XI
PRESTO CHANGE
After the battle, Miss Brewster reviewed her troops, and took stockof casualties, in the patio. None of the allied forces had come offscatheless. Galpy, whose injuries had at first seemed the most severe,responded to a stiff dose of brandy. A cut across the scientist's headhad been hastily bandaged in a towel, giving him, as he observed, theappearance of a dissipated Hindu. To Von Plaanden's indignant disgust,his military splendor was seriously impaired by a huge "hickey" over hisleft eye, the memento of a well-aimed rock. Cluff had broken a fingerand sprained his wrist. Mr. Brewster was anxious to know if any onehad seen two teeth of his on the pavement or whether he was to lookfor later digestive indications of their whereabouts. Both of the youngcricketers had been battered and bruised, though it was nothing,they gleefully averred, to what they had meted out. And Carroll had anasty-looking knife-thrust in his shoulder.
All of them were disheveled, dilapidated, and grimy to the last degree,except the Hochwaldian, who still sat his horse, which he had riddeninto the patio. But Miss Polly said to herself, with a thrill of pride,that no woman need wish a more gallant and devoted band of defenders.Leaning over them from the inner railing of the balcony, she surveyedthem with sparkling eyes.
"It was magnificent!" she cried. "Oh, I'm so proud of you all! I couldhug you, every one!"
"Better come down from there, Polly," said her father anxiously. "Someof those ruffians might come back."
"Not to-day," said Sherwen grimly. "They've had enough."
"That is correct," confirmed Von Plaanden. "Nevertheless, there maybe disorder later. Would it not be better that you go to the BritishLegation, Fraulein?"
"Not I!" she returned. "I stay by my colors. And now I'm going todisband my army."
Stretching out her hand to a vase near her, she drew out a rose ofdeepest red and held it above Von Plaanden.
"The color of my country," said Von Plaanden gravely. "May I take it fora sign that I am forgiven?"
"Fully, freely, and gladly," said the girl. "You have put a debt upon usall that I--that we can never repay."
"It is I who pay. You will not think of me too hardly, for my onebreach?"
"I shall think of you as a hero," said the girl impetuously. "And Ishall never forget. Catch, O knight."
The rose fell, and was caught. Von Plaanden bowed low over it. Then hestraightened to the military salute, and so rode out of the door and outof the girl's life.
"Men are strange creatures," mused the philosopher of twenty. "You thinkthey are perfectly horrid, and suddenly they show their other side toyou, and you think they are perfectly splendid. I wish I knew a littlemore about real people."
She confessed to no more specific thought, but as she descended thestairs to bid farewell to the blushing and deprecatory Britons, she waseager to have it over with, and to come to speech with her beetle man,who had so strangely flamed into action. The Unspeakable Perk! As thename formed on her lips, she smiled tenderly. With sad lack of logic,she was ready to discard every suspicion of him that she had harbored,merely on the strength of his reckless outbreak of patriotism. Shelooked about the patio, but he was not there. Sherwen came out of a sidedoor, his face puckered with anxiety.
"Where is Mr. Perkins?" she asked.
"In there." He nodded back over his shoulder. "Your father is with him.Perhaps you'd better go in."
With a chill at her heart, Polly entered the room, where Mr. Brewsterbent a troubled face over a head swathed in reddened bandages.
Very crumpled and limp looked the Unspeakable Perk, bunched humpily uponthe little sofa. His goggles had fallen off, and lay on the floor besidehim, contriving somehow to look momentously solemn and important allby themselves. His face was turned half away, and, as Polly's gaze fellupon it, she felt again that queer catch at her heart.
"Wouldn't know it was the same chap, would you?" whispered Mr. Brewster.
The girl picked up the grotesque spectacles, cradling them for aninstant in her hands before she put them aside and leaned over the quietform.
"Came staggering in, and just collapsed down there," continued herfather huskily. "Lord, I wouldn't lose that boy after this for a milliondollars!"
"Why do you talk that way?" she demanded sharply. "What has happened?Did he faint?"
