The Lightning Conductor Discovers America

As we went on along the shore, the tiny waves ruffled under our eyes like frills of lace on a baby's baptismal dress. The sea became a wide river with dreamland visioned on the other side. Oh, what a contrast to all the beauty of the "Peaceful Isle" and its surroundings to dash into Fall River! Here and there is a house, or a charming name of a street, to tell that it was once a pleasant old village like other New England villages, but Commerce has sacked it of all that is beautiful – or, if it has left anything by mistake, we didn't see it. The ugly, work-marred town smote us like a blow in the face, and yet we saw that it has its own fierce, flaunting interest. I shall never again think of a Fall River boat as a restful thing. A Fall River boat was all I knew of Fall River before, except that a big Revolutionary battle was fought there. Now a battle between Labour and Capital is ceaselessly going on. It was a joy – a selfish joy, perhaps – to spin out of the town limits and come into Devonshire. Really, it was Devonshire – Devonshire in look and in the names of places. What of Taunton, for instance? So we flew on to Boston, through a series of exquisite parks such as surely no other city in the world can have for a frame.

There was just one attractive feature about Fall River for us: not the Picture Palaces, of which there must be about a million; not the coloured posters of the Azores, put up to please the homesick Portuguese labourers, but the reappearance of Peter Storm. Frankly, dearest, I had been afraid in my inmost heart that the Mystery was going to close round Peter like a dark cloud, hiding him from our sight forever. Caspian had perhaps hoped that this might be the case. But Peter had said that he would be found standing at the corner of Elm Street (there wasn't an elm in it, or any other tree), and there he was, though we were early at the rendezvous rather than late.

I forgot to tell you that Pat started out from Newport in our car, the bride and bridegroom squeezing into the Grayles-Grice. I'd accused the girl of not looking well – a stupidity of which I should never be capable if I hadn't an object to gain – and she had owned to a slight headache. I said that I had some wonderful pillules that I could give her; but I must administer them myself, and they must be taken every half-hour. Of course there was nothing for it but she must come to us; and she brightened visibly with every mile, though whether owing to the pillules or the increasing nearness of Fall River, I can't say, and wouldn't if I could.

Having disposed of the honeymooners, there was room in our car for Peter. Jack and I had manœig; uvred (by taking a short cut Jack found on a map) to reach Elm Street first; so we did a sort of Sabine business reversed: snatched up Peter and dashed on. I could almost hear Ed Caspian gnashing his teeth in the G. – G. just behind. It was a sound like something wrong with the gear.

Boston you perhaps know more about than I do, at any rate from books. But you would like to see Jack here – and Monty with him, of course: two wounded heroes enjoying a well-earned repose, as many a wounded hero has enjoyed in other days. He – Jack – wonders if the famous Tea is lying at the bottom of the harbour still, in hermetically sealed tins, and whether it improves with age.

I broke it to you with the top of my letter that we're in a perfectly gorgeous hotel. Jack and I have a suite which would be good enough for a king and queen. He was determined that we'd "do ourselves well," as we are to stay several days, running out to Plymouth and so on, and running back. We've been here now only one night and a morning, but already our sitting-room looks, in some ways, as if we'd taken it for life. Flowers, of course! Jack always buys me flowers; and books – books – books: Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and some glorified guides in volume form. I said, "Are we to carry all these in the car? We shall be boiling over with books, swamped with books, buried under books as Tarpeia was under the shields and bracelets!" But Jack had made his plans. They will be sent home to Awepesha by the hotel people when we go, and we are to have the comfort of them here. As nobody else will have any books, they'll offer Pat an excuse to drop in on us – Peter, too. Jack ought to give "penny readings," I think!

I haven't, by the way, got any satisfaction out of Peter. We are partners in the Caspian-Shuster plot, but his plot he keeps to himself. I wonder what, from all I have told you, Mercédes, you think of him?

In spite of everything, Jack and I believe that he's all right, and vaguely we look for a Great Surprise, though of what nature we cannot say. I wish it would come before we get into Aunt Mary-land. I begin to need something to brace me up!

Love! Ever your

Molly.

XXII

MOLLY WINSTON TO MERCÉDES LANE

Still Boston.

