Tangles; Tales of Some Droll Predicaments/Who Killed Cock Robin?
WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN
BESS WALLACE, going alone to visit her sister, Mrs. Ford, in the little college town of Brookfield, had been delayed in reaching the city by a wreck ahead of her train, and was obliged in consequence to take the twelve-twenty-five local out, instead of the earlier express she had hoped to catch.
It was a very hot night, the last in June, and she had been travelling since early that morning and was tired and sleepy. Therefore she went out to her train as soon as it was announced; and since a woman with a fretful, sticky, candy-munching child had been sitting behind her all the afternoon, she chose the back seat in the car, insuring herself against annoyance from that direction at least. Then, realizing that in no way could she hasten the departure of the train, she wearily propped her hand against her cheek and closed her eyes.
She could not even lean her head comfortably against the window-casing, for this was in the days of stiff, straight-brimmed sailor-hats. She also wore a high, stiff, turn-over collar and slim cravat, and her mannish coat of blue serge opened over a plain white shirt-waist.
She hoped Kate had received her telegram and would have some one at the station to meet her, and wondered whether Tom Mason would be there, deciding at once that he would not. He would surely present himself in the morning, however; and remembering this, she smiled drowsily, readjusted her elbow, and felt a little less tired.
A few people straggled into the car, hot and listless: a couple of Italian laborers, who chose a place near the middle of the coach and put their feet on the opposite cushion; a pleasant-looking young fellow, who dropped into the seat across from Bess and immediately fell asleep; and the soiled and bedraggled parents of two soiled and bedraggled but still vociferous small boys, whose hands were full of rockets and pin-wheels and whose pockets bulged with firecrackers, in preparation for the approaching Fourth of July. These also found seats near the middle of the car, whence the strident voices of the boys, as they displayed and gloated and quarrelled over their treasures, smote upon her tired ears.
Presently her attention was attracted by a particularly merry and mellow laugh just outside her window, and a jovial masculine voice said:
"The only trouble with you, Jim, is that you don't loosen up often enough. You'll wake up some fine morning and find yourself an old man if you don't look out."
"I am an old man, Frank," replied another voice. "By George! I forget that I ever was a boy except when I get out with you fellows of 'eighty-three and live over my one year in college."
"Oh, dry up!" exclaimed a third voice. "We're all boys yet. I defy anybody who's been with us the last two or three days to deny that—or that Jim Mason's the youngest of the lot," he added, whereat they all laughed.
At his mention of the name, Miss Wallace's eyes opened wide, and she was plainly startled. Tom Mason had told her much of a severe kinsman, whom he called Uncle James, who had reared his younger brother and himself from early boyhood, and who was grimly determined that they should take the education for which he had vainly hungered and achieve in their lives the success that he felt his had missed. She had once asked Tom why he never spoke of this relative as "Uncle Jim," and he had replied, with a dubious little shake of the head, "Uncle James isn't that sort." Could this Jim Mason be that Uncle James whose home was in Brookfield?
"By the way, how are your boys getting along?" asked the one called Frank. "Fine fellows, aren't they?"
"They would be if they weren't both damn fools," grimly returned Mason, all the genial quality gone from his tone.
"What's the matter with 'em?" asked one of his friends.
"Bob, the younger, is a brilliant, erratic, untetherable young comet, bending all his energies, just now, toward knocking every heavenly body clear out of space—oh, it isn't funny," he interrupted himself, as the others laughed. "And Tom, the elder, is steady enough, but he's suddenly developed an asinine streak that beats anything his brother ever thought of."
"What's that?"
"He wants to get married!" His tone intimated that beyond this, criminal folly could not go, and his friends chuckled gleefully; but the girl inside the car window sat erect, her lips a straight line and her gloved hands clenched. Once she glanced hastily about at the seats remaining vacant, and touched the handle of her suit-case. Then, as the voices continued, frankly audible, the impulse waned, and she remained tense and still.
