.

"It was one grand lemon, Anthony, was it not?" asked Mr. Vining, sprawling comfortably for a stay and pinching the end of his cigarette.

Anthony himself settled down in his pet chair for a normal quarter-hour.

"It was all of that," he agreed almost cheerfully. "I've seen the so-called Kid in pretty bad form before; he was a howling outrage when he fought Morr two years ago, but last night——"

His voiced trailed away oddly and for cause. Wilkins, coming from nowhere in particular, was standing in the corridor. He looked straight at his master and with great meaning, and having caught his attention he rolled his eyes toward David's room and nodded slightly. Again he looked at Anthony, again he nodded; and Anthony rose abruptly.

"You—excuse me for a moment, Bob?" he asked, in the same low, husky voice that had afflicted him before this morning. "Wilkins—ah—Wilkins wishes——"

He hurried across the room and followed Wilkins as he backed into the shadows of the corridor.

"She wishes to see you, sir," the invaluable one whispered. "She rang for me and she says it's urgent."

"But——"

"I'd go at once, sir!" Wilkins breathed fervently. "I really would, Mr. Fry. She seems in a bit of a temper, if I may say so."

Anthony passed him without further comment or protest, and hastened to David's door. Apprehension filled him suddenly, not so much because there was any reason for apprehension as because he was nervous. Anger went up, too, that the wretched girl should have upset the first calm and peaceful moment of the morning, so that it is quite possible that Anthony failed to smile as he entered the chamber.

For that matter, Mary was not smiling either. She stood at the foot of the bed, clinging to it, and her bosom heaved and her eyes bored into Anthony Fry.

"That—that man!" she whispered quite dramatically.

"He is merely an old friend of mine, Miss Mary," Anthony said impatiently. "I have no idea of mentioning your existence, far less of——"

"Did your man say Robert Vining?"

"Of course."

"Is that the Robert Vining of Vining & Dale, lawyers, in Wall Street?" Mary cried softly.

"Of course," said Anthony. "It isn't possible that you know him?"

"Know him?" Mary echoed wildly. "That's the man I'm going to marry!"

Crime?

Entering, the Owner of Fry's Imperial Liniment had been justifiably annoyed. Twenty seconds after entering, Mary's obvious excitement had caused the annoyance to give place to not very interested wonder; but now Mary had claimed all his attention and the annoyance was all gone. Indeed, as a quantity to claim one's whole attention Mary had been a success from the very beginning.

Anthony Fry, then, scowled flitting incredulity at her; and the absurdity of being incredulous of one who panted and shook as did Mary becoming at once apparent, Anthony paled somewhat.

"I cannot—believe that such an astonishing coincidence——" he began.

"What you believe or don't believe doesn't interest me!" Mary said swiftly. "Did I hear him talking about that wretched fight last night?"

"Er—yes."

"He was there?"

"Of course."

"Well, it's the same Robert Vining!" Mary whispered. "Get him out of here!"

"But——"

"Don't argue about it! Get him out of here!" said Mary. "Do you suppose I want him to come wandering down this way and find me?"

"He will not do that, because——"

"How do you know whether he will or not?" Mary demanded hotly. "Why did he have to come here? It's all his fault—the whole thing's his fault! If he hadn't refused to take me to that beastly old fight and made such a time about it, I'd never have made up my mind to go, anyway!"

"So that's what happened?" Anthony muttered.

"That is what happened. Now get him out of here!" Mary directed. "And do it quickly!"

After all, the unlucky little coincidence was not nearly so serious as she seemed to think. Anthony smiled quite calmly.

"He will not stay very long," said he, "and when he is ready to go I will not detain him, of course. But I can't very well go in and order him out, you know."

Mary, bosom heaving still, looked straight at him with burning eyes.

"Mr. Fry," she said solemnly, "I've always lived too much out doors and boxed and shot and paddled and ridden too much to be given to hysterics. The only time I ever had hysterics was the night they thought dad had been killed—but that night, once I started, the neighbors came out on the street two blocks away to see what was the matter!"

"I don't understand?"

"You will," Mary said, controlling herself with visible difficulty. "You've made me stand enough since last night, and there are some things I cannot—some things I will not even try to stand! I tell you honestly that if Bob isn't out of this flat in two minutes, I'm going into a fit of hysterics that will have the reserves piling into this sanctified hotel just as surely as the sun is shining!"

"Miss Mary——" faltered Anthony Fry.