Dear One:

I was wishing for a surprise, and it came. But it hasn't explained anything. It has only thickened the plot – thickened it like porridge made of Boston beans.

I didn't mean to inflict another letter upon you quite so soon; but I'm so full of the surprise – and "beans," too – heavenly Boston ones, very brown, and crisp on top – that I can't wait.

My last night's budget was posted to you only this morning early, when Jack and I were going out to discover what every (other) man and woman knows about the Hub of the Universe. All day long we were so busy seeing and doing things in this delightful, intimate personality that I lost my Stormy Petrel emotion in a crowd of other emotions. Usually when we stop anywhere, and are not in the car most of the day, Mrs. Shuster finds work for Peter to do. She and ex-Senator Collinge give him sheafs of notes to elaborate into letters or articles for the papers which propagate their ideas. I think – and have thought from the first – that this plan of campaign is more to please the Ally (Caspian) than from any pressing need for such work to be done en route. Mrs. Shuster impulsively engaged Storm before Caspian met him, and very likely made some sort of contract to which he can hold her if he chooses. Besides, she admires him as much as ever, though she admires Larry more, and in her silly, blundering way, she plays a double game. All sweetness and light to Storm when she's with him, and immense pride in him as an employé – the pride a small, dull comet might feel in attracting attention to itself by trailing a disproportionately brilliant tail across the sky. All specious promises and excuses to Caspian when she's with him and not with Peter. Caspian, you remember, used to be a protégé of hers when he was a rising young socialist, and she was the widow of a quaint genius who'd made a fortune in some weird patent to keep your hair from decaying, or your teeth from falling out. Now, he's a rising young millionaire, accepted by People Who Matter; and he can do more for her than she for him, socially. So she has to be nice to him, no matter how she feels, and "keep him sweet," anyhow until she's quite sure of Larry and his ancestors to back her up. That's the way I account for Peter's being kept on, though of course there's the fact that Caspian enjoys bullying him now that he's down.

Anyhow, that's the situation on the surface. When we motor, the Stormy Petrel submits himself for the present to the boot of the tyrant in the Grayles-Grice. When we leave the motor, Peter is left, too, and chained to his duties. But, so long as he gets through his tasks at the appointed time, no questions can be asked as to how he spends the extra hours. And the speed with which he does get through those tasks is miraculous as that of Psyche sorting the grains of wheat at the order of mother-in-law Venus! Psyche had all the kingdom of ants to help her. But who helps Peter? One can't suppose that he's rich enough to fling all his salary to an understudy while he gads. Yet I've seen him going to his room with a sheaf of papers which would keep the nose of a common secretary at the grindstone for six or seven hours, whereas P. S. is free to do as he pleases in less than half that time.

This long preamble explains why Peter Storm didn't start out with us this morning, though we picked him up at Fall River and brought him on to Boston, as I told you, and why he was nevertheless able to appear casually in Cambridge. We came across him in the college yard, just as we were "processing" through the big gateway, guided by the Boys, proud, happy Boys, showing off their Alma Mater to their Best Girl and her satellites!

"If I'd had an education, here's where I should like to have got it," Peter remarked, calmly joining our forces, unabashed by Caspian's stare.

"You haven't finished all that stuff the Senator and I gave you!" gasped Lily, knowing that the eye of Ed had travelled reproachfully to her.

"That's all right, Mrs. Shuster," was Peter's airy reply. "When you get home, you'll find that everything has been duly posted."

There was nothing more to be said on the subject. And though Peter referred to himself as a person of no education, he seemed to know more about Cambridge than the Boys themselves – quite as much as Jack, who has been studying up the place as if for an exam!

