Nothing But the Truth

“To you?” said Bob cynically.

“Of course.” Firmly, but with faint surprise. “You didn’t think I rejoiced at your misfortune, did you?”

“I didn’t know. I thought it possible.”

The hammer-thrower’s heavy brows drew together. “You seem to have a little misconception of my character,” he observed with a trace of formality. “You were incarcerated, apparently, pro bono publico. I had no hand in it. If I had been consulted, I should have hesitated some time before expressing an opinion.”

“Thanks,” said Bob curtly. Such generous reserve was rather galling, coming from this quarter.

“I’m afraid you don’t mean that,” replied the other. “And it’s a bad habit to say what you don’t mean. However, we are drifting from the subject. You will pardon me for not swallowing, a capite ad calcem, that little Münchhausen explanation of yours.”

“I don’t care whether you swallow it head, neck and breeches, or not,” returned Bob. The other had taken a classical course at college, and Bob conceived he was ponderously trying to show off, just to be annoying. He was adopting a doubly irritating and classical manner of calling Bob a liar. And that young man was not accustomed to being called that – at least, of yore! Maybe he would have to stand it now. It seemed so. “You’re like a good many other people I’ve met lately,” said Bob, not without a touch of weariness as well as bitterness. “You don’t know the truth when you hear it.”

The hammer-thrower drew up his heavy shoulders. “No use abusing me, old chap,” he said in even well-poised tones. “Am I at fault for your unpopularity? Indeed” – as if arguing with himself in his slow heavy fashion – “I fail to understand why you have made yourself unpopular. You seem to have proceeded with deliberate intention. However, that is irrelevant. You say there was some one in your room, or rather the room you were supposed to have vacated; but to which you have unaccountably returned – not, I imagine, by way of the front door.” Severely. “And after entering in burglarious fashion you pursued a phantom. The phantom vanished, leaving you in a compromising position. You expect people to believe that?” Shaking his head.

“I should be surprised if they did,” answered Bob gloomily. “I suppose you’ll tell everybody to-morrow.”

“That’s the question,” said the other seriously. “What is my duty in the matter? I don’t want to do you an irreparable injury, yet appearances certainly seem to indicate that you – ” He hesitated.

“Never mind the Latin for it,” said Bob. “Plain Anglo-Saxon will do. Call me a thief.”

“It’s an ugly word,” said the other reluctantly, “and – well, I don’t wish to be hasty. My father always told me to help a man whenever I could; not to shove him down. And maybe – ” He paused. There was really a nice expression on his strong face.

“Oh, you think I may be only a young offender – a juvenile in crime?” exclaimed Bob bitterly.

“The words are your own,” observed the other. “To tell you the truth,” seriously, “I hardly know what to think. It is all too extraordinary – too unexpected. I’ll have to ponder on it. The profs, at college always said I had the champion slow brain. The peculiar part to me is,” that puzzled look returning to his heavy features, “I can’t understand why you’re making people think what they do of you? Frankly, I don’t believe you’re ‘dippy.’ You were always rather – just what is the word? – ‘mercurial’ – yes; that will do. But your head looks right enough to me.”

“What’s the Latin for ‘Thank you’?” said Bob.

“Do you really think this is a trivial matter?” asked the other, bending a stronger glance upon his visitor. “I believe you are somewhat obligated to me. Please bear that in mind.” With quiet dignity. “As I was saying, your conduct since coming here, seems to baffle explanation – that is, the right one. I wonder what is your ‘lay,’ anyhow? What’s the idea? I like to be able to grasp people.” Forcefully. “And you escape me. I can’t get at the tangible in you. Nor” – with a sudden quick glance – “can Miss Gerald – ”

“Suppose we leave her name out,” said Bob sharply. “You’ve done me a favor which I ought not to have accepted. And I tell you frankly I’d rather have accepted it from any one else in the world.”

“I think I understand,” replied the other quietly, with no show of resentment on his heavy features. “Have a cigar?” Indicating a box on the table.

“I’d rather not.”

“Very well!”

For some moments Bob sat in moody silence. Then suddenly he got up.

“Am I to be permitted to return to my room?” he asked.

“I believe I told you I would consider your case,” said the hammer-thrower.

And Bob passed out. He regained his room without mishap, which rather surprised him. He almost expected to be intercepted by the monocle-man but nothing of the kind happened.