"That won't hurt him, if the girl's all right," said one of the men.
"Humph! I've never seen the girl, and I don't want to. She's one of those silly, society butterflies, accustomed to more luxury in a month than Tom could afford to give her in a year—and of course she hasn't any sense. No girl of that sort has. I've no objection to Tom's marrying when he's of suitable age, but he's only twenty-seven—"
"What do you call a suitable age?" demanded Frank.
"Well—forty." The other men shouted with laughter. "That's all right, but you fellows know as well as I do that 'a young man married is a man that's marred,' and Tom's got too good stuff in him to fool with. I'm not going to stand for it at all."
"Look out, Jim," warned the third man. "You may be monkeying with a buzz-saw. Perhaps he's in love with her!"
Tsh! In love! I suppose he is in love with her! Anyhow, he's letting her make a fool of him, all right. He's home on his vacation now—he's an architect, in the offices of Grove and Kingdon, and doing mighty well—and this girl has somehow managed to get an invitation to visit somebody in Brookfield, and is likely to turn up at any time. I suppose she thinks she's going to land him this rime—and he's certainly floating around there with his mouth open, just waiting to swallow the bait—but I've a fly or two in reserve myself."
Bess drew a quick breath through set teeth and struck a tight little fist against the window-sill. She knew, and she found it incredible that James Mason should not know, that Tom had worked early and late, and had used all the influence he could summon, to arrange this vacation of his at the rime when she was to be in Brookfield. She had been visiting in the West, and it would be their first meeting in several months, as well as her first visit to the old town in which Tom had grown up and to which her sister had recently moved.
"Oh, I'll break it up," confidently continued Mason; "but it's the first rime I ever had any serious trouble with Tom, and it took me unawares. Why, when he told me he was going to ask this girl to marry him and I said I wouldn't stand for it, that boy defied me. Yes, sir, actually defied me!"
"Bully for him!" laughed Frank. "I wouldn't give a tinker's dam for a man who wouldn't defy anybody living for the woman he was in love with! And neither would you, you old clam! As for your comet, give him a big enough orbit, and hell be a credit to you. Give him room."
"I'll give him room—to work in!" retorted the other. "I've issued an ultimatum for him, too. One more escapade, and he comes out of college and goes to work in overalls, so quick it 'll make his head swim. If he's got so much energy that he can't control it, I'll find a vent for it! He's come near being expelled twice already."
"Oh, come, Jim!" chaffed the third man. "Remember your own youth! Remember the time we painted Prexy's cow green and hoisted her up to the roof of the chemical building?"
"That's right!" chuckled Frank. "That nearly put us all out of business! That was one of your scintillating ideas, Jim. And did you ever tell your comet about the time we held up the train with old Busby aboard?"
"You bet I never did! Nor Tom, either. But confound it, man, I was a Freshie! We were all Freshies then. Bob's past all that—or ought to be."
"Remember Bill Dewing? Brightest chap in our class? Remember what a perfect limb he was—oh, you weren't there! Well, he never got over being a comet. It took the whole class, during the Senior year, to keep him in order long enough to graduate; and look at him now! Probably the most brilliant political writer in this country."
"Right you are!" exclaimed the other man. "Give your comet room to swing in, Jim. Nobody ever gets over being a kid until he's dead. He may be unburied, but he's dead, all right. Look at yourself. You've been walled up for years in that academic mausoleum of a town up the road here, and even yet you're not defunct! You still wake up and raise—"
"Only once a year, boys! Only once a year!" protested Mason; and the others laughed.
"Well, then, make a night of it, for Heaven's sake! You've about three more drinks aboard now than you usually carry, and you're almost human! Come on back with us, and we'll give you three more, and then you'll begin to enjoy life again. Come on!"
"No, boys, not to-night. I'd like to, for I still feel like cutting everything loose, but I've got to be home early in the morning."
