Winnie Childs by C. N. Williamson

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But that he--he, of all men in New York, should be the accommodating
fellow found to screen the beast from punishment! This was the
astounding thing--the terrible thing--and yet, the providential thing.
Through Logan and the coincidence which had brought them together at a
certain moment in the hall of the New Cosmopolitan Club, Petro told
himself that he would by and by reach Winifred Child. It was a hateful
combination of circumstances; but finding her thus would be no worse
than discovering a rare jewel in a toad's head.

While the two detectives tossed off their champagne Peter Rolls sat
still, his thoughts flashing on behind a face deprived of all
expression, as a screen of motionless dark trees can hide the white
rush and sparkle of a cataract. His vague contempt for Jim Logan had
turned in the last few minutes to active loathing, even to hatred. He
wanted the fellow punished, as he would have wanted a rattlesnake to
have its poison fangs drawn. He wished to speak out and tell the now
laughing policemen the brief story of Logan's hurried visit to the
club.

Down would go the half-full champagne glasses on the table. The
cheerful grins would be wiped from the two strong faces as by an
artist who, with a stroke, changes the expression of a portrait. Peter
Rolls's word was at least as good as Jim Logan's. Questions would be
asked. Jottings would be made in notebooks. Perhaps they would both
have to go to the police station. The girl's name would be demanded;
Logan might be forced to tell it. That would be one way of finding
Winifred--but it would be a way intolerable.

If only Peter were certain--as certain as he was of her
innocence--that she wasn't hidden in the house, he would let the
detectives go quietly and get the truth out of Logan himself
afterward. But--could he be certain? Had he a right to take such
chances when the girl's safety might depend on police knowledge of her
whereabouts?

It was reasonable to suppose that Logan had put her into the street
after the giving of the alarm and before he ran to the club. Yet he
might not have done so. She might be fainting, or even dead. The most
terrible, melodramatic things happened every day in New York. One saw
them in the papers and felt they could never come into one's own life.
Supposing there were some hiding-place?

The fishlike flopping of Peter's heart slowed down as if the fish were
losing strength. The thought was too hideous to finish. Yet he would
not dismiss it until he had played his hand in the game.

So far he had hardly spoken since the sight of the blue smoke wreath
on the chair had set his brain whirling. But when Logan suddenly
challenged him to drink a health to the New York police, he took the
glass of champagne Sims offered.

"Here's to you!" he said. "I never had such a good chance to
appreciate the thoroughness of your methods! By Jove! think of looking
even under the table! Now that would never have occurred to me."

"I guess it would," one of the men encouraged him, "if you had our
experience. It gets to be second nature to be thorough. We never, so
to speak, leave a stone unturned"

"Well, it's mighty smart of you, that's all I can say!" young Mr.
Rolls went on. "What do you call being thorough--not 'leaving a stone
unturned?' Here, for instance how can you be sure you've looked in
every hole and cranny where Mr. Logan might have stowed a young woman
in a dead faint, if he wanted to fool you?"

Both men laughed. "You ought to bin with us when we went on our trip
around the house!"

"I wish I had! It would have been a sort of experience," said Peter.
"I sometimes read detective stories and wonder if they're like the
real thing. When you were out of the room I was thinking if we'd had a
girl hidden in here--behind the curtains, for instance--we might have
sneaked her away when you were upstairs or down in the basement."

They laughed again, patronizing the amateur. "You must take us for
Uncle Ezras from Wayback!" genially sneered he who claimed leadership.
"We didn't 'both' go upstairs--or in the basement. While I waited in
the hall my mate slipped down and locked the door that lets into the
area and brought away the key on him. What's more, he did something to
the keyhole--a little secret we know--that would have told us if any
one had used another key while we were gone. But no one did. Good
guard was kept, and if a mouse had tried to slip by we'd 'a' caught
it."

"But what if a mouse had tried to hide?" suggested Peter Rolls.

"We'd 'a' found it. There ain't a closet or a pair o' curtains or a
shower bath or bookcase or a screen or bureau or table or bed that's
had a chance to keep a secret from us---"

"Did you ever hear the song of 'The Mistletoe Bough?'" inquired the
doubter.

"You bet we did. You don't have to show us! We snooped all around the
trunk room and rummaged in every box big enough to hold a dwarf. None
of 'em was locked, but if they had been--why, we go around prepared."

"You don't look as if you'd done much prowling in the coal cellar,
anyhow!" laughed Peter.