CHAPTER XVI – PLAYING WITH BOB

It took a great deal of courage for Bob to go down to breakfast the next morning. In fact, he had never done anything before in his life that demanded so much courage. He pictured his entrance, anticipating what would happen; he didn’t try to deceive himself. The monocle-man would tap him on the shoulder. “You are my prisoner,” he would say. And then it would be “exit” for Bob amid the exclamations and in the face of the accumulated staring of the company.

Bob wasn’t going to play the craven now, though, so he marched down-stairs and into the breakfast-room, his head well up. With that smile on his lips and the frosty light in his blue eyes, he looked not unlike a young Viking fearlessly presenting a bold brow to the enemy while his ship is sinking beneath him. He acted just as if he hadn’t been away and as if nothing had happened.

“Good-morning, people,” he said in his cheeriest.

For a moment there was a tombstone silence while Bob, not seeming to notice it, dropped down in a convenient place at the table. His vis-a-vis, as luck, or ill-luck would have it, was the monocle-man. Bob felt the shivers stealing over him. But the monocle-man, too, acted as if nothing had happened. He didn’t get up and tap Bob on the shoulder. Perhaps he wished to finish his breakfast first.

“Aw! – Have some toast,” he observed to Bob. “Mrs. Ralston’s toast is really delicious.”

“No,” said Bob airily. “I don’t like that English kind of toast. Makes me think of rusk! No taste to it! Give me good old American toast with plenty of butter on it.”

“Aw!” said the monocle-man.

Bob didn’t stop there. He appealed to the bishop and carried the discussion on to the doctor. He even went so far, a daredevil look in his sanguine blue eyes now, as to ask Miss Gerald’s opinion. Miss Gerald, however, pretended not to hear. Her devoted admirer was close at hand and Bob saw the hammer-thrower’s brows knit at sight of him. Bob in his new mood didn’t care a straw now and looked straight back at the hammer-thrower, as if daring him to do his worst. For an instant he thought the hammer-thrower was going to say something, but he didn’t. Perhaps second thought told him it would be better taste to wait, for he lifted his heavy shoulders with rather a contemptuous or pitying shrug and paid no further attention to luckless Bob.

The latter kept up a gay conversation between bites, professing to be quite unaware of a certain extraordinary reticence with which his light persiflage was received. He looked around to see if Gee-gee and Gid-up were anywhere visible and saw that they were not. This did not surprise him, as theatrical ladies are usually late risers and like to breakfast in their rooms; nor would they be apt to mingle promiscuously with the other guests. Mrs. Ralston, Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were also not about. Bob was thankful Mrs. Ralston needed most of the morning by herself, or with sundry experts, to beautify; he didn’t care to see his hostess just yet. It was hard enough to meet her fair niece, Miss Gerald, under the circumstances.

“I understand we have two new arrivals in the professional entertaining line,” said Bob to the monocle-man.

“Aw! – how interesting!” replied the other. Bob couldn’t get much of a “rise” out of him, though unvaryingly affable in his manner toward the young man. “Try some of this marmalade – do – it’s Scotch, you know. All marmalade ought to be Scotch. Dislike intensely the English make!”

“How unpatriotic!” said Bob cynically. Really, the monocle-man did it very well. He was a fine imitation.

“Aw!” he said once more.

And then Bob began to play with him. Dear old dad who was somewhat of a bibliomaniac had, on one or two of Bob’s vacation trips to London, introduced the lad to many quaint, out-of-the-way nooks and corners. Now Bob drew on the source of information thus gleaned and angled with his one-eye-glassed neighbor. But the monocle-man fenced beautifully; he knew more than Bob. And when the latter had exhausted himself, the monocle-man, with a few twinkles behind his staring window-pane, played with Bob. He showed him as a mere child for ignorance of the subject, and drawled so brilliantly that some of the others became interested, though professing not to see that Bob was there. When the monocle-man had finished, Bob felt abashed. He gazed upon the other with new and wondrous respect. He had attempted the infantile and amateurish game of unmasking the other – of exhibiting his crass ignorance and letting the others draw their own conclusions – and he had been literally overwhelmed in his efforts.

Having shown Bob the futility of trying to play with him, the monocle-man again offered Bob the marmalade. His manner of doing it made Bob think of a jailer who believed in the humane treatment of prisoners and who liked to see them well-fed. Bob for the second time refused the marmalade and did it most emphatically. Whereupon the monocle-man smiled.