Mary's hands clenched in the most peculiar manner.

"Hadn't you better make the best of those two minutes?" she asked breathlessly.

His quiet smile was gone now; lines appeared in Anthony's countenance as he looked at her—and then, wasting no further time in aimless comment, he turned and tottered into the corridor. Mary meant just what she said.

Robert Vining and Johnson Boller were sprawling in the deep chairs, opposite one another, smoking comfortably and giving every evidence of having settled down for a considerable session. Young Mr. Vining grinned through the smoke at his older friend.

"Sit down, Anthony," said he. "We're just going over the thing round by round, to see if either of us can remember a worse fight for the money. We're working on round two, just now."

Anthony smiled strangely and laid a dramatic hand upon his brow.

"I will not join the discussion," he said.

"Eh? What's the matter?" Robert asked, sitting up.

"Headache! One of the—er—headaches that make my life a burden!" Anthony groaned.

"I never knew you had 'em," young Vining said with a mystified smile.

"Neither did I," Johnson Boller contributed healthfully.

"Did you have it before you talked to Wilkins, there?" pursued Robert, who owned a really keen mind.

"Er—it was just coming on."

"No bad news, old chap?" Vining said, crossing his legs the other way.

Anthony shook his head and smiled again, indicating suffering that was not all simulated.

"No, just the—er—headache," he said. "Comes on suddenly, you know, and settled in the back of my head and neck. There is only one thing that can be done for it and that is a steady massage. Perhaps you'd do that for me, Johnson?"

"Sure," said Johnson Boller, whose eyes shot two questions to the second. "Sit down and we can go on talking while I rub."

"Well, I have to lie down for this," Anthony explained. "On the bed, you know, and it's—well, it is likely to take an hour or more. You wouldn't care to wait around, Bob?"

Mr. Vining gazed steadily at him. No refined intuition was necessary to tell Anthony that it was not his morning for tactful dismissals. This effort, evidently, had carried the delicate touch of a blow from a baseball bat, for Robert, flushing slightly, spoke with unpleasant crispness:

"No, I couldn't wait, I'm sure. And while I don't understand it, of course, I'm sure I'm sorry to have intruded. Good-by."

"You—haven't intruded," Anthony cried. "Only——"

"Well, don't bother explaining," said young Mr. Vining. "I beg your pardon for breaking in and—good morning."

Wherewith he stalked out to the corridor, removed his hat from the rack without the assistance of Wilkins and, opening the door himself, closed it after him with a careful lack of force that was more expressive than any slam.

"Gone off mad!" Johnson Boller said.

"I can't help it!" Anthony said miserably.

"Nice chap, too! Too bad to offend him that way," Mr. Boller pursued meditatively. "Friends are few and far between in this sad old world, Anthony, and a queer dick like you—rich or poor—has trouble hanging on to the few he makes. Oh, I don't mean to be nasty, you know; I'm just telling you. Well, come and have your head rubbed."

Anthony collapsed into his chair.

"There's nothing wrong with my head," he said. "That was the first lie I could think of, Johnson, to get him out of here. He had to go!"

"Why?"

"She said so," Anthony informed him, with a ghastly little smile. "She's engaged to him!"

"To Bob Vining?"

"Yes!"

Johnson Boller whistled softly and, elevating his eyebrows, thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and looked at Anthony with new commiseration.

"Too bad, that!" said he. "Too bad for you that it should have been a chap of the Vining type."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, sooner or later, he may find out. The chances are that he will find out just what you've done to that girl," Boller went on contemplatively. "It's just about as she says, too. If he was a fool, you could fool him, one way or another. Or if he was a little snide, Anthony, you could talk him off or bribe him off—but it'll never be like that with Bob. He'll never take any account of the circumstances; he'll just snatch out the gun and let fly!"

"Rot!" Anthony said thinly.

Johnson Boller's face grew grave and more grave. He sighed and looked over Anthony's head for a little and then, reaching a decision, he looked at him suddenly.

"Old chap," he said kindly.

"Well?"

"I don't want to worry you, but perhaps it is better for you to know—now. And I wish you wouldn't mention it, because Bob told me once, two years ago, and showed it to me in a sort of burst of confidence."

"Showed you what?"

"Down at the base of his thumb, Bob Vining's got the murderer's cross!" Johnson Boller said huskily.

"Nonsense!" Anthony said sharply.

"It's a fact! The little mark is there, clear as if it had been drawn in with a knife!" said Mr. Boller. "And for another fact—I don't know whether you know this or not, but virtually every murderer who has been executed in the last twenty years in this State, has shown that cross in some form and——"

He stayed the pleasant flow abruptly. From the direction of David's doorway a rustle was coming, very softly and cautiously, yet quite distinctly. It paused in the corridor while Mary drew aside a corner of the curtain and looked in—and then Mary was with them and asking:

"Is he gone?"

"Yes," Anthony sighed.

"Was he excited while he was here?"

"Not at all, apparently."

"Then he doesn't know yet that I've disappeared," Mary said calmly, returning to her place at the cleared table. "Isn't he a darling?"

"He is—a very charming fellow," Anthony muttered, thinking of the murderer's cross.

"Did your man take my coffee away?" Mary pursued.

Silently, Anthony rang for his servitor. Silently, Wilkins brought back pot and cup and the little plate of toast; and Mary, a very pleasing little figure indeed, sipped and munched and asked:

"Well, have you determined how I'm to leave?"

Anthony merely stared moodily at her at first. Johnson Boller, though, found his sense of humor overcoming him again. He gazed at Anthony, hair rumpled, eyes fogged with anxiety such as he rarely knew, and presently Johnson Boller was vibrating again. One merry little wheeze escaped and earned a glare from Anthony, another followed it—and after that Johnson Boller sat back and haw-hawed frankly until Anthony spoke.

"So far, I have been thinking of the ways in which you cannot leave," he admitted tartly. "If you'd consent to try my clothes and——"

"Umum," said Mary, shaking her head. "No, no!"

"Then frankly, I don't know what to suggest," said the master of the apartment. "You are not invisible. You cannot walk through the office without being seen, Miss Mary—and once you have done that be sure that your face will be registered in the memory of the employees. You have no idea of moving from New York, I take it?"

"Hardly."

"Then since you will be about town for years, may I point out that each man who sees you will remember, also for years, that you left one of these apartments and——"

He paused, partly in distress and partly because it seemed to him that Wilkins was whispering to somebody. He sat up then, because Wilkins was talking and there was another voice he could not at first place. He had heard it before, many times, and it was very calm, very clear, very determined; and now Wilkins' tone came distinctly and resignedly.

"Well, of course, if he's expecting you, sir——"

The door closed. Steps approached the living-room. And with Mary sitting at the table, coffee-cup in hand, furnishing just the homelike touch a bachelor apartment must normally lack, Hobart Hitchin was with them!

One glance settled the fact that the amateur detective had attained a high state of nervous tension. Behind his spectacles, the keen eyes flashed about like a pair of illuminated steel points; his face seemed tired, but the rest of him was as alive as a steel spring, and his right hand held a fat brief-case.

Had he been more intimately acquainted with Hobart Hitchin, Anthony Fry would have trembled. As it was, he felt merely keen annoyance—and then utter consternation, because Hitchin had stopped with a jerk and was looking straight at Mary.

"I—er—didn't know," he said.

Poor little Mary, be she who she might, was in a decidedly ticklish position, however perfectly her outward calm was preserved. Everything that was chivalrous in Anthony surged up and told him to protect her; and coming out of the nowhere at the very last second, merciful inspiration reached his brain and he stared so fixedly, so warningly at Johnson Boller that that gentleman's chronic quiver ceased.

"Only—ah—Mrs. Boller!" Anthony said quietly. "My dear Mrs. Boller—Mr. Hitchin, one of our neighbors here."

Johnson Boller himself started out of his chair, gripping its arms; and then, the general sense penetrating his cranium, dropped back with a puff. His mouth opened, as if to protest; his eye caught the eye of Anthony Fry. With a gasp and a flush, Mr. Johnson Boller subsided for the time, and Anthony was saying suavely:

"Mr. and Mrs. Boller were with me overnight, you know—decorators have captured their place and they were good enough to take the edge off my loneliness for a little."

"I never knew you minded it; I've heard you say you liked it," Hobart Hitchin smiled as he took Mary's hand and favored her with his drill-point stare. "But when you are alone again I'm quite sure that you'll know how lonely you are! My dear Mrs. Boller, I am honored!"

Mary, after one startled and one thankful glance at Anthony, dimpled charmingly. Mr. Hitchin dropped her hand and ceased his inspection, and immediately he turned more tensely solemn than upon his entrance.