It really is charming, that college yard, you know, Mercédes – just as charming in its way, Jack admits, as bits of Oxford, or the old Cambridge for which this darling place was named. Once it was called Newton, but after the great event in 1636 – the granting by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay of four hundred pounds "towards a schoole or colledge" – they decided that it ought to be called Cambridge. Nearly all the buildings contrive to look rather venerable (they cloak themselves with creepers), but some, like Massachusetts Hall and Harvard Hall, and several houses, are really old. Tom, Dick, and Harry put on the air of graybeards returning, after a half-century of adventure, to their childhood's home, though they left college only last year to go abroad. It was funny to see the patronizing looks they cast on the undergrads we saw; but they were the life of the place for us, all the same, and we felt truly in it, chaperoned by them. Outside college bounds, however, they lost interest. It was Jack who had to tell us about "Brattle." As far as the Boys were concerned, it might have been any ordinary street, instead of the street of the world, as it is to true hearts of Cambridge. In Cambridge the smart thing is to be rather dowdy, just as it is at Oxford, and in Cambridge of England; and so, as we had got ourselves up to dazzle Boston (a difficult task, I must say!), we were conspicuously, ignominiously tourists as we gazed in reverence at Washington's Elm, at Longfellow's exquisite old primrose yellow house, and the other historic incarnations of Cambridge's past. Only the Boys were not subject to the pitying scorn of Society. They didn't have on their worst clothes, because they have neither best nor worst, but what they had on was it. And possessing no hats was greatly in their favour. By the way, did you know that Cambridge is the first place where a printing press was set up in America? I didn't. It remained for my English Jack to inform me of the fact.

This Cambridge expedition was in the afternoon I neglected to mention. Our morning (while Peter doubtless toiled) had been spent in the wonderful Public Library of Boston itself. We'd meant to do more and other things, but one could stay a week in that library, which I believe started with just ten thousand books! Everything is beautiful about it, from the pale-pink granites and brown Spanish tiles without to the St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's "Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de Chavannes – "The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment" – are worth while coming from London or Paris to Boston to see.

After we motored back from Cambridge we wandered about here and there, seeing the "Cradle of American Liberty," the "Sanctuary of Freedom," and the place "where Independence was born." Unless you have the key, you won't be able to unlock this saying, so I'll do it for you. Why, they call Faneuil Hall the "Cradle of Liberty" because they used to hold all the town meetings there to discuss whether they should revolt against British rule or no; so Liberty must have rocked to and fro a lot! The Old South Meeting House is the "Sanctuary of Freedom," for there it was prayed for and blessed. And of course Independence was born in the Old State House. I wonder if anything half as epoch-making will ever come to pass under the great gold dome of the new one? It's very fine, but it can never be quite so thrilling, I think. And it wasn't built where the pillory and scaffold used to stand! Jack would see the Bunker Hill Monument, too, though I think monuments, even the finest, seem to chill your glorious visions of what really happened on the spot.

Jack, and Pat, and Peter, and I then made a secret pact that we'd devote part of to-morrow to Hawthorne's Boston; that we'd pretend to find the house of "The Blythedale Romance" in Tremont Street; that we'd poke about for the lost site of Hester Prynne's lonely hut on the Back Bay (huts there are neither cheap nor lonely now), and search for various other story landmarks. With this happy prospect before us, and having slyly shaken off all other companions, we went unsuspectingly back to the hotel, not dreaming of a guet-apens, as the French so expressively say.

Peter doesn't live at our hotel, not being able to afford gorgeousness. Marble-walled, gilded-ceilinged rotundas and restaurants are not for humble secretaries, alas, even if they do look like banished princes! We invited him, however (also Pat), to have tea with us in our own sitting-room, and he accepted.

If we could, we should have sneaked in; but the magnificent entrance-hall of our palatial hotel is not adapted to sneaking purposes. I'll be hanged if there's a single trapdoor under a conveniently placed Persian rug, or so much as a secret sliding panel, unless you count the elevators as such! However, we were doing our best to look invisible en masse, when up sprang Edward Caspian and crossed our path as we ought to have expected the villain of the piece to do.

He was not alone. With him was a man, not young, yet not looking middle-aged. He had a head rather like Shakespeare's, and eyes like aquamarines with a light burning behind them.

"Jove!" I heard the Stormy Petrel mutter. "Camera-eyed Dick!"

I knew instantly that Caspian had been as good as his word, and had sent for a detective. The name "Camera-eyed Dick" was too terribly expressive, and so was the way Peter pronounced it, even though he spoke under his breath – to himself, not to me. I felt that here was a man with a fearsome specialty – a man called "camera-eyed," because his eyes photographed on his brain stuff a permanent picture of every face he saw. And Caspian had brought him here, no doubt at large expense, to recognize the face of Peter Storm, alias Some One Else.