"That's because there ain't enough coal in it to dirty a dove,"
explained the policeman. "Why, we even had a squint into the wine bins
and the kitchen pantries and under the sink and into a laundry basket.
There ain't a fly on the wall in this house but we wouldn't know its
face if we met it again!"

They all laughed once more, and none more loudly than Logan, though
he had given Peter Rolls a puzzled glance for each new and apparently
aimless question.

"If I wrote those detective stories, I'd use this for a plot," Petro
went on; "but it wouldn't be much good to the magazines the way it's
turned out. I think I'd have a girl hidden behind a sliding panel, or
a picture that came out of its frame, or something, and the hero find
her."

"Then you mustn't lay your plot in this house," retorted the officer.
"There ain't any pictures a full-sized cat could crawl through, and as
for Mr. Logan's panels, they look real nice, but I guess they're the
kind you buy by the yard. And there ain't a room with a wall that
could open to hide anything thicker than a paper doll."

He earned a laugh again on that climax. Peter said that he would have
to go to some old country on the other side to write the kind of story
he meant. The men finished their champagne and had more. Then they
finished that with a gay health (proposed by their host) to Freddy
Fortescue. And at last there was no doubt that the time had come to
go.

Logan shook hands with both and pressed gifts of cigars and cigarettes
upon them. If Peter intended to give Logan away, now was the latest,
the very latest moment. But he said not a word. Satisfied that the
girl could not possibly be concealed in the house, her name must not
be risked. While Logan accompanied the guardians of the law to the
front door, opened by Sims for their benefit, Peter annexed the blue
smoke wreath. A splinter of wood (the furniture was only imitation
Jacobean) had impaled the rag of chiffon, and almost tenderly
releasing it, Rolls folded the trophy away in a breast pocket.

His imagination had not tricked him. The stuff did smell of
fresias--which he proved by holding it to his lips for an instant--the
very scent that had come out to him whenever the dryad door opened, in
reality and memory, the scent he had grown intimate with while the
Moon dress hung in his wardrobe during those days when he had awaited
a chance to present his offering to Ena!

When Logan came back he turned to tell Sims at the door that he would
not be needed again, at any rate, for the present. Then he shut
himself and Peter into the rosy glow of the dining-room.

"At last!" he exclaimed, sinking contentedly into the chair opposite
Rolls. "I feel as if I'd earned a whole bottle of drink. But all's
well that ends well."

"It hasn't quite ended yet, has it?" remarked Peter. "No, thank you,
no champagne!"

"Not ended?" repeated Logan, bottle in hand. "Oh, I see what you're
at!" and he began filling his own glass, already emptied half a dozen
times during the visit of the detectives. "You mean you want an
explanation of this hanky panky. Well, I promised it to you, didn't I?
I said you must give me the benefit of the doubt till those chaps were
out of the house. I hope you have. But I thought once or twice you
looked a bit thick, as if you weren't sure what I'd let you in for.
But I'm not the kind of chap to get a pal in a fix to save my own
face. I'm going to explain, all right. Only first I want to thank you
again for---"

"You needn't," said Peter.

"Sure you won't change your mind and take a little fizz? We've been
through some hot work for this weather."

"_You_ have. No--not any!"

"One go at mine, then, and I'm yours. A-ah! that was pretty good.
Well--there _was_ a girl, of course. But she came because she wanted
to come. Then the trouble began. There was a little misunderstanding
about a pearl dog collar she admired in a jeweller's window. She
seemed disappointed to find that this wasn't to be the occasion of a
presentation. Said I'd promised. I hadn't! I never do promise
beforehand to give girls things. Girls would love to have the same
effect on your money the sun has on ice. Not that this one's like all
the others. She's worth a little expenditure. A real stunner! Any
fellow'd be wild over her. An English girl, tall and slim, but
gorgeous figure: long legs and throat, and dark eyes as big as
saucers. You'd turn and look after her anywhere! A lady, and thinks
herself the queen, though she works in a New York department store.
I've been running after her since one night we made acquaintance in
the park--great chums--called each other Jim and Winnie and held hands
from the first.

