Nothing But the Truth

Her query worked the expected havoc, all right. Bob’s jaw fell. Then his eyes began to flash with a new fierce love-light. He couldn’t help it. Marry her? – Great Scott! – She, asking him, if he would? He felt his pulses beating faster and the blood pumping in his veins. His arms went out – very eager, strong, primitive arms they looked – that cave-man kind! Arms that seize resistless maidens and enfold them, willy-nilly! Miss Gerald really should have felt much alarmed, especially as there was so much doubt as to Bob’s sanity. It’s bad enough to be alone with an ordinary crazy man, but a crazy man who is in love with one? That is calculated to be a rather unusual and thrilling experience.

However, though Miss Gerald may have entertained a few secret fears and possible regrets for her own somewhat mad precipitancy, she managed to maintain a fair semblance of composure. She had the courage to “stand by” the coup. She was like a tall lily that seems to hold itself unafraid before the breaking of the tempest. She did not even draw back, though she threw her head back slightly. And in her eyes was a challenge. Not a love challenge, though Bob could not discern that! His own gaze was too blurred.

Miss Gerald suddenly drew in her breath quickly, as one who felt she would need her courage now. Almost had Bob, in that moment of forgetfulness, drawn her into his arms and so completed the paradoxical picture of himself, when the impulse was abruptly arrested. He seemed suddenly to awaken to a saner comprehension of the requirements of the moment. His arms fell to his side.

“That’s a joke, of course,” he said hoarsely.

“And if it wasn’t?” she challenged him. There was mockery now in her eyes, and her figure had relaxed.

“You affirm it isn’t?”

“I said if it wasn’t?”

“I guess you win,” said Bob wearily. These extremes of emotion were wearing on the system.

“You mean you wouldn’t, even if I had really, actually – ?”

“I mean you certainly do know how to ‘even up’ with a chap. When he doesn’t dare dream of heaven, you suddenly pretend to fling open the golden gates and invite him to enter.”

“Like St. Peter,” said the girl.

“Ah, you are laughing,” said Bob bitterly, and dropped his head. Her assurance was regal. “As if it wasn’t hard enough, anyway, to get you out of my darn-fool head,” he murmured reproachfully.

“Then you reject me?” said the girl, moving toward the entrance. “Good! I mean, bad! So humiliating to have been rejected! Good night, Mr. Bennett. No – it isn’t necessary for you to accompany me to the house. I really couldn’t think of troubling you after your unkind refusal to – ”

Bob groaned. “I say, there is always your aunt, you know, who can ask me to vacate the – ” he called out.

“I’ll think about it,” said the lady. A faint perfume was wafted past him and the vision vanished. Bob sank down on the cold marble seat.

He remained thus for some time, oblivious to the world, when another car, en route from the village to the house, purred past him, spitting viciously, however, between purrs. Bob didn’t even look around. Spit! – spit! – purr! – purr! – Its two lights were like the eyes of some monster pussy-cat, on the war-path for trouble. Spit! – it seemed in a horribly vicious mood. More “spits” than “purrs,” now! Then the car stopped, though it was some distance from the house.

“Curse this old rattletrap!” said a man’s voice.

“Oh, I guess no one’ll pay any attention to it,” spoke another occupant. “Besides, it was the only one to be had at the station, and we had to get here quick.”

“You bet! The quicker, the better,” observed a third man.

They all got out, not far from where Bob sat in the dark gazing into a void, but he did not notice. Cars might come, and cars might go, for all of him. He was dimly aware of the sound of voices but he had no interest in guests, newly-arrived or otherwise. One of the trio paid the driver of the car and it purred back, somewhat less viciously, from whence it came.

“Better separate when we get near the house and approach it carefully,” said the first speaker in low tense tones. “We’ve got to get hold of him without anybody knowing it.”

“That’s right. Wouldn’t do to let them” – with significant accent – “know what we’ve come for,” said the second man. The trio were quite out of ear-shot of Bob, by now.

“Hope it’ll turn out all right,” spoke the third anxiously. “Why, in heaven’s name, didn’t we think of this in the first place?”

“Can’t think of every contingency!” answered the first speaker viciously. “Our plan now is to get hold of one of the servants. A nice fat tip, and then – Come on! No time to waste!”