"Just collapsed. When I tried to rouse him, he kicked me in the chest,"replied the magnate, with somber seriousness.
"Oh, you goose of a dad!" There was a tremulous note in Polly's lowlaughter. "That's all right, then. Can't you see he's dead for sleep,poor beetle man?"
"Do you think so?" said Mr. Brewster, vastly relieved. "Hadn't I bettergo out for a doctor, and make sure?"
She shook her head.
"Let him rest. Hand me that pillow, please, dad."
With soft little pushes and wedges she worked it under the scientist'shead. "What a dreadful botch of bandaging! He looks so pale! I wonder ifI couldn't get those cloths off. Lend me your knife, dad."
Gently as she worked, the head on the pillow began to sway, and the lipsto move.
"Oh, let me alone!" they muttered querulously.
The eyes opened. The Unspeakable Perk gazed up into the faces abovehim, but saw only one, a face whose tender concern softened it to aloveliness greater even than when he had last seen it. He tried to rise,but the hands that pressed him back were firm and quick.
"Lie still!" bade their owner.
A thin film of color mounted to his cheeks.
"I--I--beg your pardon," he stammered. "I--I--d-didn't know--"
"Don't be a goose!" she adjured him. "It's only me."
"Yes, that's the trouble." He closed his eyes again, and began tomurmur.
"What does he say?" asked Mr. Brewster, lowering his head and almostfalling over backward as his astonished ears were greeted by the slowlyintoned rhythm:--
"Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea."
"Delirious!" exclaimed the magnate. "Clean off his head! How does onefind a doctor in this town?"
"No need, dad," his daughter reassured him. "It's just a--a sort ofgame."
"Game! Did you hear what he said?"
"Well, a kind of password. It's all right, Dad. It is, really."
Still undecided, Mr. Brewster stared at the injured man.
"I don't know--" he began, when the eyes opened again.
"Feeling better?" inquired Polly briskly.
"Yes. The charm works perfectly."
"Anything I can do, or get, for you, my boy?" inquired Mr. Brewster,stepping forward.
"What's in the ice-box?" asked the other anxiously.
"Oh!" cried the girl in distress. "He's starving! When did you eatlast?"
"I can't exactly remember. It was about five this morning, I think. Abanana, and, as I recall it, a small one."
"Dad!" cried the girl, but that prompt and efficient gentleman wasalready halfway to the cook, dragging Sherwen along as interpreter.
"He'll get whatever there is in the shortest known time," the girlassured her patient. "Trust dad. Now, you lie back and let me fix up afresh bandage."
"You'd have made a great trained nurse," he murmured, as she adjustedthe clean strips that Sherwen had sent in. "Don't pin my ear down. It'sgot to help hold my goggles on."
"The dear funny goggles!" Picking them up, she patted them with daintyfingers, before setting them aside. He watched her uneasily, much in themanner of a dog whose bone has been taken away.
"Do you mind giving them back?" he said.
"But you're not going to wear them here," she protested.
"I've got so used to them," he explained apologetically, "that I don'tfeel really dressed without them."
She handed them back and he adjusted them to the bandages. "For thepresent, rest is prescribed you know," said she.
"Oh, no!" he declared. "As soon as I've had something to eat, I'll go.There are a hundred things to be done. Where are my gloves?"
"What gloves? Oh, those white abominations? Why on ear
th do you wearthem?" Her glance fell upon his right hand, which lay half-open besidehim. "Oh--oh--oh!" she cried in a rising scale of distress. "What haveyou done to your hands?"
He reddened perceptibly.
"Nothing."
"Nothing, indeed! Tell me at once!"
"I've been rowing."
"Where to?"
"Oh, out to a ship."
"There aren't any ships, except the Dutch warship. Was it to her?"
"Yes."
"To carry our message--MY message?"
He squirmed.
"I'm awfully sleepy," he protested. "It isn't fair to cross-examine awitness--"
"When was it?" his ruthless interrogator broke in.
"Night before last."
"How far?"
"How can I tell? Not far. A few miles."
"And back. And it took you all night," she accused.
