Читать книгу Out of the Primitive - Robert Ames Bennet - Страница 17

For half a minute after his titled friend had bowed himself out, Blake stood glowering at the door. The sharp crackle of a blueprint under the thrumming fingers of Griffith caused him to start from his abstraction and cross to the desk, where he dropped heavily into his former seat.

"Well?" demanded Griffith. "Out with it."

"With what?"

"You called him your friend. He's a likely-looking youngster, even if he is the son of a duke. Same time, there's something in the wind. Cough it up. Haven't happened to smash any heads or windows, have you, while you were—"

"No!" broke in Blake harshly. "It's worse than that, ten times worse!

It's—it's Jenny—Miss Leslie!"

Griffith's thin lips puckered in a soundless whistle. "Well, I'll be—!

Don't tell me you've gone and—Why, you never cared a rap for girls."

"No, but this time, Grif—It began when I showed her through that Rand mine. Jimmy has told you what followed."

Griffith blinked, and discreetly said nothing as to what lie had heard from Miss Leslie's father. "H'm. I'd like to hear it all, straight from you."

"Can't now. Too long a yarn. I want to tell you about the results. Couldn't do it to any one else," explained Blake, blushing darkly under his thick layer of tropical tan. He sought to beat around the bush. "Well, I proved myself fit to survive in that environment, tough as it was—sort of cave-man's hell. Queer thing, though, Jenny—Miss Leslie—proved fit, too; that is, she did after right at the start. She's got a headpiece, and grit!"

"Takes after her dad," suggested Griffith.

"Him!"

"As to the brains and grit."

"Not in anything else, though. They're no more alike than garlic and roses."

"Getting poetic, eh?" cackled Griffith.

"Don't laugh, Grif. It's too serious a matter. I'd do anything in the world for her. She's the truest, grittiest girl alive. She told me straight out, there at the last, that she—she loved me."

"Crickey!" ejaculated Griffith. "She told you that?—she?—Miss—"

"Hush! not so loud!" cautioned Blake. Again the color deepened in his bronzed cheeks. His pale eyes shone very blue and soft. "It was when we heard the siren of Jimmy's steamer. She—You'll forget this, Grif? Never whisper a hint of it?"

"Sure! What you take me for?"

"Well, she wouldn't agree to wait. Wanted to be married as soon as we got aboard ship."

"She—!" Griffith lacked breath even for an expletive.

"I agreed. Couldn't help it, with her looking at me that way. Then we went down around through the cleft to the shore, where the boat was pulling in. Well, there was Jimmy in the sternsheets, in a white yachting suit—Me with my hyena pants, and Jenny in her leopard-skin dress!"

"Say, you were doing the Crusoe business!" cackled Griffith.

"It shook me out of my dream all right, soon as I set eyes on Jimmy. I waded out with—Miss Leslie, and put her into the boat. Told him to hurry her aboard. I cut back to the cleft—the place where we'd been staying."

"Off your head, eh?"

"No. Don't you see? I had to save Jenny. I had proved myself a pretty good cave-man, and she had been living so close to that sort of thing that she had lost her perspective. Wasn't fair to her to let her tie herself up to me till she'd first had a chance to size me up with the men of her class."

"You mean to say you passed up your chance?"

"I'd have been a blackguard to 've let her marry me then!" cried Blake, his eyes flashing angrily. He checked himself, and went on in a monotone: "I waited till Jimmy came back to fetch me. Course I had to explain the situation. Asked him to pull out without me, and send down a boat from Port Mozambique. No go. Finally we fixed it up for me to slip aboard into the forecastle."

"Well, I'll be—switched!" croaked Griffith. "You did that, to escape marrying the daughter of a multi-millionaire!"

"It would have been the same if she'd been poor, Grif. She's a lady, through and through, and I—I love her! God! how I love her!"

"Guess that's no lie," commented Griffith in his dryest tone.

Blake relaxed the grip that seemed to be crushing the arms of his chair.

"Well, I went aboard and kept under cover. Jimmy managed to keep her diverted till we put into Port Mozambique. There I sent a note aft to her, letting on that I had already landed, and swearing that I was going to steer clear of her until after she got back to her father. But I kept aboard, in the forecastle, as Jimmy had made me promise to do. At Aden, Jimmy put her on a P. and O. liner in the care of a friend of his, Lady Chetwynd, who was on her way home to England from India."

"He went along, too; leaving you to shift for yourself, eh?"

"Don't you think it! He had been spending half the time forward with me in that stew-hole of a forecastle. Soon as she was safe, I hiked aft and bunked with him. No; Jimmy's as square as they make 'em. To prove it—he had met Jenny before; greatly taken with her. There on the steamer was the very chance he had been after. But he played fair; didn't try to win her. Told me all about it, right at the first, and we came to an agreement. We were both to steer clear of her over on that side. That's why we stuck close to Ruthby Castle till Jenny sailed for home. No; Jimmy is white. He had invitations to more than one house-party where she was visiting around with Lady Chetwynd and Madam Gantry."

"So neither of you have seen her since there at Aden?"

"Yes, we have. Came on from New York with her and her aunt. They had stopped over when they landed, and we blundered into them before we could dodge."

"And Miss Leslie? You look glum. Guess you got what was coming to you, eh?"

Blake's face clouded. "Haven't seen her apart from her aunt yet. She has been kind but—mighty reserved. I'd give a lot to know whether—" He paused, gripping his chair convulsively. "Just the same, I haven't quit. The agreement with Jimmy is off to-morrow afternoon. She's had plenty of time for comparisons. I'll make my try then."

"Don't fash yourself, Tom. If she's the sort you say, and went as far as you say, she's not likely to throw you over now."