"But to-night, just because I said I'd never promised a dog collar or
anything like one, she went mad as a tiger cat and took revenge by
ringing up the police with a beast of a story that I'd kidnapped her.
She got it out before I could make her stop, and for just a minute I
was in a blue funk. New York's rampagin' so just now on the subject of
kidnappers. But I had wit enough to chuck her into the street and run
to the club for help. I thought of Freddy Fortescue (by the way, I
must get him to stand by me with a story in case he's questioned. I
can count on him every time!), but he wasn't in. I tried another man
or two, same result, and just then I saw you coming downstairs--ram
caught in the bushes."

"For the sacrifice," Peter finished.

"Well, not too much of a sacrifice, I hope," Logan temporized "You
don't regret standing by?"

"No, I don't regret it."

"Yet your tone sounds sort of odd, as if you were keeping something
back. I don't see why, either. I've kept my promise. I've
explained--put the whole story in a nutshell, not to bore you too much
with my love affairs gone bad. And what I've told you is the Gospel's
own truth, old man, whether you believe it or not."

"I don't believe it," said Peter. "I know it to be the devil's own
lie."

As he spoke he rose, and Logan jumped up, hot and red in the face.

"By Jove!" he sputtered. "I don't know what you mean."

"You know very well," Rolls insisted. "I mean--that you're a liar. A
damn liar! The girl didn't come here because she wanted to come. And
she wouldn't take a pearl collar or a _paper_ collar from you if you
went on your knees."

"You must be crazy!" Logan stared at him, paler now. "If you weren't
my guest, in my house, I--I'd knock you down."

"Try it," Peter invited him. "This is your father's house, I believe,
not yours. And I don't call myself your guest. Neither need you. I'm a
sort of out-of-season April Fool. At least, I was. I'm not now."

"I tell you--you're bughouse!" stammered Logan.

"You stand up for a girl you don't know a damn thing about---"

"I'd stand up for any girl against you," he was cut short again. "But
I do know this girl. I won't say how. I know you're the dirt under her
feet, and if I hadn't made sure every way that she was out of the
house, I'd have set the police onto you as--as I _wouldn't_ set
terriers onto a rat."

"You--you can't tell me her name--or anything about her--I'll bet!"

"You won't bet with me. And neither of us is going to speak her name
here. Shut your mouth on it if you don't want it stuffed down your
throat and your teeth after it. You've been a villain. That's the one
thing that stands out in this business. God! do you think you could
make me believe anything wrong about that girl--_you_? Why, if an
angel looped the loop down from heaven to do it I wouldn't. Tell me
what store she's working in. That's what I want to hear about her from
you, and nothing else."

Logan was not red in the face now. He had grown very pale. In truth,
he was frightened. But he was angry enough to hide his fear for the
present. He determined that Rolls should not get a word out of him.

"That's _all_ you want to hear, is it?" he mimicked. "If you know so
much about her, you can jolly well find out the rest for yourself or
keep off the grass. I don't intend---"

The sentence ended in an absurd gurgle, for the hand of Peter Rolls
was twisting his high collar. It was horribly uncomfortable and made
him feel ridiculous, because he was taller and bigger and older than
Rolls. He tried to hit Peter in the face with his fist, but suddenly
all strength went out of him. The hated face vanished behind a shower
of sparks.

"You're murdering--me!" he gasped. "I've--got--a weak heart."

Peter let go and flung him across the room. He tottered toward the
door. And his servant, who had been breathlessly listening outside,
opened it opportunely on the instant. Logan saw his chance, as Sims
meant him to do, half fell, half staggered out, and the door slammed
in Peter's face.

It took the latter no more than thirty seconds to wrench it open again
and drag Sims, who was holding desperately to the knob, into the
dining-room. "Don't hurt me, sir!" the man pleaded. "I only did my
duty."

"Hurt you!" repeated Rolls with a laugh. "Don't be afraid. Where's the
other coward?"

"If you are referring to Mr. Logan, sir," Sims replied politely, "he
is gone. If you look for him, I think you will find he has _quite_
gone. I had the front door open, all ready, in case it should be
needed."

Peter reflected for an instant, and then shrugged his shoulders.

"Let him go!" he said. "I'd as soon step twice on a toad that was
hopping away as touch him again. _Br-r!_ This place is sickening. I'll
go, too--but not after him."

"Yes, sir, certainly," returned Sims with alacrity, slinking along the
hall to the vestibule. "I'll open the front door for you. This," he
added with a certain emphasis "will be the fourth time I've done so
to-night. Once to let Mr. Logan in, once when the young ladies came,
and---"

"Ah, there were two of them!" Rolls caught him up.