"What if it did?" he cried peevishly. "A man's got to have some relieffrom work, hasn't he? It was livelier than sitting all night with one'seye glued to a microscope barrel!"
"Oh, beetle man, beetle man! I don't know about you at all. What kind ofa strange queer creature are you? Have you wings, Mr. Beetle Man?"
Suddenly she bent over and laid her soft lips upon the scarified palm.The Unspeakable Perk sat up, with a half-cry.
"Now the other one," said the girl. Her face was a mantle of rose-color,but her eyes shone.
"I won't! You shan't!"
"The other one!" she commanded imperiously.
"Please, Miss Brewster--"
A noise at the door saved him. There stood Thatcher Brewster, magnate,multi-millionaire, and master of men, a huge tray in his hands.
"Beefsteak, fried potatoes, alligator pear, fresh bread, REAL butter,coffee, AND cake," he proclaimed jovially. "Not to mention a cocktail,which I compounded with my own skilled hands. Are you ready, my boy?Go!"
The Unspeakable Perk leaped from his couch.
"Food!" he cried. "Real American food! The perfume of it is a squaremeal."
"You're much gladder to see it than you were me," pouted Miss Polly.
"I'm not half as afraid of it," he admitted. "Mr. Brewster, yourhealth."
"Here's to you, my boy. Now I'll leave you with your nurse, and make myfinal arrangements. We're off by special in the morning."
"That's fine!" said the scientist.
But Miss Polly Brewster caught the turn of his head in her direction,and saw that his fork had slackened in his hand. Something tightenedaround her heart.
As he went, her father considered her for a moment, and wondered. Neverbefore had he seen such a look in her eyes as that which she had turnedon the queer, vivid stranger so busily engaged at the tray. Polly, andthis obscure scientist! After the kind of men whom the girl had known,enslaved, and eluded! Absurd! Yet if it were to be--Mr. Brewsterreviewed the events of the afternoon--well, it might be worse.
"By the Lord Harry, he's a MAN, anyway!" decided Thatcher Brewster.
Meanwhile, the subject of his musings began to feel like a man oncemore, instead of like a lath. Having wrought havoc among the edibles, herose with a sigh.
"If I could have one hour's sleep," he said mournfully, "I'd be fit as acricket."
"You shall," said the girl. "Mr. Sherwen says he won't let you out ofthe house until it's dark. And that's fully an hour."
"I ought to be on my way back now."
"Back where? To your mountains?"
"Yes."
"You'd be recognized and attacked before you could get out of the city.I won't let you."
"That wouldn't do, for a fact. Perhaps it would be safer to wait. I'vemade enough trouble for one day by my blunder-headed thoughtlessness."
"Is that what you call rescuing the flag?"
"Oh, rescuing!" he said slightingly. "What difference does it make whatvermin like that mob do? Just for a whim, to endanger all of you."
She stared at him in amaze and suspicion. But he was quite honest.
"MY whim," she reminded him.
"Yes; I suppose it was," he admitted thoughtfully. "When I saw youcrying, I lost my head, and acted like a child."
"Then it was all my fault?"
"Oh, I don't say that. Certainly not. I'm master of my own actions. If Ihadn't wanted--"
"But it was my fault this much, anyway, that you wouldn't have done itexcept for me."
"Yes; it was your fault to that extent," he said honestly. "I hope youdon't mind my saying so."
"Oh, beetle man, beetle man!" She leaned forward, her eyes deep-litpools of mirth and mockery and some more occult feeling that he couldnot interpret. "Would it scare you quite out of your poor, queer wits ifI were to HUG you? Don't call for help. I'm not really going to do it."
"I know you're not," said he dolefully. "But about that row, I want toset myself right. I'm no fool. I know it took a certain amount of nerveto go down there. And I was even proud of it, in a way. And when VonPlaanden turned and gave me the salute before he went away, I liked itquite a good deal."
"Did he do that? I love him for it!" cried the girl.
"But my point is this, that what I did wasn't sound common sense. Now ifCarroll had done it, it would have been all right."
"Why for him and not for you?"
"Because those are his principles. They're not mine."
"I wish you weren't quite so contemptuous of poor Fitz. It seems hardlyfair."
"Contemptuous of him? I'd give half my life to be in his place afterto-morrow."
"Why?" There was a flutter in her throat as she put the question.
"Because he's going with you, isn't he?"
"So are you, if you will."
"I can't."
"Father won't go without you, I believe. Won't you come, if I ask you?"
"No."
"Work, I suppose," said the girl; "the work that you love better thananything in the world."
"You're wrong there." His voice was not quite steady now. "But it's workthat has to have my first consideration now. And there is one specialresponsibility that I can't evade, for the present, anyway."
"And afterward?" She dared not look at him as she spoke.
"Ah, afterward. There's too much 'perhaps' in the afterward down here.We science grubbers on the outposts enlist for the term of the war," hesaid, smiling wanly.
"How can I--can we go and leave you here?" she demanded obstinately.
"Oh, give me a square meal once in a while, and a night's rest here andthere, and I'll do well enough."
"Oh, dear! I forgot your sleep. Here I've been chattering like a magpie.Take off your coat and lie down on that sofa at once."
"Where shall I find you when I wake up?"
"Right where you leave me when you fall asleep."
"Oh, no! You mustn't wear yourself out watching over me."
"Hush! You're under orders. Give me the coat." She hung it on the backof a chair. "Not another word now. And I'll call you when time is up."
He closed his eyes, and the girl sat studying his face in the dimlight, graving it deep on her inner vision, seeking to formulate someconception of the strange being so still and placid before her. How hadshe ever thought him ridiculous and uncouth? How had she ever dared toinsult him by distrust? What did it matter what other men, estimatinghim by their own sordid standards, said of him? As if her thought hadestablished a connection with his, he opened his eyes and sat up.
"I knew there was something I wanted to ask you," he said. "What didyour 'Never, never, never' mean?"
"A foolish misunderstanding that I'm ashamed of."
"Was it that--that woman-gossip business?"
"Yes. I was stupid. Will you forgive me?"
"What is there to forgive? Some time, perhaps, you'll understand thewhole thing."
"Please don't let's say anything more about it. I do understand."
This was not quite true. All that Polly Brewster knew was that, withthose clear gray eyes meeting hers, she would have believed his honorclean and high aga
inst the world. The presence of the woman, eventhat dress fluttering in the wind, was susceptible of a hundred simpleexplanations.
"Ah, that's all right, then." There was relief in his tone. "Of course,in a place like this there is a lot of gossip and criticism. And whenone runs counter to the general law--"
"Counter to the law?"
"Yes. As a rule, I'm not 'beyond the pale of law,'" he said, smiling."But down here one isn't bound by the same conventions as at home."
The girl's hand went to her throat in a piteous gesture.
"I--I--don't understand. I don't want to understand."
"There's got to be a certain broad-mindedness in these matters," heblundered on, with what seemed to her outraged senses an abominablejauntiness. "But the risk was small for me, and, of course, for her,anything was better than the other life. At that, I don't see how thetruth reached you. What is it, Miss Polly?"
Rage, grief, and shame choked the girl's utterance.
Without a word, she ran from the room, leaving her companion a prey totroubled wonder.
In the patio, she turned sharply to avoid a group gathered around Galpy,who, with a patch over one eye, was trying to impart some news betweengasps.
"Got it from the bulletin board of La Liberdad," he cried. "Killed; bodygone; devil to pay all over the place."
"What's that?" demanded the Unspeakable Perk, running out, coatless andgoggleless.
"There's been another riot, and Dr. Luther Pruyn is killed," explainedSherwen.
"Who says so?"
"Bulletin board--La Liberdad--just saw it," panted Galpy.
"Nonsense! It's a bola."
"The whole city is ringing with it. They say it was a plot to get himout of the way to stop quarantine. The Foreign Office is buzzing withinquiries, and Puerto del Norte is burning up the wires."
"Puerto del Norte! How did they hear?"