"Oh, you're a quitter!" gibed the other two, as the starting-bell rang. "Cinderella galloping home to the ashes at midnight! Come on! Dare you to! No? Good-by, then, until next year!"
The train moved, and Miss Wallace, erect and tense and vividly angry, waited for Mr. James Mason to come into her field of vision; but apparently he chose the car behind, for no one entered the one where she sat, and gradually she relaxed somewhat, although it was long before her lips lost their rigidity of line, or her eyes their somber fire.
Meanwhile other people drifted in, chiefly country patrons of the city's roof-gardens and open-air restaurants; and as the train crawled through the hot night they left it again, by twos and threes, at the little stations. Shortly before one o'clock the parents of the boys, awaking opportunely themselves, hurriedly aroused their slumbering offspring and dragged them from the car, reluctant and whimpering, but still firmly clutching their pyrotechnical treasures.
There were few passengers remaining by this time, and of these all were asleep, except the girl in the back seat, now the only woman in the coach. Even she finally put aside the magazine in which she had been trying to interest herself, and again propped her head upon her hand and closed her eyes, giving herself entirely to indignant contemplation of James Mason's utterances and attitude.
Thus she did not notice an elderly man who entered from the doorway behind her, and who, after glancing at the scattered passengers, selected a seat across the aisle from and slightly behind the two Italians, now peacefully, if somewhat audibly sleeping. Nor did she see him go forward and help himself thirstily to ice-water; but as he turned to come back through the car she chanced to open her eyes, and indifferently observed him from behind her screening fingers. He was a man of medium height and weight, past middle age, and well dressed. More she did not mark at the moment.
He looked with evident disapproval at the unconscious Italians, whose dusty feet still reposed in the opposite seat, and whose open mouths and flushed, perspiring faces were a fitting accompaniment to their loud snores. After passing them his attention was attracted by something on the floor. He paused, looked sharply at it, and stooped. When he arose, he held in his hand that special delight of the youth of our land known as a "cannon-cracker!" dropped by the children.
For a moment he considered it carelessly; then a mirthful spasm crossed his face, and after a hasty but searching glance at his fellow-passengers he slipped into the seat behind the Italians. Bess cautiously turned her head and looked at the youth across from her, finding him palpably asleep, as all the others seemed to be. She realized at once that her own drowsy attitude was probably reassuring to the elderly man, but she could not know that her mannish dress had contributed to his conviction that there were no women present, her face being partly concealed by the propping hand. Once more he quickly scrutinized the passengers, then fumbled in his pocket, stooped a little—and slipped across the aisle and a few seats back.
A moment later a terrific detonation not only effectually ended the snores of the two Italians, but brought every man in the car to his feet, blinking and pale. There was the instant of bewildered suspense that always follows a shock, which was first broken by wild yells of terror from the Italians. As one of them ran, crouching between the seats, toward the nearest door, the other flung himself bodily upward and hung from the bell-rope, while the still quivering air was reassaulted by a shrill outburst of Neapolitan expletives, appeals, and threats.
The train jolted heavily to a halt, under the sudden application of the air-brakes, and the excited crew ran into the car from both directions, followed by other passengers, while those originally there were still asking one another what had happened.
Through all the excitement Bess had kept her eye on the man responsible for it, and he had feigned to be as much startled as the rest. Therefore, she was not surprised to see him approach the conductor, with indignant mien, demanding what this disturbance meant, and whether there were not men enough in the crew or energy enough in the management to protect patrons of the road from outrage. She was not prepared, however, to hear the man reply:
"What happened, Mr. Mason? Anybody hurt?"
"Hurt? No! Unless that dago back there has burst a blood-vessel yelling! From the fragments on the floor, I should say that somebody exploded a firecracker or a Fourth-of-July bomb. An outrage, Jackson, an outrage! This is no place and no hour for practical jokes."
"Did you see who did it, Mr. Mason?"