At that moment Bob met the gaze of the temperamental young thing. There were dark rings under her eyes and she looked paler than he had ever seen her. Also, there was a certain fascinated wonder, not unmixed with some deeper feeling, in her expression. She was, no doubt, absolutely astounded to see Bob there, and talking with the monocle-man. Bob surmised she would be waiting for him somewhere later to express herself, and he was not mistaken. Bob got up. As he did so, he glanced at the monocle-man. Would he be permitted to go, or would the denouement now happen? Would the other, alas, arise?

He did nothing of the kind. He let Bob have a little more line. He even suffered him to walk away, at the same time smiling once more at vacancy or the rack of toast. Of course the temperamental young thing hailed Bob shortly after he was out of the room. He expected that. She came hurrying up to him, excitement and terror in her eyes.

“Flee!” she whispered.

“I won’t do it,” answered Bob sturdily.

“Why did you come back?” Agitatedly, “What a rash thing to do! Like walking into the lions’ den.”

“Well, the principal lion was nice and polite, anyhow.”

“Could you not see he was only just” – she sought for a word – “dallying with you?”

“He made me see that,” Bob confessed rather gloomily. “He made me feel like thirty cents. I guess he’s got my goat. And to think I thought him a blamed fool. I tell you I’m learning something these days; I’m taking a course they don’t have in college, all right.”

“Why do you waste time talking?” said the girl. “Every moment is precious. Go, or you are lost.”

“That sounds like the stage,” replied Bob.

She came closer, her temperamental gaze burning. “Will this make you serious?” she asked almost fiercely. “I told.”

“Eh?”

“I told all,” she repeated.

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Hum!” said Bob. “That makes it a little worse, that is all.”

“I was mad,” she said, “at the way you – you – ”

“I think I understand.”

“Why – why don’t you get angry and – ”

“And curse you the way they do in plays?” He laughed a little mirthlessly. “What’s the use? It wouldn’t do any good if I dragged you around by the hair.”

“It’s just that attitude of yours,” she said, breathing hard, “that has made me perfectly furious.”

“Who’d you tell?” Bob eyed her contemplatively.

“Lord Stan – The monocle-man, as you call him.”

“Whew!” Bob whistled. “You went straight to headquarters, didn’t you?”

“He came up to me on the porch just after you had left, and – and – ”

“It’s quite plain,” said Bob gently. “You couldn’t hold in. Don’t know as I ought to blame you much.”

“I wish you wouldn’t act like that,” she returned passionately. “Don’t you hate me?”

He looked at her from his superior height. “No. Now that I think of it, you only did the right and moral thing. After all” – he seemed to be speaking from the hammer-thrower’s high judicial plane – “it was your duty to tell.”

“Duty!” she shot back at him. “I didn’t do it for that, or” – with sudden scorn – “because it was the moral thing. I did it because – because you – you had hurt me and – and I wanted to hurt you the worst way – the very worst way I could – ”

“Well, that sounds very human,” replied Bob soothingly. “It’s the old law. Eye for an eye! Tit for tat! Quid pro quo!” That hammer-thrower was getting him into the Latin habit.

“You must not speak like that. You must hate me – despise me – I betrayed you – betrayed – ”

Bob looked at her sympathetically. She really was suffering. “Oh, no, you didn’t. You only thought you did,” he said.

“I did! I did! And afterward I felt like Salome with the head of John the Baptist.”

Bob twisted his handsome head and lifted a hand to his neck. “Well, it’s really not so bad as that,” he returned in a tone intended to be consoling. “Anyhow, it’s very brave of you to come and tell me about it.”

“Brave!” she scoffed, the temperamental breast rising. “Why, I just blurted it all right out – how I discovered you in my room – how I turned on the light and how you dropped the brooch to the floor!”

For a few moments both were silent. Then Bob spoke: “How’d it be, if we called bygones, bygones, and just be friends?” he said gravely. “Honestly, I believe I could like you an awful lot as a friend.”

“Don’t!” she said hoarsely. “Or – or I can’t hold in. My! but you are good.”

“Isn’t that the sound of music?” said Bob suddenly.

“I – I believe it is.”

“A tango, by jove! Think of tangoing right after breakfast! Some one is beginning early. What are we coming to in these degenerate days?” Bob wanted to take her thoughts off that other disagreeable subject. His own sudden and unexpected appearance had, no doubt, been quite upsetting to those other guests. That tango music had a wild irresponsible sound, as if the some one who was banging the concert-grand in the big music salon was endeavoring to turn the general trend of fancy into more symphonious channels. He, or she, was a musical good Samaritan. Bob held out a ceremonious arm to the temperamental young thing. “Shall we?” he said. “Why not?”

“You mean – ?”

“Tango with me? That is, if you are not above tangoing with a – ”

She slipped an uncertain little hand on his arm.

“It may be my last, for a long time,” he said gaily. “While we live, let us live.”

But when they entered they saw it was the man with the monocle who sat at the big, wonderfully carved piano. His fingers were fairly flying; his face was a bit more twisted up to keep the monocle from falling off, while he was flinging his hands about over the keys. At sight of him, the temperamental little thing breathed quickly and would have drawn back, but Bob drew her forward. The monocle-man’s face did not change as he glanced over his shoulder to regard them; he had a faculty for hitting the right keys without looking. Bob put a big reassuring arm about a slim waist. He tangoed only to show the temperamental little thing that he forgave her. But her feet were not so light as ordinarily and the dance rather dragged. Once Bob looked down; why, she wasn’t much bigger than a child.

“Friends?” he asked.

Her little hand clutched tighter for answer, and the monocle-man played more madly. It was as if he were making the puppets fly around while he pulled the strings. He seemed having the best kind of a time. There was now a whimsical look in his eyes as they followed Bob.

That was one of the longest days Bob ever knew. The temperamental thing had told him they were coming to arrest him. Well, why didn’t they? His appearing unexpectedly on the spot like that may have caused them to change their minds. He included in the “them” Mrs. Ralston and her niece and he could only conclude they all meant to “dally” with him, in Miss Dolly’s phraseology, a little longer. But surely they had enough evidence to go right ahead and let justice (?) take its course. What the temperamental little thing had confessed would be quite sufficient in itself, for their purpose.

Bob began to get impatient; he didn’t like being “dallied” with. In his desperate mood, he desired to meet the issue at once and since “it” was bound to happen, he wanted it to happen right off. Then he would robustly proclaim his innocence – aye, and fight for it with all his might. He was in a fighting mood.

Mrs. Ralston’s demeanor toward him – when in the natural order of events he was obliged to meet that lady – added to his feeling of utter helplessness. She, like the monocle-man, acted as if nothing had happened, seeming to see nothing extraordinary or surprising in his being there. She treated him just as if he hadn’t been away and talked in the most natural manner about the weather or other commonplace topics. She was graciousness itself, even demanding playfully if he hadn’t thought of any more French compliments?

Bob stammered he had not. The fact that Miss Gerald was near and overheard all they said didn’t add to his mental composure. Gwendoline’s violet eyes had such a peculiar look. Bob hoped and prayed she would preserve that manner of cold and haughty aloofness. He wouldn’t have exchanged a word with her now for all the world, if he had had any choice in the matter. Did she divine his inward shrinking from any further talk with her? Did she realize she was the one especial person Bob didn’t want to converse with, under the circumstances? It may be she did so realize; also, that she deliberately sought to add to his discomfiture. Possibly, she felt no punishment could be too great for one who had sunk so low as he had.

At any rate, the day was yet young when, like a proud princess, she stood suddenly before him. Bob had taken refuge in that summer-house where she had proposed (ha! ha!) to him. He had been noting that Mrs. Ralston seemed to have several new gardeners working for her and it had flashed across his mind that these gardeners were of the monocle-man type. They were imitation gardeners. One kept a furtive eye on Bob. He was under surveillance. Now he could understand why the monocle-man let him flutter this way and that, with seeming unconcern. Oh, he was being dallied with, sure enough! That monocle-man was argus-eyed. Bob had had a sample of his cleverness at the breakfast-table.

Miss Gerald’s shadow fell abruptly at Bob’s feet. He saw it before he saw her – a radiant, accusing patrician presence. The girl carried a golf stick, but there was no caddy in sight.

“Mr. Bennett,” said Miss Gerald, with customary directness, “do you know who poisoned my aunt’s dog?”

Bob scrambled to his feet awkwardly. Her loveliness alone was enough to embarrass him. “No,” he said.

“He was poisoned that night you left,” she said, and went on studying him.