"Telephone, of course. I hear Wisner is coming up," said Sherwen.
"I've got to get a wire to the port at once," cried the scientist. "Atonce!"
"You! What for?"
"To stop off Wisner. To tell him it isn't so."
"You're excited, my boy," said Mr. Brewster kindly. "Better lie downagain."
"It's true, right enough," said the Englishman. "Sir Willet's cocherosaw the mob get him."
"When? Where?" asked Fitzhugh Carroll.
"Haven't got any details, but the Government admits it."
"I don't care if the President and his whole cabinet swear to it,"vociferated the Unspeakable Perk. "It's a fake. How can I get Puerto delNorte, Mr. Sherwen?"
"You can't get it at all for any such purpose. How do you know it's afake?"
"How do I know? Oh, dammit! I'M Luther Pruyn!"
He snatched off his glasses and faced them.
The little group stood petrified. Mr. Brewster was first to recover.
"Crazy, poor chap!" he said. "Luther Pruyn was my classmate."
"That's my father, Luther L."
"Proofs," said Sherwen sharply.
"In my coat pocket. In the room. Can I have your wire, Mr. Sherwen?"
"It's cut."
"Come to the railway wire," offered Galpy. "My eye! Wot a game!"
The two men ran out, the scientist leaving behind coat and goggles.
"It was our little mix-up that started the rumor," said Carrollthoughtfully. "Somebody recognized Perk--Dr. Pruyn."
"When his glasses fell off," said CLuff. "They're some disguise."
"He's Luther Pruyn, sure enough!" said Mr. Sherwen, emerging from theroom. "Here's the proof." He held out an official-looking document. "Anorder from the Dutch Naval Office, made out in his name."
"What does it say?" asked Carroll.
"I'm not much of a hand at Dutch, but it seems to direct the blockadingwarship to receive Dr. Luther Pruyn and wife and convey them toCuracao."
"And wife!" exclaimed Cluff loudly. He whistled as a vent to hisamazement. "That explains all the talk about a woman--a lady in hisquinta on the mountains?"
"Apparently," said Carroll. "May I see that document, Mr. Sherwen?"
The American representative handed him the paper. As he was studying it,Galpy reentered, still scant of breath from excitement and haste. "He'sgone back to the mountains," he announced. "Sent word for you to get tothe port before dawn, if you have to walk. See Mr. Wisner there. He'llarrange everything."
"Will Mr. Perk--Dr. Pruyn be there?" asked Mr. Brewster.
"He didn't say."
"But he's gone without his coat!"
"And goggles," said Cluff.
"And his pass," added Sherwen.
"Trust him to come back for them when he gets ready. He's a rum josserfor doing things his own way. Now, about the train." And Galpy outlinedthe plan of departure to the men, who, except Carroll, had gatheredabout him. The Southerner, unnoticed, had slipped into the roomwhere the scientist's coat lay. Coming out by the lower door, he wasintercepted by Miss Polly Brewster. He interpreted the misery in herface, and turned sick at heart with the pain of what it told him.
"You heard?" he asked.
She nodded. "Is it true? Did you see the permit yourself?"
"Yes. Here it is."
"I don't want to see it. It doesn't matter," she said, with utterweariness in her voice. "When do we leave? I want to go home. Sendfather to me, please, Fitz."
Mr. Brewster came to her, bearing the news that the sailing was set forthe morrow.
"I'm glad to know that Dr. and Mrs. Pruyn are provided for," sheremarked, so casually that the troubled father drew a breath of relief,concluding that he must have misinterpreted the girl's interest in theman behind the goggles.
On his way to the patio, he passed through the room where the scientisthad lain. He came out looking perturbed.
"Has any one been in that room just now?" he asked Sherwen.
"Not that I've seen."
"The coat and the other things are not there."
Inquiry and search alike proved unavailing. Not until an hour later didthey discover that Carroll had also disappeared. Sherwen found a notefrom him on the office desk:--
Please look after my luggage. Will join the others at the yachtto-morrow.
P. F. F. C.