CHAPTER XII—JUST ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER
It was far from a pleasant meeting. Dickie looked about as amiable as a wind or thunder demon, in front of a Japanese temple. That oscillatory performance beneath the “kissing-oak,” as the noble tree was called, had been almost too much for Dickie. He seemed to have trouble in articulating.
“You’re a nice one, aren’t you?” he managed at length to say, and his tones were like the splutter of a defective motor. “You ought to be given a leather medal.”
“Could I help it?” said Bob wearily. And then because he was too much of a gentleman to vouchsafe information incriminating a lady: “Usual place! Customary thing! Blame it on the oak! Ha! ha!” This wasn’t evading the truth; it was simply facetiousness. Might as well meet this trio of dodging brigands with a smiling face! Dickie’s vocal motor failed to explode, even spasmodically; that reply seemed to have extinguished him. But the commodore awoke to vivacity.
“Let us try to meet this situation calmly,” he said, red as a turkey-cock. “But let us walk as we talk,” taking Bob’s arm and leading that young man unresistingly down a path to the driveway to the village. “I shouldn’t by any chance want to encounter Mrs. Dan just yet,” he explained. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll get away from here, while I explain.”
Bob didn’t mind. He saw no guile in the commodore’s manner or words. Nor did he observe how Clarence looked at Dickie. The twilight shadows were beginning to fall.
“Briefly,” went on the commodore, as he steered them out of the woods, “our worst fears have been realized. Negotiations with Gee-gee are in progress. Divorce papers will probably follow.” Clarence on the other side of Dickie made a sound. “All this is your work.” The commodore seemed about to become savage, but he restrained himself. “No use speaking about that. Also, it is too late for us to call the wager off and pay up. Mischief’s done now.”
“Why not make a clean breast of everything?” suggested Bob. “Say it was a wager, and—”
“A truth-telling stunt? That would help a lot.” Contemptuously.
Dickie muttered: “Bonehead!”
“I mean, you can say there wasn’t any harm,” said Bob desperately. “That it was all open and innocent!”
“Much good my saying that would do!” snorted Dan. “You don’t know Mrs. Dan.”
“Or Mrs. Clarence,” said Clarence weakly.
Bob hung his head.
“We’ve thought of one little expedient that may help,” observed Dan, still speaking with difficulty. “While such influences as we could summon are at work on the New York end, we’ve got to square matters here. We’ve got to account for your—your—” here the commodore nearly choked—“extraordinary revelations.”
“But how,” said Bob patiently, “can you ‘account’ for them? I suppose you mean to make me out a liar?”
“Exactly,” from the commodore coolly.
“I don’t mind,” returned Bob wearily, “as long as it will help you out and I’m not one. Only I can’t say those things aren’t true.”
“You don’t have to,” said Dan succinctly. “There’s an easier way than that. No one would believe you, anyway, now.”
“That’s true.” Gloomily.
“All we need,” went on Dan, brightening a bit, “is your cooperation.”
“What can I do?”
“You don’t do anything. We do what is to be done. You just come along.”
“We take you into custody,” interposed Clarence.
“Lock you up!” exploded Dickie once more. “And a good job.”
“Lock me up?” Bob gazed at them, bewildered. Had the temperamental little thing “peached,” after all? Impossible! And yet if she hadn’t, how could Dan and Dickie and Clarence know he was a burglar—or rather, that a combination of unlucky circumstances made him seem one? Perhaps that kiss was a signal for them to step forward and take him. History was full of such kisses. And yet he would have sworn she was not that kind.
“You’re to come along without making a fuss,” said the commodore significantly.
“But I don’t want to come along. This is going too far,” remonstrated Bob. “I’ve a decided objection to being locked up as a burglar.”
“Burglar!” exclaimed Dan.
“Don’t know how you found out! Appearances may be against me, but,” stopping in the road, “if you want me to go along, you’ve got to make me.”
The trio looked at one another. “Maybe, he really is—” suggested Dickie, touching his forehead.
“Too much truth!” said Clarence with a sneer. “Feel half that way, myself!”
“Would be all the better for us, if it were really so,” observed Dan. And to Bob: “You think that we think you’re a burglar?”
“Don’t you? Didn’t you say something about locking me up?”
“But not in a jail.”
Bob stared. “What then?”
“A sanatorium.”
“Sanatorium?”
“For the insane.”
“You mean—?”
“You’re crazy,” said Dan. “That’s the ticket. Dickie found out, up at Mrs. Ralston’s.”
“Oh, Dickie did?” said Bob, looking at that young gentleman with lowering brows.
“You bet I did,” returned Dickie. “I put in a good day,” viciously, “while you were fishing.”
“Yes,” corroborated the commodore, “Dickie found a dozen people who think you’re dottie on the crumpet, all right.”
Bob folded his arms, still regarding Dickie. “You know what I’ve a mind to do to you?”
“Hold on!” said Dan hastily. “This matter’s got to be handled tactfully. We can’t, any one of us, give way to our personal feelings, however much we may want to. Let’s be businesslike. Eh, Clarence? Businesslike.”
“Sure,” said Clarence faintly.
But Dickie, standing behind the commodore and Clarence, said something about tact being a waste of time in some cases. He said it in such a sneering nasty way that Bob breathed deep.
“I’ve simply got to spank that little rooster,” he muttered.
But again the commodore smoothed things over. “Shut up, Dickie,” he said angrily. “You’ll spoil all. I’m sure Bob wants to help us out, if he can. He knows it’s really up to him, to do so. Bob’s a good sport.” It was an awful effort for the commodore to appear nice and amiable, but he managed to, for the moment. “You will help us out, won’t you?” he added, placing velvety fingers on Bob’s arm.