"Yes, sir. And though I did my duty just now helping Mr. Logan--if I
may say it, sir, without offence--helping him out of _danger_, I am
ready to assist you, sir, by answering any questions you may wish to
ask. I do not consider my doing so disloyal to my employer. My
statements won't hurt him, I assure you. And if you would--er---"

"Would 'make it worth your while,' I suppose you're trying to get
out," Peter disgustedly prompted him.

"I have a wife to support, sir, and a child. I keep them in the
country, and it comes expensive."

"Give me ten dollars' worth of talk," ordered Peter, "and I'll believe
as much as I choose."

He was half ashamed of himself for stooping to bribe the fellow who
perhaps, after all, was only trying to delay him. Yet he might have
something worth hearing. He could not afford to lose a chance.

"Two young ladies came as far as the door, sir," said Sims, pocketing
the greenback, "but only one came into the house--a tall, handsome
young lady, different looking from most, with a thin yellowish silk
cloak over a blue dress. She walked right in, but when she found her
friend was gone she seemed surprised, and the next thing she was in
the boudoir telephoning. Mr. Logan went in and she came out. They had
a little dispute, I think, and though he'd been expecting her to
supper, he told me to get her out of the house as quick as I could. I
showed her through the basement, and she walked, rather briskly I
should say, sir, down the street, while Mr. Logan went in the other
direction--toward the corner, where the club is. As for the young
ladies themselves, I can give you no information, except that the one
who didn't come in to-night has been here before on several occasions.
The one who came in and--er--used the telephone, I have never
previously seen. That's all I know which you don't know yourself. But
I hope I've been of some assistance to make up for doing my
disagreeable duty, sir?"

"I've had ten dollars' worth, thank you," said Peter. "And now for the
fourth time of opening that door."

He went out, satisfied that he was carrying with him the only trace of
Winifred Child from the shut-up house. To-morrow he would begin with
the opening of the shops and look through every department store until
he found her.

CHAPTER XXIII

MOTHER

Peter Rolls, as it oddly happened, had run up to New York that hot
night in order to see a girl do a "turn" at a vaudeville theatre--an
English girl about whom he had read a newspaper paragraph, and who
might, he thought, be Winifred Child. The girl's stage name was
Winifred Cheylesmore. The newspaper described her as "tall, dark, and
taking, with a voice like Devonshire cream."

She was a new girl, of whom nobody had heard, and Peter had been
thrilled and impatient. Her "singing stunt" was to be heard at ten
o'clock, and Peter had dined at his club, meaning to be early in his
seat at the theatre. But a man he knew, sitting at a table near, was a
budding journalist, an earnest amateur photographer. He began passing
samples of his skill to Peter Rolls, calling out rather loudly the
names of ladies snapshotted. Among them was Winifred Cheylesmore, whom
he had interviewed. She was no more like Winifred Child than Marie
Tempest is like Ethel Barrymore. Consequently Peter gave his ticket
away and sat longer over his dinner than he had meant.

If he had started out even five minutes earlier he would have missed
Jim Logan and the adventure in the shut-up house. He would not have
known that there was hope--indeed, almost a certainty--of finding the
lost dryad in one of New York's great department stores.

He was excited, and would have liked to spend half the night walking
off his superfluous energy in the streets or the park where that lying
beast said he had made Miss Child's acquaintance. Peter would have
felt that he was marching to meet the dawn and that the day he longed
for would come to him sooner if he walked toward the horizon. But
father was in town that night--presumedly at his club, and Peter did
not like to leave mother alone. She had exacted no promise--she never
did exact promises, for that was not her way. Peter had said, however,
that he would motor home after the theatre, and though mother mustn't
sit up, she would know that he was in the house.

He determined to keep to this plan, which, of course, would not
prevent his returning to New York early enough next day for the first
opening of the first shop. He wished there were not so many shops.
Unless luck were with him on his search, he might not reach the dryad
for days.

In spite of all that had happened, midnight was not long past when
Peter tiptoed softly through the quiet house at home and opened the
door of his own den. He had expected to find the room in darkness, but
to his surprise the green-shaded reading lamp on the book-scattered
mahogany table was alight, and there in the horsehair-covered
rocking-chair sat mother with her inevitable work. Close by the window
was wide open, and the night breeze from over the Sound was
rhythmically waving the white dimity curtains.