"Certainly not! I saw no one. But if your crew can't keep persons of that sort in order, I shall take the matter to the superintendent. I've been driven out of one car by a squalling young one, and now somebody explodes a bomb in this one!"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mason. I'll try to find out who did it," said the conductor, anxiously. Turning to Bess, he continued: "You were in this car, miss. Do you know who did it?"
"I know no more about it than this gentleman does!" she quietly replied; whereupon Mason shot a keen glance at her from beneath his brows, which she met with apparent unconcern, concluding, carelessly: "At this hour everybody's likely to be dozing."
"This makes it worse, Jackson," severely declared Mason. To her he added, with a direct look: "I had no idea there was a lady in the car. I hope you were not frightened."
"Thank you, I was not at all frightened," she indifferently returned. "One expects firecrackers at this season."
"I congratulate you on your steady nerves, madam. Most women would have screamed."
Entirely reassured as to her ignorance in the matter, he took off his hat, bowed, and made a dignified exit, while she stood looking after him, a curious light in her eyes. So that, again, was James Mason! Through the open door she saw him drop off the platform and go forward, apparently to the smoking-car; and a moment later, taking advantage of the excitement still centering on the sons of Italy, she slipped out and found a seat in the coach behind.
From the subsequent comments of people about her, returning from the seat of war, she gathered that it had taken the combined efforts of passengers and crew to convince the Neapolitans that they had not been the victims of a Black-Hand plot, and that even when this had been accomplished, they had discovered in the car an ancient enemy, in the person of a young collegian who had previously hoaxed them, and despite his denials of any knowledge of this affair of the bomb, had threatened him with varied and picturesque vengeance.
For a moment she contemplated going to his relief, but no one seemed to take the affair at all seriously, so she kept both her seat and her counsel, and in time, somewhat delayed by the bomb episode, the train arrived in Brookfield, where Miss Wallace found her brother-in-law awaiting her at the station, and she saw James Mason no more that night.
Nor did she see her sister, except for a moments greeting, until the next morning, when Mrs. Ford came into her room with the breakfast-tray, curled up at the foot of her bed, and poured forth the details of Bob Mason's latest escapade, which had shaken all Brookfield to its foundations, used as that long-suffering old town was to the pranks and vagaries of undergraduates.
The details of that affair belong to another story. Suffice it to say here that young Mason had taken advantage of his uncle's absence in the city to perpetrate a long-studied trick, involving dignified men and staid institutions in a situation sufficiently fantastic to justify his kinsman's characterization of him as "a brilliant, untetherable young comet," and the end was not yet.
"And the worst of it," she concluded, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, "is that, while it's so funny, it's tragic, too. Bob's uncle will never forgive him for this, even if the others would. Poor Tom was here last night, positively haggard over the thing."
"Do you know him—the uncle?" asked Bess, who had been less amused than the tale warranted.
"Yes—after a fashion. Everybody does. You see, he's our leading citizen—president of the biggest bank, member of the Town Council, director of—"
"Do you like him?"
"Like him? I never heard of anybody who liked James Mason—except Tom. He seems fond of him. The men all say he's 'able' and 'square,' in an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth sort of way, but everybody grants that he's a regular old curmudgeon. He's never had the least sympathy or patience with Bob's scrapes. If he had, the boy might not be so utterly irrepressible. As it is, Tom's the only person in the world who has the slightest influence over either of them. Bob's such a brilliant fellow too!"
"Is he? You know, I never saw him."
"Oh yes, he really is! They say there's nobody equal to him in the whole college when he chooses to settle down to work—which isn't often, to be sure. And now that terrible old man—!"
"What is he likely to do?" asked Bess, curiously but soberly.
"That's what all Brookfield was asking over the telephone last night. Nobody knows. Of course Bob hasn't done much real harm this time, but he's made a lot of men look perfectly ridiculous, and they're all furious. It's the sort of thing a certain type of man hates more than anything else, and James Mason's of that type. He'll never forgive it. These men are all his associates, and it touches his pride."