Oh, it was an awful moment, and made worse because I felt this stroke was partly our fault. If we hadn't done everything we could to aggravate Caspian and make him more jealous than ever of Storm, just as his jealousy had been simmering down, probably he wouldn't have bothered to carry out his old threat. I thought I should faint, I was so frightened for Peter, and so sick at the idea of having him arrested or something.

"Is there anything I can do?" I stammered out, before I could stop myself from making a bad faux pas and showing that I suspected his danger.

Peter (he and I were walking ahead, Jack and Patsey behind) didn't make the faintest pretense of not understanding. He gave me a glance – I wasn't sure whether it was just bold or whether there was a sense of drama in it – and said in a quiet voice: "No, thank you; nothing at all."

The one way of escaping the encounter would have been to run for it, which would, of course, only have made matters worse; so we marched straight on into the jaws of detection. I would have given much to know whether Jack and Pat had heard Peter's exclamation, and if they guessed in the least what a scene we might be in for. (No, not a scene! I couldn't, even then, associate Peter with a "scene" in public; despite his temper, he is always so cool in every emergency, and has such a peculiar way of carrying things off!)

Much as I wanted to know, however, I dared not turn. Does a mouse turn to the mice behind it and say, "Here is Mr. Camera-eyed Cat?" No! We walked along, my knees feeling like pats of butter, and presently Ed Caspian and his companion blocked our way, filling the whole horizon. "I want to introduce my friend Mr. Moyle, Mrs. Winston," said Ed. "And Mr. Moyle, this is Mr. Peter Storm."

Beads of perspiration came out on my nose, which Aunt Mary always used to tell me was most unladylike and ought never to happen. My heart and I just stood still together!

Murmuring something more like a hiccup than a "How do you do?" I saw Peter use his eyes like grappling irons on the camera-eyes of Mr. Moyle. Then his magnetism, like a band of pirates, swarmed aboard of the other's mentality. He put out his hand and shook the hand of the man, whether Camera eyed Dick wished to shake hands or not, and with that shake, the lamp seemed suddenly to be snatched away from behind the aquamarines.

"How do you do, Mr. Moyle? Pleased to meet you," Peter said slowly.

"Pleased to meet you," echoed Mr. Moyle. His Shakespearean forehead had turned red, and there was a slight gasp in his voice, a tone sliding up instead of down. His queer eyes (rather bald-looking because his light lashes curl right up and away from them, leaving them very wide open) turned off their lights, as I said. But though they were vacant compared to what they had been when professionally on the alert, they had a curious effect as if they would burst if he couldn't laugh. This may have been produced by the lashes turning up so much. I couldn't make it out at all, anyhow. And the whole affair is past my making out. Now, what should you say Peter did to quell Camera-eyed Dick? Was it the look, or was it the way he shook hands?

For he was quelled. There's no doubt – or very little doubt – about that. He was friendly with Peter Storm. He and Peter and Caspian talked together, and it was Camera-eyes who went away first. Ed was ready to cry, I'm sure.

I asked Jack afterward (of course I breathed not a word to Pat), and he said that she and he had guessed nothing of what was going on under the surface of the introduction. They hadn't heard Peter's give-away words; and without that clue there was no reason to suspect.

I shan't sleep to-night because of that "misunderstood virtue" of mine. In other words, Curiosity is gnawing my vitals.

Your modern Pandora, alias

Molly.

XXIII

PETER STORM TO JAMES STRICKLAND

Boston.

Dear Strickland:

Caspian has "let loose the dogs of war" on me, or, rather, the first dog is loose. There will no doubt be others yapping on my track. You'll grin when I tell you the first of the breed was your old henchman, Camera-eyed Dick!

Hotel halls seem to be fatal to me lately. I shall get jumpy going into one. Caspian was lying in wait for me to appear with Miss Moore and the Winstons, we having "lost" the others and gone for a walk. Camera-eyes was with him, and I thought it was touch and go for me. However, I turned the tables by doing the camera-eye act myself. Also, I gave Dick's hand a friendly grip. You remember that he's a Mason? Going away, he contrived to palm me a card with a scrawled address: a small hotel where he was spending the night.