The sweetness of home-coming swept over Peter with the perfume of
wallflowers which blew in on the wind--a sweetness almost as poignant
as that of fresias. Half unconsciously he had been wishing to see his
mother--perhaps not even to speak, but just to see her placid face in
its kind womanliness. It was almost as if his wish had been whispered
to her telepathically and she had answered it. She made a charming
picture, too, he thought, in the shadowy room where the pale, moving
curtains in the dimness were like spirits bringing peace, and all the
light focussed upon the white-haired, white-gowned woman in the high,
black chair seemed to radiate from her whiteness.

Mother looked up, pleased but not surprised, as the opening door
framed her son.

"Howdy do, deary!" She smiled at him. "I thought you'd be coming along
about this time."

Peter threw his hat and coat at the whale, whose large, shining
surface hospitably received them. Mrs. Rolls's small, plump feet in
cheap Japanese slippers rested upon a "hassock" on whose covering
reposed (in worsted) a black spaniel with blue high lights. This
animal she had herself created before the birth of Peter or Ena, but
it was as bright a beast as if it had been finished yesterday. No one
at Sea Gull Manor except Peter would have given Fido house room. But
he liked the dog, and now sat down on it, lifting his mother's little
feet to place them on his knee.

"You oughtn't to have waited up," he remarked, having kissed her
snow-white hair and both apple-pink cheeks and settled himself more or
less comfortably on Fido.

"I thought I would," she returned placidly. "I like being here. And I
had just this to finish." She held up a wide strip of crocheted lace.
"It's 'most done now. It's go'n' to be a bedspread for Ena. But I
don't know if she---"

Mrs. Rolls did not finish the sentence, but it was a long, long ago
established custom of hers not to finish sentences. Except when alone
with Petro, she seldom made any attempt to bring one to an end. It was
life at Peter senior's side which had got her out of the habit of
trying to complete what she began to say. As he generally interrupted
her when she spoke, even in their early years together, she had almost
unconsciously taken it for granted that he would do so, and stopped
like a rundown mechanical doll at about the place where her
quick-minded husband was due to break in.

Peter junior, who never interrupted (though he, too, had a quick
mind), knew as well as if she had gone on that his mother meant: "I
don't know if Ena will think a homemade coverlet of crocheted lace
smart enough for a real, live _marchesa_, but I feel I should like to
make my daughter some bridal present with my own hands."

"Oh, yes, she's certain to. It'll be beautiful, if it's anything like
the one you did for me," Petro assured her when the long pause had
told him that mother had no more to add. "Just think of Ena getting
married!"

"Yes, indeed," sighed Mrs. Rolls. "And it seems only a little while
since you were both---"

Peter knew that the missing word was "children." "Anyhow, she's happy,
I think," he reflected aloud, a far-away look in his eyes.

"I guess so," mother agreed. "She'll like real well being a--- I
wish---"

"_Marchesa"_ was easy for Peter to supply mentally, and would have
been much easier for him to pronounce than it was for Mrs. Rolls, who
had had small education in the management even of her native tongue.

She made dear little, cozy, common mistakes in grammar and other
things. Peter adored her mistakes, and Ena was ashamed of them. But in
those good manners which are taught by the heart and not by the head,
no queen could have given Mrs. Rolls lessons.

As for the next sentence, beginning with "I wish---" and ending in the
air, that was more difficult. Even mother, so placid, seemingly so
contented, must have many wishes. And so Petro ventured on a "What?"

"I wisht I could be just as sure _you_---"

"As sure that I'm happy?"

"Yes, dear."

Peter had been looking at his mother's feet in those blue Japanese
slippers, whose cheapness was rather pathetic. (With all their money,
she never enjoyed wearing expensive things herself. It was as if she
felt lost and un-at-home in them.) But suddenly he glanced up. The
pink-and-white face was as calm as usual, yet her tone had meant
something in particular. A chord seemed to vibrate in his soul, as if
she had softly, yet purposely, touched it with her finger.

"Don't you believe I am happy?" he asked.

"Not--just like you used to be," she said. Their eyes met as she
lifted hers from her work and began rolling it up, finished. She
blushed beautifully, like a girl.

Peter pressed both the little feet between his hands, pressed them
almost convulsively. He did not stop to think how strong his fingers
were, though Logan had had cause to realize their strength two hours
ago. The pressure hurt the small toes so lightly covered. And the
mother of this strong, though slight, young man gloried in the hurt.
She was proud of it, proud of Peter, the one thing in the world she
felt was really hers.

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