As they made their way up the driveway to the house Bob looked drearily around. His eyes noted and mechanically followed the trio of dark forms. He saw them stop near the house; then he observed one approach a side window and peer in. A moment later another approached another window and peered in.

“That’s funny!” thought Bob, without any particular emotion. At the same time, he recalled that a band of burglars had been going about, looting country-houses. Perhaps these fellows were after a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewels? There might be half a million dollars’ worth of jewelry sprinkled about among Mrs. Ralston’s guests. But what did it matter? The presence of these intruders seemed too trifling a matter to think about now, and Bob sank into another reverie.

How long he remained thus, he did not know. The laughter and talk of a number of guests, coming out the front way (end of a “trot,” probably) aroused him and Bob got up.

As he did so, he fancied he saw again the three men he had noticed, then forgotten, slip around toward the back of the house. Throughout the gardens, the moonlight made clear spots on the ground where the bright rays sifted through the foliage or shone down between the trees, and they had to skip across one of these bright places to get around somewhere behind the big mansion. Undoubtedly, the appearance from the house of the guests who wanted to cool off had startled the intruders and inspired a desire to make themselves less conspicuous for the time being. Bob entertained a vague impression that the conduct of the trio was rather crude and amateurish, though that didn’t worry him. He didn’t care whether they were full-fledged yeggmen of the smoothest class, or only bungling artists, a discredit to their profession. He dismissed consideration of them as quickly again as he had done before.

A yawn escaped his lips, and it rather surprised him that a broken-hearted man could yawn. He looked at his watch, holding it in the moonlight, and saw that it was late enough now so that he could retire if he wished, without violating, to any great degree, that even-tenor-of-his-way clause. Accordingly Bob got up and walked toward the house. A side door was open and he went in that way and up to his room. He was glad he didn’t encounter any one – that is, any one he had to speak to. The monocle-man drifted by him somewhere, but Bob didn’t have to pay much attention to him. He could imagine the superior way in which the Britisher had informed Miss Gerald that he found him (Bob) an “interesting young man.” The monocle-man and the bishop seemed to agree on that point.

Undressing hastily, Bob flung himself into bed. He had gone through so much he was tired and scarcely had he touched the sheets when the welcoming arms of Morpheus claimed him. His sleep was sound – very sound! In fact, it was so sound that something occurred and he didn’t know it. It occurred again – several times – and still he did not know it. Another interval! – a long one! Bob yet slept the sleep of the overwrought. His fagged brain was trying to readjust itself. He could have slept right through to the dawn, but this was not to be. Long before the glowing god made its appearance in the east, Bob was rudely yanked from the arms of Morpheus.

CHAPTER IX – ANOTHER SURPRISE

Three men were in his room and Bob found himself sitting up in bed and blinking at them. The lights they had turned on seemed rather bright.

“Hello!” said Bob.

“Hello yourself!” said the commodore in a low but nasty manner. “And not so loud!”

“Some sleeper, you are!” spoke Dickie in a savage whisper.

“Believe he heard, all right!” came Clarence’s hushed, unamiable tones. “Perverse beast, and pretended not to!”

Bob hugged his knees with his arms. “You’ve torn your pants,” he observed to the commodore.

“Never you mind that” as guardedly, though no more pleasantly than before.

“Oh, all right,” said Bob meekly. He didn’t ask any questions, nor did he exhibit any curiosity. There couldn’t anything happen now that would make matters much worse. But in that, he was “reckoning without his host.”

“Got in the window, of course,” he observed in a low unconcerned tone, as if their coming and being there after midnight was the most natural occurrence in the world. “Not so hard to get in, with that balcony out there. All you had to do was to ‘shin up’ and then there’s that trellis to help. Good strong trellis, too. Regular Jacob’s ladder! Easiest thing for burglars! Thought you were burglars,” he added contemplatively.

“You mean you saw us?” snapped the commodore, almost forgetting his caution. His expression matched his tone. He was no longer the jovial sailorman; he wore now a regular Dick Deadeye look. To Bob’s comprehensive glance he appeared like a fragment in a revival of Pinafore.

“Oh, I didn’t know it was you,” said Bob.

“Where were you?”

“Summer-house.”

“Think of that,” murmured the commodore, disgustedly. “Bird at hand, and we didn’t know it. Fool of a bird had to hop away and make us all this trouble!”