Late in the evening I walked round there, taking it for granted that Dick would be in, and that he had recognized me with certainty despite the lapse of time. I counted on his not giving me away to his employer, so I didn't hurry to pay my respects. And I hadn't trusted the old chap in vain. He was loyal to Caspian, so far as not betraying any instructions he may have had; but he did not mind admitting that he'd come from New York to Boston on receipt of a telegram. I felt I owed him the reward of an explanation, so gave a somewhat garbled one, in which Dick was intensely interested. He confessed that he was "flabbergasted" at sight of "the gentleman he'd come to be introduced to" (me) and for once was disinclined to believe his eyes. He promised silence, refused a reward, as near the V.C. as I'm able to bestow, and I told him to call on you. You're sure to hear from him soon.

This is the second narrow escape I've had within a week. I oughtn't to take these risks till I'm ready to face the consequences, whatever they may be. But I'd do more to be in sight of Patricia Moore's profile which is about all I see of her in the car these days when (in every sense of the word) I'm obliged to take "a back seat." Do, for heaven's sake, finish up your end of the business and give me a free hand, since you yourself say I may in honour take it. I probably should take it even if you said the opposite – that I tell you frankly, as I believe I've told you before. But it's good to have your backing.

I've been to Plymouth to-day, thanks to a chap I've hired to do my work for me, and have returned to Boston, which we shall leave to-morrow for good and all. Caspian had an accident just before starting time – had been out in a taxi on a hurried errand to some shop, and the chauffeur, trying to be helpful, banged the door with C.'s finger in it. The finger was in a glove, or the hurt would have been more serious, but even as it was, when he tried to take the wheel of the G. – G. he found the pain unbearable. I was called – like a male Cinderella – from the ashes (those of a cigarette) and ordered to drive. In an instant the secretary had become the chauffeur. I can do these fairy godmother trick-acts like lightning; and as Miss Moore didn't think it necessary to change her seat, I knew that Fate was going, anyhow, to give me one good day.

I had never been by road from Boston to Plymouth, and as I'd not expected to drive, I hadn't looked up the route. Caspian probably had, but I didn't want help from him, and I determined to die rather than look at a map. You, a Harvard man, no doubt know the way well, though a motor car was a rare if not unknown species of animal when you were an undergrad.

In the beginning it was easy enough. We simply went out of Boston along the road by which we'd come in: past the Arnold Arboretum of which you Harvard fellows are so proud; Forest Hill, parklike Morton Street, and across the Neponset River, where my dear little seat-mate (who couldn't have guessed how I felt to be by her side again) was enraptured with the view of Boston Harbour. She was gayer than I had seen her since that moonlight night when I came to myself – too late, as it turned out; yet I don't feel somehow that it's irrevocably too late. I can't! It was good to hear her laugh again. "Do look," she said, "at the funny little porches on the funny little houses! They put hammocks on ones that are so narrow people have to fall off the porch when they want to get out! Yet see how happy the women look! They must have husbands they love."

Caspian heard, and leaned forward to suppress her. "Patricia, I wouldn't talk so much to the chauffeur if I were you, while he's driving. He doesn't know the way, and he'd better give his attention to the sign-posts."

Of course I could say nothing. But I reminded myself that snubs generally come home to roost. I hoped he'd "get his," as you say, and I hadn't long to wait before poetical justice fell. The man kept up a running fire of information, which he had doubtless culled from a guide-book to impress his fiancée, having no personal interest in history except that it has led up to him. The landscape left him cold; the seas of wild blue chicory and forget-me-not didn't suggest to him the colour of a certain girl's eyes as it did to another chap who had no right to make the comparison. He didn't care for the "Golden Wedding House," or any of the other pretty old houses so beautifully fitted to the pretty old ladies rocking on their "piazzas" under the shade of giant trees. The facts with which he had primed himself, like pocketsful of dry cracknels, were such as "Here" (at East Milton) "was built the first railway in the country. It was horse drawn, and over it was carried" (I think he used the word "transported," which proved the guide-book) "stone from the quarries of Quincy to construct the Bunker Hill Monument." "Here" (at Quincy) "in the middle of the city stands the Stone Temple where are buried the two Presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams."