Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 484
“Then don’t do it, Penrod. You will injure your eyes, doing it so much.”
“I won’t either, Mamma.”
“I don’t know, but I think it might; I’m going to ask the doctor. What makes you do it, if they don’t pain you?”
Penrod was annoyed. “Nothin’,” he muttered.
After dinner, he disappeared (as was his summer privilege) until nine o’clock, his bedtime, and presently he was moving slowly on all fours along the latticework below the front verandah. Unfortunately for his mystic purposes, Margaret glanced down over the railing in the course of a little tour she appeared to be making to points of interest about the verandah.
“Don’t play around here, Penrod,” she said, and there was a businesslike tone in her voice. “You’ll catch cold from the dew on the grass, and if you don’t find something healthier to do, I’ll have to call Mother.”
Penrod made no audible reply, but rose and sauntered away. However, she seated herself on the railing, and glanced frequently over her shoulder, chatting gaily with Mr. Dade all the while, and George B. Jashber, after watching for some time this exhibition of a vigilance equal to his own, extricated himself noiselessly from a clump of lilac, entered the house by way of the kitchen, went up the back stairs, came down the front stairs, then, after a moment’s debate, tiptoed through the hall and seated himself quietly upon the floor just outside the open door of the library. He had caught words from the two cribbage players that acutely interested him.
“Well, I’d just like to know who he is,” Mr. Schofield was saying. “I don’t like to have every Tom, Dick and Harry to dinner without knowing anything at all about them.”
“But Mr. Dade seems to be a very pleasant young man,” Mrs. Schofield said mildly. “He has nice manners — —”
“ ’Manners’!” Mr. Schofield interrupted. “Anybody can have good manners. Why, I knew a horse-thief once that had beautiful manners.”
A low vocal flutter, soprano, betokened Mrs. Schofield’s amusement. “Mr. Dade isn’t a horse-thief, I fancy,” she murmured.
“There’s something a little slick about him,” her husband grumbled. “I’d like to know more about him if he’s going on coming to the house this much.”
“Why, Margaret met him at the church fair last month,” Mrs. Schofield explained.
“Anybody can go to a church fair; that’s what they’re for.”
“But he knows all the girls of Margaret’s set.”
“Met ’em all at the church fair?”
Mrs. Schofield laughed again. “They’re all excited about him, because he’s so good-looking and different. You’re worse than Penrod. As soon as a young man shows the slightest interest in Margaret, you decide there’s something queer about him. Mr. Dade has good manners; he dresses well; he’s very good-looking — in fact, he’s handsome — and he’s traveled, because he speaks familiarly of every city in the country; but — —”
“But we don’t know,” he took her up emphatically, “what business he’s in, where he comes from, or even where he stays in this town. He hasn’t mentioned — —”
“But he did! The last time he was here, he told me he came from Gosport, Illinois.”
“Well, where does he live here in town?”
“I don’t know.”
“No,” Mr. Schofield said grimly. “And what business is he in?”
Mrs. Schofield, a little piqued, replied, with satire: “He didn’t happen to mention that either, so I suppose that leaves us no option. Probably you’re right; he must be a professional horse-thief.”
Naturally, she had little expectation that this remark would be accepted at its face value; but it was not the habit of George B. Jashber to take sarcasm into account, except when uttered in either a savage or a mocking tone of voice; and he forthwith came to the simple conclusion that both his parents suspected Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade’s business, or profession, to be that of stealing horses. This conclusion, coinciding with the trend of his own impressions, gave him a great moment. He rose in silence; his fingers stole to his jacket pocket and took therefrom a well-whittled object of wood — the sketchy likeness of an ottomatick. He returned it to his pocket, and, after the proper heave of his shoulders, moved silently toward the open front door.
He halted, hearing his name spoken from the verandah.
“You mean Penrod?” Margaret said.
“If that’s what you call your little brother — yes.”
“Why, no; I don’t think he goes down town often. I think he plays around the neighborhood here, most of the time. Why?”
“I didn’t know,” Mr. Dade replied carelessly. “It just struck me that I’ve run across him down town almost every time I go out lately. I wondered if your mother knew about it; that’s all. I thought possibly she wouldn’t want him to be — —”
“She wouldn’t,” Margaret agreed decidedly. “I’ll tell her about it. Of course, a child of his age shouldn’t be wandering around down there among street-urchins and newsboys.”
At this, Penrod’s expression became so scornful, and continued in that contortion so long, that he was forced to relax it because his nose hurt him. Meantime, after a silence and some murmured words, the verandah was the scene of a departure.
Margaret spoke regretfully. “It’s awfully mean of you to go so soon!”
And Mr. Dade replied airily from the foot of the steps: “Too bad! But I’ve got to be on long-distance at eight-thirty sharp, Princess.”
“Telephoning to — to someone in another town?”
Mr. Dade had a rich voice and a rich laugh, musically barytone and perhaps a shade conscious; he protracted his laugh now, as if he heard it with some pleasure, himself. “It’s only business — but important in spite of that, Princess.”
She made a small exclamation, half smothered but impatient; he laughed again, and then his voice came from near the gate. “Good-night! Good-night, Princess!”
Margaret came in, looking pink and perplexed and cross; but Penrod did not see her — nor did she see Penrod. He had slipped into an unlit room adjacent to the hall, had slid down from a window and was now crossing the front lawn, hot on the trail. Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade had indeed become the bandit selected by George B. Jashber for a ruthless running to earth; but this was the first opportunity Penrod had found to shadow him except in the daytime, and daytime shadowing had so far failed to reveal (on account of Penrod’s various engagements to lunch and dine at home) the whereabouts and nature of Mr. Dade’s dwelling-place. George B. meant to discover the secret lodging of the scondrel this very night; and, not only that, but where he kept his stolen horses.
Mr. Herbert Hamilton Dade walked down the street, humming thoughtfully to himself and lightly swinging from a hand gloved in chamois a polished yellow cane that flashed streaks of high light as he passed the street-lamps. Surely no detective could have wished for a more easily shadowed scondrel, and, since Mr. Dade not once glanced over his shoulder to ascertain if he were followed, many of George B. Jashber’s precautions to avoid being seen might have struck an observer as unnecessary.
George B. took advantage, so to speak, of every bit of cover; he flitted from the trunk of one shade-tree to the next; anon, stooping low, he darted into the mouths of alleys and out again; several times he threw himself full-length upon the grass-plots beside the pavement and crawled a few feet before rising; and in these various alarums and excursions he covered almost as much ground as if he had been an inquisitive poodle out walking with his master.
Not less ingenious was he when the marts of the town were reached. In this illuminated region he sheltered himself among groups of citizens, or walked behind strolling couples, or flattened himself in entry-ways, not forgetting to put frequently into practise that detectivest of street devices, the affectation of interest in a shop window; but never letting his eye wander, for more than three or four seconds at a time, from the flashing yellow walking-stick and the yellow chamois glove that held it.
Proceeding in this manner, he traced the sinister peregrinations of Herbert Hamilton Dade for more than an hour. Mr. Dade went into a hotel lobby, purchased a package of cigarettes at the news-stand (as Penrod was able to observe from the entrance to the lobby) and then spoke to the telephone operator. After this, he took a seat near by, and lit a cigarette and smoked it. Presently, the telephone operator spoke to him in a low voice, and Mr. Dade went into one of the booths. He remained therein for almost a quarter-of-an-hour and came out looking annoyed and perspiring suspiciously. He gave the telephone operator a sum of money, left the hotel and crossed the street to a drug store, where he purchased a glass (with spoon) of soda-water, ice-cream and a flavouring sirup not to be identified from outside the show-window. Then he left the drug store, walked to the next corner and stood there for several minutes, apparently thinking. Suddenly, he decided to go on again, and walked twice round the block with no object discernible to Penrod, whose feet were beginning to be painful. Yet he would not give up. He was determined to see this thing through to the end.
At last, he uttered a low exclamation — that is to say, he uttered a moral exclamation in a low voice — and quickened his pace; for Mr. Dade, having yawned audibly, had quickened his own pace and had turned into a dark and silent side street that led away from the main thoroughfare of the town. Before he had gone a dozen paces in this direction, he encountered a man whose lower features were wholly curtained behind a black beard, as easily supposed false as real, and both Mr. Dade and this bearded man came to a halt. Every word of their conversation was audible to George B. Jashber, who was sitting below the level of the pavement upon some steps leading down to a basement barbershop.
“Well, good-evening,” said the bearded man.
“Hello!” Mr. Dade returned.
“Any news?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Well, it’s warm weather.”
“Yes, it is,” said Mr. Dade. “I’m going home to bed. Good-night.”
And the other, passing onward, called back, in a voice not perceptibly muffled by his whiskers, “Well, good-night.”
Breathlessly, Penrod waited until the black-bearded man was safely beyond the entrance to the barber’s stairway; then he crept forth upon the pavement and once more took up the trail. Dade had distinctly said, “I’m going home to bed.” Very well! George B. Jashber might have to defer to another occasion the discovery of where the stolen horses were kept; but at least he was certain of one thing: a short time — perhaps only a few minutes — would reveal the location of the scondrel’s den. He was going there now!
Mr. Dade proceeded as far as the middle of the block; then he crossed the street and halted before a broad, arched doorway, rather dimly revealed by a faintly luminous globe above the arch. Then he opened the door, passed noiselessly into an entryway, and the door closed behind him.
Penrod darted across the street and marked the place well, the shape of the doorway and its distance from each corner. He was certain that he could easily find it again, either by night or in the daytime, as need might arise. George B. Jashber uttered sounds of satisfaction and quiet triumph; then, stepping backward into the street and lifting his eyes as he did so, became aware of a wooden sign above the globe. Here was a means of identification indeed! Four large letters were painted upon this sign, and, though the light was dim, the tired detective was able to discern them and to comprehend their meaning with absolute certainty. They were:
Y. M. C. A.
Unerringly, George B. had tracked Mr. Dade to his lair in the Young Men’s Christian Association building.
XII. HERMAN AND VERMAN ARE ALLOWED TO JOIN
WHEN PENROD GOT home that evening, Mrs. Schofield was standing at the front gate, looking up and down the street in the darkness. For this reason, Penrod, having seen her before she saw him, quietly entered the yard by climbing over the side fence. Then he sauntered out of obscurity into the faint oblong of light that issued from the open door, thinly illumining his mother’s anxious back as she leaned over the gate. He yawned casually, inquiring, “Whatch’ doin’ out here, Mamma?”
“Penrod!” She jumped, turning upon him sharply. “Where on earth have you been till this time of night?”
“What, Mamma?”
“Where have you been? Do you know it’s after ten o’clock?”
“No’m,” he said meekly. “I didn’t think it was late.”
“It’s disgraceful, and your father’s very angry. Where have you been?”
“Why, I haven’t been anywhere, Mamma,” he protested plaintively. “I — I haven’t lifted my little finger, but you ack like I been doin’ sumpthing wrong, and I haven’t been doin’ anything at all.”
“Where were you?”
“Just playin’.”
“With whom were you playing?”
“Why, just around,” he responded, his tone aggrieved but reasonable.
“You weren’t over at Sam Williams’s,” said Mrs. Schofield. “We telephoned, and Sam said he hadn’t seen you at all.”
“Mamma, I didn’t say I was at Sam’s, did I?” he protested. “I don’t see why you got to go and claim, all of a sudden, when I never said I was anywhere near Sam’s, and go and say I’m telling a l — —”
“Penrod, be quiet! I didn’t say you were telling an untruth. I only said — —”
“Well, it looked like it,” he insisted accusingly. “I guess I can’t lift my little finger around here but I got to go and get accused of sumpthing I never did except just lift my little finger. I expeck there’s hardly any other boys around here their mother wouldn’t let ’em lift their little finger without scolding ’em just because I lifted my little f — —”
“Oh, stop talking about your little finger!” Mrs. Schofield cried, losing patience and conscious of a vague bafflement. “You march into the house and go straight up to bed. I don’t know what your father’s going to do to you. He’s as upset as he can possibly be.”
Upon this, Penrod entered the house with some natural hesitation, but was relieved to hear the sound of a shoe dropping upon the floor of his father’s bedroom, Mr. Schofield being thus revealed as in process of disrobing for the night, and evidently not so wholly succumbed to agitation as his wife had indicated to their son. In fact, all that Penrod heard from him was a murmured question, a little later, and this came through an open transom over the closed door.
“Where’d he say he’d been?”
“Just playing in the neighborhood,” Mrs. Schofield replied. “But it’s dreadful, his staying out till after ten. It’s no way for children to be brought-up, and you must do something. I don’t see how you can lie there and go to sleep so calmly when you know how worried I was over it.”
Silence was the answer, though probably not intended as one, and, since nothing more was to be gained in that quarter, George B. Jashber, barefooted and in his nightgown, presently stole back to his own room and slid into bed.
In spite of some physical weariness, he did not at once fall asleep, but lay open-eyed, thinking exultantly. Probably a genuine, adult, official plain-clothes man, or detective, tracking a suspected person to residence in a Young Men’s Christian Association might have felt rather discouraged, might have abandoned the trail altogether. Not so with the open mind of a boy. For Penrod, it was absolutely as easy to imagine a horse-thief having his lair in the Y. M. C. A. as anywhere else in the world. Why not? And George B. would be hot upon the trail again to-morrow!
The difference between a man’s way of thought, in such matters, and a boy’s was exemplified at the lunch-table several days later, when Mr. Schofield once more dwelt grumpily upon the subject of Mr. Dade.
“Papa, you’re just unreasonable!” Margaret protested, after a discussion that had brought evidence of some emotion into her voice and expression. “Why can’t I go walking with him?”
“Because we don’t know who he is.”
“But he goes to everybody’s house, and everyone likes him,” Margaret said. “Why, he’s been here to dinner in your own house, Papa!”
“Well, I didn’t ask him,” her father retorted.
“Papa, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you like him?”
“I’ve told you.”
“Well, what do you want to know about him?”
“I’d like to know one thing that I should think even you might consider fairly important,” Mr. Schofield returned, with satire. “I’d like to know where he lives.”
Margaret’s eyes glowed sudden triumph. “He lives at the Y. M. C. A.”
“What?”
“He lives at the Young Men’s Christian Association,” she said, laughing lightly.
“How do you know?”
“He told me the other evening that he’d taken rooms there, and he telephoned me from there this morning. I met him at the church bazaar, and he lives at the Young Men’s Christian Association, Papa.”
Mr. Schofield’s expression, after a moment of incredulity, had become one of simple and unmanly disappointment. Margaret’s, following an opposite course, now offered a charming contrast of liveliness.
“Is there anything more you want me to find out about him, Papa?”
The defeated man made no reply other than to eat morosely; whereupon his wife laughed aloud. “You can go for that walk, dear,” she said to Margaret. “Papa’s a funny man when he decides to take prejudices; but it looks as though he’d have to give this one up.”
Mr. Schofield said nothing for a time; then he set his napkin beside his plate, rose, and, not looking at his wife or daughter, uttered the reluctant words: “Well, you may be right — for once.”
Instantly they broke into peals of laughter, and then, as he left the room, the happy and suffused Margaret pointed across the table at her brother, and shouted: “Look at Penrod!”
Penrod was worth looking at, though he was doing nothing except with his countenance. However, Mrs. Schofield found his action more disquieting than amusing.
“Stop doing that with your face, Penrod!” she exclaimed. “You’ll ruin your eyes, and you’ll be all wrinkled before you’re twenty years old. You must get out of that habit; it’s awful!”