“I told you I thought you were burglars,” observed Bob patiently. He didn’t care how they abused him or what names they called him.

That disagreeable look on Dan’s face was replaced by a startled one. “Good gracious, man” – only that wasn’t the expression he used – “I hope you haven’t told any one you saw burglars prowling around? Nice for us if you did!” As he spoke he gazed anxiously toward the window, before which they had taken the precaution to draw a heavy drape after entering.

“No, I didn’t tell a soul.”

“But – I don’t understand why you didn’t when you thought – ?”

“I ought to have spoken, I suppose,” said Bob with a melancholy smile. “But it didn’t seem very important and – I guess I forgot. These little jewel robberies are getting to be such commonplace occurrences!”

The commodore stared at him. Then he touched his forehead. “A lot of trouble you’ve made for us,” he said, speaking in that low tense voice, while Clarence and Dickie looked on in mad and reproachful fashion. “Bribed a servant to tell you to slip out! Told him to whisper that we were waiting in the garden and simply had to see you at once! Didn’t you hear him rap on your door?”

“No,” answered Bob sorrowfully.

“Heavens, man! believe you’d sleep through an earthquake and cyclone combined! Servant came back and told us he’d tapped on your door as loudly as he dared. Was afraid he’d arouse the whole house if he knocked louder. When you leave a ‘call’ at the hotels, how do they manage? Break down the door with an ax?”

Bob overlooked the sarcasm. The commodore might have thumped him with an ax, at the moment, and he wouldn’t have protested very hard. He murmured a contrite apology.

“Get my telegram?” said the commodore.

“Yes. What could you have been thinking about when you sent it? How could I leave when I had to stay? Thought you must have been sailing pretty close in the wind at the yacht club, when you dashed it off! Could just feel your main-sail fluttering.”

The commodore swore softly but effectively. Clarence and Dickie murmured something, too. Bob hugged his knees closer. Being so unhappy himself, he couldn’t but feel a dull sympathy when he saw any one else put out.

“See here,” said the commodore, “what’s the situation? We never dreamed, of course, that you would come here. Have you been talking with Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence? Dickie’s been conjuring all kinds of awful things you might have told them, if they cornered you and you got that truth-telling stunt going. Dickie’s got an imagination. Too confounded much imagination!” Here the commodore wiped his brow. That was quite a bad tear in his pants but he appeared oblivious to it. “Maybe you would have thought it a capital way to turn the tables on us poor chaps?” he went on, stabbing Bob with a baleful look. “Perhaps you came here on purpose?”

“No,” said Bob, “I couldn’t have done that, of course, owing to the conditions.” And he related what had happened to bring him there.

Dan groaned. “Why, it was we, ourselves, who steered him right up against her at the Waldorf. It was we who got him asked down here. I suppose you’ve been chuckling ever since you came?” Turning on Bob, with a correct imitation of Mr. Deadeye, at his grouchiest moment.

“No,” said Bob, speaking to immeasurable distance, “I haven’t done any chuckling since I came here. Nary a chuckle!”

“Let’s get down to brass tacks,” interrupted Dickie, “and learn if our worst apprehensions are realized. There’s a girl down here I think a lot of and I’d like to know if, by any chance, any conversation you may have had with her turned on me. I allude to Miss Dolly – ”

“Hold on,” said the commodore. “That’s not very important. Suppose she should have found out a few things about you? You aren’t married. It’s different in the case of married men, like Clarence and me here. We’ll dismiss Miss Dolly, if you please, for the present – ”

“I really haven’t said anything to Miss Dolly about you,” said Bob to Dickie. “Your name hasn’t been mentioned between us.” He was glad he could reassure one of them, at least. He wouldn’t have had Dickie so sorrowful as himself for the world.

That young man looked immensely relieved. It may be he experienced new hope of leading the temperamental young thing to the altar, and incidentally consummating a consolidation of competing chimneys, conveniently contiguous. “Thanks, old chap,” he said, and shook Bob’s hand heartily.

“But what about us?” whispered the commodore sibilantly. “Have you talked with Mrs. Clarence or Mrs. Dan to any great extent?”

“I haven’t had hardly a word with Mrs. Clarence,” answered Bob, whereupon Clarence began to “throw out his chest,” the way Dickie had done.

The commodore shifted uneasily, seeming to find difficulty in continuing the conversation. He moved back and forth once or twice, but realizing he was making a slight noise, stood still again, and looked down at Bob.

“Talk much with Mrs. Dan?” he at length asked nervously.

“I did have a little conversation with Mrs. Dan,” Bob was forced to reply. “Or, I should say, to be strictly truthful, rather a long conversation. You see, I took her in to dinner.”

The commodore showed signs of weakness. He seemed to have very indecisive legs all of a sudden. “Talk about me?” he managed to ejaculate.

“Some. I’m not certain just how much.”

“What – what was said?”

“I can’t remember all. It’s very confused. I’ve had a lot of conversations, you see, and most of them awfully unpleasant. I remember, though, that Mrs. Dan impressed me as a very broad-minded lady. Said she had lived in Paris, and was not a bit jealous.”

“What!” Dan was breathing hard.

“Said she always wanted you to have the best kind of a time.”

“Did she say that?” asked the commodore. “And you believed it? Go on.” In a choked voice. “Did you tell her about that cabaret evening?”

“I believe it was mentioned, incidentally.”

“Say I was there?” put in Clarence quickly. He was losing that “chestiness.”

“I rather think I did. I – what is that?” Bob looked toward the window. There was a sound below at the foot of the balcony. Some one turned out the light in the room and Bob strode to the window and looked out. “It’s a dog,” he said. “He’s snuffing around at the foot.”

“He’s doing more than snuffing,” observed the commodore apprehensively, as at that moment a bark smote the air. They stood motionless and silent. The dog stopped barking, but went on snuffing. Maybe it would go away after a moment, and they waited. Dickie and the commodore had thrashed out that question of dogs. With so many guests around, they had figured that, of course, they would be dog-safe. Didn’t they look like guests? How could a dog tell the difference between them and a guest? It is true, they hadn’t been expecting so much trouble as they had been put to, to find Bob. They had, in that little balcony-climbing feat, rather exceeded what they had expected to be called on to do. In their impatience, they had acted somewhat impetuously, but it had looked just as easy, after the servant had pointed out the room and told them Bob was in, as certain sounds from his bed indubitably indicated.

They couldn’t very well enter the house as self-invited guests, though they, of course, would have been made welcome. They couldn’t very well say they had all changed their minds about those original invitations which had naturally included husbands as well as wives. After all three had declined to come on account of business, it would certainly look like collusion, if all three found they hadn’t had urgent business, at all, in town. If anything untoward or disastrous had happened in the conversational line, with Bob as the Demon God, Truth, their sudden entrance upon the stage of festivities, would seem to partake of inner perturbation; it might even appear to be a united and concentrated case of triple guilty conscience. This, obviously, must be avoided at any cost. How they had heard Bob was here at the Ralston house, matters not. Naturally they had kept tab on his movements, where he went and what he did being of some moment to them.

The dog barked again. Thereupon, a window opened and they knew that some one had been aroused.

“He’s looking out. It’s the monocle-chap,” whispered Bob.

“Who’s he?”

“One of Mrs. Ralston’s importations. Belonged to that Anglo-English colony when she did that little emigration act in dear old London.”

“Hang it, we’ve got to get out,” whispered the commodore nervously. No matter what had been said; no matter what the Demon God of Truth had done, it was incumbent on them not to remain longer, with that dog looking up toward Bob’s window and making that spasmodic racket. Some one might get up and go out and see footprints, or a disturbed trellis. The commodore forgot a certain desperate business proposition, apropos of that confounded wager, he had come to put to Bob. That infernal dog got on his nerves and put that other matter, which would settle this truth-telling stunt at once, right out of his mind.

It was all very well, however, to say they “had to get out,” but it was another matter to tell how they were going to do it. They couldn’t descend the way they had come, and meet doggie. Bob arose to the occasion.

“I can let you into the hall and show you downstairs, to that side door on the other side of the house. You can take one of my golf sticks, just as a safeguard, but I think you’ll be able to circumvent the jolly little barker without being obliged to use it.”

“What kind of a dog is it?” whispered the commodore who had a pronounced aversion to canines.

“Looked like a smallish dog. Might be a bull.”

“Better give us each a club,” suggested Clarence in a weak voice.

Which Bob did. The dog renewed the vocal performance, and – “Hurry,” whispered the commodore. “Find means to communicate with you to-morrow, Mr. Bennett.” Bob didn’t resent the formality of this designation, which implied to what depths he had fallen in good old Dan’s estimation. “Can we get down-stairs without any one hearing us?”

Bob thought they could. Anyhow, they would have to try, so he opened the door softly and led the way. Fortunately, the house was solidly built and not creaky. They attained down-stairs safely, and at last reached the side door without causing any disturbance. Bob unfastened the door, the key turned noiselessly and they looked out. There was no sign of any living thing on lawn or garden on this side of the house.

“Out you go quickly,” murmured Bob, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. His position was not a particularly agreeable one. Suppose one of the servants, on an investigating tour as to the cause of doggie’s perturbation, should chance upon him (Bob) showing three men out of the house in that secret manner at this time of night?

But before disappearing into the night, the commodore took time to whisper: “Was Gee-gee’s name mentioned?”

“I fear so,” said Bob sadly.

The commodore wasted another second or two to tell Bob fiercely what he thought of him and how they would “fix” him on the morrow, after which he sprang out and darted away like a rabbit.

Bob wanted to call out that they were welcome to “fix” him, but he was afraid that others beside Dan might hear him, so he closed and locked the door carefully and stood there alone in the great hall, in his dressing-gown. Then he sat down in a dark corner and listened. Better wait until all was quiet, he told himself, before retracing his steps to his room. The dog seemed to have stopped barking altogether now and soon any persons it might have awakened would be asleep again. His trio of visitors must be well on their way to the village by this time, he thought. He was sorry the commodore seemed to feel so bad. And Clarence? – poor Clarence! That last look of his haunted Bob. Anyhow, he was pleased Dickie had, so far, escaped his (Bob’s) devastating touch.

How long he sat there he did not know. Probably only a few moments. A big clock ticked near by, which was the only sound now to be heard. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had better return to his room, and wearily he arose. Up-stairs it seemed darker than it had been when he had left his room. He had the dim lights in the great hall below to guide him then. Now it was a little more difficult. However, after traversing without mishap a few gloomy corridors – he realized what a big house it really was – he reached, at last, his room near the end of one of the upper halls and entered.

He had a vague idea he had left his door partly ajar, but he wasn’t sure; probably he hadn’t, for it was now closed; or maybe a draft of air had closed it. Groping his way in the dark for his bed, he ran against a chair. This ruffled his temper somewhat as the sharp edge had come in contact with that sensitive part of the anatomy, known as the shin-bone. He felt for his bed, but it wasn’t there where it ought to be. He must have got turned around coming in. His fingers ran over a dresser. Some of the articles on it seemed strange to him. He thought he heard a rustle and stood still, with senses alert, experiencing a regular burglar-feeling at the moment. He hadn’t become so ossified to emotion as he had supposed. But everything was now as silent as the grave. Again his hand swept out, to learn where he was, and again his fingers swept over the dresser. What were all those confounded things? He didn’t know he had left so much loose junk lying around. And where was that confounded switch-button?

At that moment some one else found it, for the room became suddenly flooded with light. Bob started back, and as he did so, something fell from the dresser to the floor. He stared toward the bed in amazement and horror. Some one, with the clothes drawn up about her, was sitting up. Bob wasn’t the only one who had a surprise that night. The temperamental, little dark thing was treated to one, too. Above the white counterpane, she stared at Bob.

CHAPTER X – INTO BONDAGE

She continued to stare for some moments, while he stood frozen to the spot. Then the young lady’s face changed. Fear, startled wonder, gave way to an expression of growing comprehension and into her eyes came such an excited look.

“You!” said Miss Dolly in a thrilling whisper. And then – “Pick it up, please.”

Instead of picking anything up – he didn’t know what – Bob was about to rush for the door, when – “Stop! Or I’ll scream,” exclaimed Miss Dolly. “I’ll scream so loud I’ll wake every one in the house.”

Bob stopped. In his eyes was an agony of contrition and shame. Miss Dolly, however, seemed quite self-possessed. She might have been frightened at first, but she was no longer that. Her temperamental, somewhat childish face wore a thrill of pleasurable anticipation. “Now pick it up,” she repeated.