"Hm!" commented Bess. "Perhaps it will do him good to have his pride ground down a little. I dare say he deserves it. Bob may be an instrument in the hands of Nemesis. Who knows? I'm going to get up."
"Well, I do think you might show a little sympathy for poor Tom," complained Kate. "He's heartbroken about the thing."
"It may not be as hopeless as he thinks. You never can tell," was the unruffled reply. "Uncle may have troubles of his own by night. Even curmudgeons do, sometimes."
"How would that help Bob?"
"It might afford him some satisfaction to see Uncle's banners trailing in the dust, even though his own couldn't be set waving again. There is such a thing as poetic justice, Kate."
"Hm—maybe." Mrs. Ford's lips twisted skeptically. "But I don't see who's going to start the wheels."
"You never can tell," returned Miss Wallace, with a cryptic little smile. "That was a pleasing fancy of the ancients, to place a cup of poison in a man's hands and make him lift it to his lips himself, wasn't it?" Which was as near as she ever came to telling Kate about her encounter with James Mason the night before, for Bess was not one to give half-confidences, and there was that in the earlier utterances of Tom's uncle in her hearing that she would not repeat even to her sister.
"I don't know what you mean," puzzled the more literal Kate.
"I mean that I'm going to get up forthwith, and that I want you, please, to put on your prettiest frock and take me out to see Brookfield!"
While Bess was dressing, there came a messenger with flowers from Tom, and a note saying that he had hoped to call at the earliest hour she would permit that morning, but that, as she had doubtless heard, his brother was in rather serious trouble, and he must spend all the forenoon, and possibly all day, in an effort to straighten out the affair. He said he would try to call late that afternoon, and asked her, in any event, to save the evening for him. He also asked her to believe that, whatever matter kept him temporarily from her side, the knowledge that she was near was his greatest help, and that he was always faithfully hers, Thomas L. Mason.
The sisters were most attractive to the eye, in their light gowns and lacy hats, as they strolled through the shaded streets of old Brookfield that morning; and many of Mrs. Ford's friends stopped to speak to her, to be presented to Miss Wallace, and to discuss in undertones the latest rumors concerning "the Mason affair." Public sympathy seemed to be almost wholly with Bob, although even the most obvious amusement was always hand in hand with the admission that the young scamp had done an egregious thing and probably deserved all that would come to him of punishment. Nevertheless, laughter was a running accompaniment of all these discussions, and there was, too, a constant undercurrent of sympathy for the boy in his reckoning with James Mason.
Presently they came into the elm-arched main street, where they met more friends and stopped to chat, in the informal fashion of small towns, and there it was that Bess, glancing back, saw Tom Mason striding toward them, his face set in troubled lines. So absorbed was he in thought that he did not even see her until she stepped before him, saying:
"I know you're too busy to talk, but I must shake hands with you!"
He stopped short at that, and the effulgence that overspread his countenance at sight of her told its own story to any who cared to look. Its glow brought answering color to her cheeks, but she met his gaze directly, while she gently disengaged her hand from his long clasp.
"I got your letter," said she. "I'm sorry. Is it—very bad?"
"Pretty bad, I'm afraid," he replied, in a low tone. Her glance followed his to the group she had left, and while he acknowledged the cordial greetings of the women composing it she moved on a few steps, just out of their hearing, and paused again.
"You mean—it's going hard with your brother?"
"Very hard, I'm afraid—with all of us."
"How all of you? You don't mind telling me?"
"You know I want to tell you—everything. You see, Bob's always been pretty wild. Not vicious—just spirited and untamed. And he's made a lot of trouble for Uncle James, first and last—trouble and expense. The last rime he got into a scrape—"
"Yes, I know. I've heard," she interrupted. "But is Mr. James Mason so sure of his own glass houses that he dares throw such heavy stones?" Her tone was touched with mockery, and he looked at her in surprise.
"People don't understand Uncle James," he said, gently. "They think he's hard and rough and cold—and so he is, in a way. But he's had a hard, rough, cold life. And he's always been disappointed in the thing he set his heart upon. First it was the education he longed for and couldn't have. You ought to hear him talk about his one year in college!"
"I suppose he never got into scrapes?" she intimated.
"I don't know. He was probably a Freshman like other Freshmen. But it was his Chance—and it was taken away from him. Almost the only real fun he ever has now is when he goes, once a year, to the reunion of that old class. That's where he was when Bob—" There was a little pause, and she did not look at him. "Well, he had to give that up. Then it was a woman whom he loved, and who was—unworthy. Then it was great financial success, which comes to few men. And now it's us. We're all there is left to him, and upon us—especially upon Bob, for he is brilliant—he has centered all the deflected hopes of his warped and disappointed life. And when he had given Bob one more chance—Bob failed. That makes it hard, you see. Harder for him than for either of us."
"You are generous," she said, but she saw how keenly this thing was making him suffer.
"No, not generous—only just. There's another side to it—Bob's side. Uncle James never understood him. He hasn't understood either of us sometimes. But he's done his best for us. He's believed in us, been ambitious for us, wanted to give us everything his own life lacked—"
"Except love," she softly supplied.
"Well—perhaps. I'm not sure. I think he loves us, in his way. Otherwise we couldn't hurt him so. And when he's hurt, he isn't tender, he's savage. He's savage now. So he's going to hurt Bob."
"And you."
"It doesn't matter about me. I have—other things. And I think I can hold Bob, in a way. He's sorry now. I think he appreciates for the first time what he has lost. But I can't do anything with Uncle James. I've tried everything I know—but it's of no use. And nobody can ever make it up to him."
"Tom, how you love him!" she pitifully exclaimed.
"Love him? Why, yes," simply. "He's the only father I ever knew much about, you know. He's harsh and rough, and doesn't make friends, but to us he's been— There he is now, probably looking for me. You'll excuse me?"
James Mason had appeared in the doorway of his bank, at the next corner, and now, as he caught sight of his nephew, he waved his hand and came briskly toward them.
"Tom, introduce me to him," she suddenly begged.
"Oh—would you mind if I didn't—just now?" he stammered. "You see, he might—he's not—"
"Yes, yes, I know! I know a lot of things! But I have a special reason. Now please."
The elder Mason, however, paused for no ceremonies, but addressed himself abruptly to the younger, without noticing the girl.
"I'm going over to the police court, Tom."
"I was just coming to see you about that, sir. I suppose it's Stan Chase?"
"Yes; his father telephoned me, thinking I might know something about it. I do. I can exonerate Stanley, and I'm not in a position just now," bitterly, "to refuse John Chase anything." John Chase was one of the men Bob had pilloried.
"Very well, sir. But before you go, let me present you to Miss Wallace." His uncle perfunctorily uncovered, still with hardly a glance in her direction. Apparently the name had not touched his consciousness. "She must have been on that train last night, too."
"I was," Bess quietly affirmed. "Mr. Mason and I made part of the journey in the same car." Tom's uncle looked at her then sharply.
"Oh," said he, "you're the young woman who didn't scream."
"I am," was the demure reply.
"Were you in the car when the bomb went off?" demanded Tom.
"Yes. Do you know about that?" From his manner, she thought for a moment that he might even know the truth.
"That's the very thing we're talking about. Stanley Chase, a chum of—of my brother's, was in that car, and because he's been mixed up in one or two college affairs in which those Italians got rather the worst of it they pitched upon him as the bomb-thrower, and they've taken out a warrant for his arrest."
"What a very un-Italian thing to do!" she laughed, glancing at Mr. Mason, whose face was like a mask.
"Yes; but, you see, they're not very keen to tackle Stan personally. They've been up against that before, and he's an all-round athlete. So somebody has evidently told them that they can hit him hardest through the law."
"And is he languishing in prison?" she lightly asked, with another apparently cursory glance at the elder man. It was Tom who replied.
"He hasn't been arrested yet. His father heard about the warrant—you see, everybody knows everybody else here—and Stan's keeping out of the way for a while, hoping that somebody can be found who can swear that he had nothing to do with that affair last night. Then he'll go and give himself up, and have the thing put right through."
"And that's what they have asked of your uncle? But he can't help much," she spoke with light assurance, "for I heard him say last night that he didn't see it done."
"I can have the charge dismissed," James Mason curtly told her.
For a brief moment she looked into his face, deeply lined and grim. Then she said, softly:
"Won't you let me attend to that for you, Mr. Mason? You are a busy man, I know, and—I think I'm the only person who really knows who killed Cock Robin. I saw that 'bomb' fired."
"Saw it fired!" he repeated, staring at her. Then the color swept up into his face in a heavy flush.
"Yes, I saw it." Very quietly she held his glance—so quietly that not even Tom was suspicious—and her tone continued one of amused explanation. "You see, I wasn't asleep, though I dare say I seemed to be. I did have my eyes shut for a while, and when I opened them I saw this man coming down the aisle."
"What man?" asked Tom.
"I hadn't seen him before," she replied, with a quick movement of the hand as James Mason opened his lips to speak. "I didn't know when he entered the car, or where he came from, and of course I didn't know who he was." She looked from one to the other as she told the story, smiling slightly, but with the last phrase she again met the elder man's glance, squarely and significantly. "I saw him look at those slouching, snoring Italians; I saw him pick up the big firecracker from the floor, where some boys had dropped it; I saw him laugh a little and look about to see if anybody was awake; and I saw him set the thing off. Later, in the height of the excitement after the explosion, I saw him leave the car—and I did not see him again."
"And where was Stan Chase all this time?" eagerly inquired Tom.
"I don't know—unless he was the nice-looking boy asleep in the seat across from mine. There were several other people in the car, perhaps ten!"
"Well, there's the whole thing in a nutshell!" cried the young man. "That will fix Stan all right!"
"Why didn't you tell some of this last night?" asked the elder. "You had the opportunity."
"I had several reasons," she returned, still lightly, but fearlessly meeting his stem and penetrating gaze. "You see, when he was doing it, he looked so jolly," she laughed a little, "so like a boy in funny, naughty mischief, that I rather enjoyed it. And those Italians were a little unpleasant; don't you think they were? So it was just funny at first. And then—well, I don't think he expected it to make quite so much of a row, and he was a little upset by it—a little taken aback. Don't you see that if I had told what I knew, some dignified, respected man might be humiliated to-day, through having been detected in a foolish, boyish prank?" There was now a warm, pretty, pleading eagerness under her laughing tone. "Don't you see that it really didn't do any harm at all, but that petty, little, narrow people might take it up and magnify it and make him ashamed? He wasn't a young man—he must be a person of some importance in some of these little towns about here—and don't you see what it might mean to him, and to his friends—and to his children, if he has any—if those Italians had had him arrested to-day on a silly charge like that? Oh, I'm so glad I didn't say anything about it last night! I'm glad, too, that I can honestly say I had never seen the man before, that I didn't know when he came into the car, and that he left it before the excitement was over. It was a very natural, boyish sort of thing to do under the circumstances, but it wasn't, as it turned out, a thing that a dignified, responsible, rather elderly man would care to have published and spread broadcast about himself. Now was it?" She appealed to Tom.
"Most certainly it was not," he agreed, smiling for the first time since she had met him. "Was he that sort of man? A gentleman?"