But Bob with a vigorous swing shook off those fingers. He didn’t intend being taken into custody. Dan and the others might as well understand that, first as last. The commodore’s voice grew more appealing.
“Don’t you see you’re being crazy will account for everything?”
“Oh, will it?” In a still small voice.
“Miss Gwendoline asked me if you’d showed signs before coming down here?” piped up Dickie. And again Bob breathed deep. Then his thoughts floated away. Dickie was too insignificant to bother with.
“Hallucinations!” observed the commodore briskly. “Fits you to a T!”
Bob didn’t answer. He was trying to think if she—Miss Gwendoline—hadn’t said something about hallucinations?
“You simply imagined all those things you confided to Mrs. Dan. You didn’t mean to tell what wasn’t so, but you couldn’t help yourself. You really believed it all, at the time. You are irresponsible.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me next there isn’t any Gee-gee,” said Bob. “Also, that Miss Gid-up is but an empty coinage of the brain?”
“No, we’ll do better than that. The existence of a Gee-gee accounts, in part, for your condition. First stage, Gee-gee on the brain; then, brain-storm! Gee-gee is part of your obsession!”
“You talk, think and dream of Gee-gee,” interposed Clarence. “We’ve got it all doped out. You are madly jealous. You imagine every man is in love with her. You even attribute to Dan here, ulterior motives.”
“I mentioned to Miss Gerald, privately, that a certain very fascinating but nameless young show-girl might be your trouble,” said Dickie.
Again Bob did a few deep-breathing exercises, and again he managed to conquer himself.
“Don’t you see we’ve simply got to lock you up?” said the commodore. “You’re a menace to the community; you’re a happy home-breaker. You may do something desperate.”
“I might,” said Bob, looking the commodore in the eye.
Dan overlooked any covert meaning. “We take your case in time,” he went on. “You go into an institution, stay a week, or two—or shall we say, three,” insinuatingly, “and you come out cured.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” said Bob. They were going to put truth in a crazy-house. That’s what it amounted to. “But how about Gid-up? Did I have an obsession about her, too?”
“Oh, as Gee-gee’s chum she is part of the brainstorm and that drags poor old Clarence in,—Clarence who is as ignorant of the existence of Gid-up as I am of Gee-gee.”
“And that’s the truth,” said Clarence stoutly.
Bob laughed. He couldn’t help it. Perhaps many of the people in jails and crazy-houses were only poor misguided mortals who had gone wrong looking for truth. Maybe some of them had met with that other kind of truth (Dan’s kind and Clarence’s kind) and they hadn’t the proper vision to see it was the truth (that is, the world’s truth).
“Got it fixed all right,” went on the commodore. “Doc, up there at the house, has written a letter to the head of an eminently respectable institution, for eminently respectable private patients. It’s not far away and the head is a friend of Doc’s. Dickie saw to the details. It’s a good place. Kind gentle attendants; nourishing food. Isn’t that what the Doc said, Dickie?”
“I guess the food won’t hurt him” said Dickie, regarding Bob. Maybe, Dickie wouldn’t have minded if Bob had had an attack, or two, of indigestion.
“Doc says they’re especially humane to the violent,” continued the commodore, unmindful of Bob’s ominous silence. It seemed as if Dan was talking to gain time, for he looked around where the bushes cast dark shadows, as if to locate some spot. “None of that slugging or straight-jacket business! Doc talked it over with the judge and some of the others. Judge said he’d committed a lot of people who hadn’t acted half as crazy as you have. You see Dickie had to take him into his confidence a little bit and the Doc, too. Doc diagnosed your breakdown as caused by drugs and alcohol.”
“So you made me out a dipsomaniac?” observed Bob.
“What else was there to do? Didn’t you bring it on yourself?”
Dan now stopped, not far from a clump of bushes. Down the road stood a stalled motor-car vaguely distinguishable in the dusk. Its occupant, or occupants had apparently gone to telephone for help.
“You bet I made you out a ‘dippy,’” said Dickie with much satisfaction.
A white light shone from Bob’s eyes. Then he shrugged his broad shoulders.
“Good night,” he said curtly and turned to go.
But at that instant the commodore emitted a low whistle and two men sprang out of the bushes. At the same moment the trio precipitated themselves, also, on Bob. It was a large load. He “landed” one or two on somebody and got one or two in return himself. Dickie rather forgot himself in the excitement of the moment and was unnecessarily forceful, considering the odds. But Bob was big and husky and for a little while he kept them all busy. His football training came in handy. Numbers, however, finally prevailed, and though he heaved and struggled, he had to go down. Then they sat on him, distributing themselves variously over his anatomy.
“Thought I was giving you that charming little chat, just for the pleasure of your company, did you?” panted the commodore, from somewhere about the upper part of Bob? “Why, I was just leading you here.”
“And he came like a lamb!” said Clarence, holding an arm.
“Or a big boob!” from Dickie, who had charge of a leg.
Bob gave a kick and it caught Dickie. The little man went bowling down the road like a ten-pin. But after that, there wasn’t much kick left in Bob. They tied him tight and bore him (or truth, trussed like a fowl), to the car. Some of them got in to keep him company. There wasn’t anything the matter with the car. It could speed up to about sixty, or seventy, at a pinch. It went “like sixty” now.
“If he tries to raise a hullabaloo, toot your horn,” said the commodore, when he got his breath, to the driver. “At the same time I’ll wave my hat and act like a cut-up. Then they’ll only take us for a party of fuzzled joy-riders.”
“I don’t think he’ll make much noise now,” shouted Dickie significantly, from behind. “We’ll jolly well see to that.”
“How long will it take you to make the bug-house?” the commodore asked the man at the wheel.
“We should reach the private sanatorium in less than an hour,” answered that individual.