"You don't savvy!" exclaimed Blake. "There on that infernal coast I was the real thing—and the only one, at that. Here I'm just T. Blake, ex-bum, periodic drunkard, all around—"

"Stow that drivel!" ordered Griffith. "What if you were a kid hobo? What are you now?—one of the best engineers in the country; one that's going to make the top in short order. I tell you, you're going to succeed. What's more, Mollie said—"

"Mollie!" repeated Blake softly. "Say, but wasn't she a booster! Had even you beat, hands down. Good Lord, to think that she, of all the little women—! Only thing, typhoid isn't so bad as some things. They don't suffer so much."

"Yes," assented Griffith. "That helps—some—when I get to thinking of it. She went out quietly—wasn't thinking of herself."

"She never did!" put in Blake, "Say, but can't a woman make a heap of difference—when she's the right sort!"

"There was a message for you. She said, almost the last thing: 'Tell Tom not to give up the fight. Tell him,' she said, 'he'll win out, I know he'll win out in the end.'"

"God!" whispered Blake. "She said that?" He bent over and covered his eyes with his hand.

Griffith averted his head and peered at the blueprints on the nearest wall with unseeing eyes. A full minute passed. Keeping his face still averted, he began to tap out the ash and half-smoked tobacco from his pipe.

"H'm—guess you'd better work in a room apart," he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. "Too much running in and out here. D' you want to start right off?"

"No," muttered Blake. He paused and then straightened to face his

friend. His eyes were blood-shot but resolute, his face impassive. "No.

I'll wait till after to-morrow. Big order on for to-morrow morning.

Appointment to meet H. V."

"Hey?"

"He was down at the depot. You can imagine how effusive he wasn't over my saving his daughter. Curse the luck! If only she had had any one else for a father!"

"Now, now, Tommy, don't fly off the handle. You know there are lots of 'em worse than H. V."

"None I'm in so hard with. First place, there's that Q. T. survey."

"That's all smoothed over. He came around all right. Just ask for your pay-check. He'll shell out."

"I'll ask for interest. Ought to have a hundred per cent. I needed the money then mighty bad."

"We all did. Let it slide. He's her father. You can't afford to buck his game."

"I'd do it quick enough if it wasn't for her," rejoined Blake. "That's where he's got me. Lord! if only he and she weren't—!" Blake's teeth clenched on the end of the sentence.

"Now look here, Tommy," protested Griffith. "This isn't like you to hold a grudge. It's true H. V. did us dirt on the survey pay. But he gave in, soon as I got a chance to talk it over with him."

"'Cause he had to have you on the Michamac Bridge, eh?" demanded Blake, his face darkening.

"Stow it! That may be true, but—didn't I tell you he turned the bridge over to the Coville Company?"

"Afraid he'd be found out, eh?"

"Found out? What do you mean?"

"Mean!" repeated Blake, his voice hoarse with passion. He brought his big fist down upon the desk with the thud of a maul. "Mean? Listen here! I didn't write it to you—I couldn't believe it then, even of him. But answer me this, if you can. I was fool enough not to send my plans for the bridge competition to him by registered mail; I was fool enough to hand them in to his secretary without asking a receipt. After the contest, I called for my plans. Clerk told me he couldn't find them; couldn't find any record that they'd been received. I tell you my plans solved that central span problem. Who was it could use my plans?—who were they worth a mint of money to?"

Griffith stared at his friend, his forehead furrowed with an anxious frown. "See here, Tom—this tropical roughing—it must be mighty overtaxing on a man. You didn't happen to have a sunstroke or—"

Blake's scowl relaxed in an ironical grin. "All right, take it that way, if you want to. He let on he thought I was trying to blackmail him."

"Crickey! You don't mean to say you—"

"Didn't get a chance to see him that time. Just sent in a polite note asking for my plans. He sent out word by his private-detective office-boy that if I called again he'd have me run in."

"And now you come back with this dotty pipe-dream that he knows what became of your plans! Take my advice. Think it all you want, if that does you any good; but keep your head closed—keep it closed! First thing he'd do would be to look up the phone number of the nearest asylum."

"I'd like to see him do it," replied Blake. He shook his head dubiously. "That's straight, Grif. I'd like to see him do it. I can't forget he's her father. If only I could be sure he hadn't a finger in the disappearance of those plans—Well, you can guess how I feel about it."

"You're dotty to think it a minute. He's a money-grubber—as sharp as some others. But he wouldn't do a thing like that. Don't you believe it!"

"Wish I'd never thought of it—he's her father. But it's been growing on me. I handed them in to his secretary, that young dude, Ashton."

"Ashton? There you've hit on a probability," argued Griffith. "Of all the heedless, inefficient papa's boys, he takes the cake! He wasn't H. V.'s secretary except in name. Wine, women, sports, and gambling—nothing else under his hat. Always had a mess on his desk. Ten to one, he got your package mixed in the litter, and shoved all together into his wastebasket."

"I'll put it up to him!" growled Blake.

"What's the use? He couldn't remember a matter of business over night, to save him."

"Lord! I sweat blood over those plans! It was hard enough to enter a competition put up by H. V., but it was the chance of a lifetime for me. Why, if only I'd known in time that they were lost, I'd have put in my scratch drawings and won on them. I tell you, Grif, that truss was something new."

"Oh, no, there's no inventiveness, no brains in your head, oh, no!" rallied Griffith. "Wait till you make good on this Zariba Dam."

"You just bet I'll make a stagger at it!" cried Blake. His eyes shone bright with the joy of work,—and as suddenly clouded with renewed moroseness.

"I'll be working for you, though," he qualified. "I don't take any jobs from H. V. Leslie—not until that matter of the bridge plans is cleared up."