Bob pondered heavily. If the dog had been killed with a golf stick for example, he might have been to blame. “You are sure he was poisoned?” he asked with an effort.

“Certainly.” In surprise.

“Well, I didn’t do it,” said Bob.

“Were you in any way responsible for it?” She stood like an angel of the flaming sword in the doorway, where the sunlight framed her figure. She rather intoxicated poor Bob.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said. Of course the commodore might have poisoned the dog, but it was unlikely. Probably that inside-operator, or his outside pal had “done the deed.” A dog would be in their way.

Miss Gerald considered. “There is another question I should like to ask you, Mr. Bennett,” she said presently.

“Go on,” returned Bob, with dark forebodings.

“Are you a sleep-walker?”

“No.”

“Then why do you go wandering around nights when every one else has retired? Last night, for example?”

“So that hammer-thrower told you, did he?” remarked Bob. “I thought he would.”

“Do you blame him?”

“Oh, I suppose it was his duty.” Every one seemed “telling” on Bob just at present.

“You do not deny it?”

“Why should I?”

“Then we may accept his version of the story?”

“Yes. I presume it was correct.”

Again Miss Gerald remained thoughtful and Bob glanced out toward the gardeners. One of them seemed to have edged nearer. Bob smiled a little glumly. After having caught him in the web, the spiders were now winding the strands around and around him. Spiders do that when they don’t want to devour their victim right off. They mummify the victim, as it were, and tuck him away for the morrow.

“Why” – the accusing presence was again speaking – “did you go down-stairs that first night of your arrival, after all the household had retired?”

Bob would have given a great deal not to answer that, but he had to. “I was showing some people out.”

“Your accomplices?”

“They might be called that.” Miserably. He wouldn’t “give away” Dan and the others, unless he had to – unless truth compelled him to designate them by name as his accomplices.

“Are you aware, Mr. Bennett, of the seriousness of your answer?”

“Yes, I know. But how did you know – that I went down-stairs?”

“I thought I heard some one go down. And then I got up and you went by my door, and I looked out, ever so quietly. You went in Dolly’s room and she woke up and caught you trying to take her brooch.”

Bob was silent. What was the use of talking?

“Well, why don’t you speak?”

“It is true I went in Miss Dolly’s room, but I thought it was my room,” said Bob monotonously. “It was a mistake.” And Bob told how the brooch happened to fall to the floor. Strange to say, truth didn’t ring in his accents. He hadn’t much confidence at that moment in the old saw that truth is mighty and will prevail. Truth wasn’t mighty; it was a monster that sucked your heart’s blood. And Bob gazed once more with that famished look upon Miss Gerald. He found her a joy to the eye. Though she stood in a practical pose, the curves of her gracious and proud young figure were like ardent lines of poetry in a matutinal and passionate hymn to beauty. And Bob’s lips straightway yearned to sing hexameters to loveliness in the abstract – and in the flesh – instead of plodding along half-heartedly through unconvincing and purposeless explanations.

“You certainly do look fine to-day!” burst from Bob. It wasn’t exactly a hexameter nor yet an iambic mode of expression. But it had to come out.

Roses blossomed on the girl’s proud cheek. Bob’s explosive and uncontrollable ardency would have been disconcerting, under any circumstances, but under such as those of the present – Miss Gerald’s eyes flashed.

“Isn’t – isn’t that rather irrelevant?” she said after a moment’s pause.

“I – yes, I guess it is,” confessed Bob, and his head slowly fell. He looked at the hard marble pavement.

A moment the girl stood with breast stirring, like an indignant goddess. “Have you – have you any information to volunteer?” she said at length icily.

“Oh, I don’t have to volunteer,” answered Bob. And then rushed on to a Niagara of disaster. “Why don’t you ask that hammer-thrower? I suppose you’d believe anything” – he couldn’t keep back the bitter jealousy – “he tells you.”

An instant eyes met eyes. Bob’s now were stubborn, if forlorn and miserable. They braved the indignant, outraged violet ones. He even laughed, savagely, moodily. What would he not have given if she would only believe him, instead of – ? But it was not to be. Yet this girl had his very soul. His miserable and forlorn eyes told her that. Whose eyes would have turned first, in that visual contest is a matter of uncertainty, for just then the enthusiastic voice of Gee-gee was heard “through the land.”

“Why, Mr. Bennett – you here? So glad to see you!”