"He was a man of great natural force and distinction," she quickly replied. "I fancy he had been dining in town, and had had a glass or two of wine. I don't mean that he was intoxicated, but just a little careless and jolly. In fact," slowly, "I have an idea—though I didn't think of this until it was all over—that he was one of three men who stood under my window talking before the train started. The others tried to make him go back with them, but he wouldn't. They said: 'You've got about three more drinks aboard now than you usually carry, and you're almost human. Come back, and we'll give you three more.'" She glanced up at James Mason, and caught a softening in his face. "Maybe he has a headache to-day, but he was human and jolly and—and a good fellow last night," she dared, audaciously. "Now, you'll let me go to the police court and tell all this for your friend, won't you, Mr. Mason? It will be quite proper," she gave him no opportunity to reply, and kept the same light, half-laughing tone, "for my sister, Mrs. Ford, is with me, and Tom can take us over. And you really couldn't liberate the poor youth, for you didn't see the man who killed Cock Robin at all. Tom, will you explain all this to Kate and ask her to come with us?" The young man went at once to summon Mrs. Ford, and Bess turned to his uncle.
"Why did you do this?" he asked. "Why should you do it?"
"Will you—will you remember last night, and—be a little kind to Bob?" For the first time she faltered slightly. Then, as his face hardened, she added, with a shaky laugh: "Remember the time you painted Prexy's cow green, and—and all the other times."
"So! You were eavesdropping," he said.
"No; you were careless. More careless than you know, Mr. Mason, I've not been quite honest with you, and I prefer to be." She glanced back and saw Tom still occupied with Kate's friends. "I've given you the reasons why I'm glad now that I didn't tell what I knew last night. And no one else knows all of what I knew, except you. But at the time the reason I didn't tell was that I was angry—you had made me very angry, and when I found out who you were I concealed my knowledge of your connection with that, foolish little affair, as I might have concealed a sharp, mean little weapon that I might some day use against you."
"Why?"
"Because when the train started you stood with your friends directly beneath the open window where I sat, and said—what you did say. I don't think you quite realize yet, Mr. Mason, that I am Bess Wallace."
"Bess Wallace! Tom's girl?"
"The girl of whom you spoke to your friends—so frankly. I heard every word of that." She shut her teeth hard for a moment, remembering, but continued at once: "So I started down-town this morning, having heard about Bob—whom I have never seen—and knowing about your attitude toward him, and about what you did last night—I started down-town determined that before I returned I would put you in a position where you would have to admit your part in last night's affair and take the shabby consequences. I meant to force you to humiliate yourself—to make yourself ridiculous—to gratify my petty pride."
"Why did you change your mind. Shall we walk on? Why did you change your mind?"
"I met Tom."
"Well?"
"He talked to me about Bob—and about you. But mostly about you. He made me see what this thing Bob has done means to you—and why. I saw, too, that it hurt Tom most where it hurt you. Then I knew that he loved you, and that any blow I aimed at you would strike him. Those are the real reasons."
"Hm!" said James Mason, and walked a whole block in silence. Then: "But I'll have to send Bob away—after this."
"Oh yes, send him away! But send him understanding—you know!"
"Perhaps I do. Perhaps I do." Another block. "Miss Wallace, I'm an old man—and a hard man. Apology does not come easily to my lips—"
"Oh, please don't!" she cried. "Please don't! Let's forget it all."
"Thank you. We'll not forget it, but we'll not speak of it—at present. Perhaps when you and Tom are married—by the way, you're going to marry Tom, aren't you?" She glanced up and met his rare smile, to which she instantly responded.
"How can I say, when he's never asked me?"
"You're woman enough to know that he wants to ask you."
"I have the word of a member of his family for it," she dryly retorted.
"Hm! So you won't tell me? Well, I suppose that's right, too."
"I'll tell you this," she offered, looking up at him through eyes bright with tears. "If ever—that—does happen, I shall call you Uncle Jim."
"I hope you will," said James Mason, stopping to take her hand. "I hope you will! Now I'll go and telephone Chase—and see Bob."