V
A packet of newspaper clippings forwarded with other mail for Pendleton did not add to the joy of the Burgess breakfast table the next morning. The archæologist murmured an apology and scanned the cuttings with knit brows.
“How early,” he asked, “do you imagine Miss Parker can have a confirmation of her impression about that thing of Glosbrenner’s?”
“By noon, I should think,” answered Burgess.
The husband of Mrs. Burgess had passed a bad night, and he was fully persuaded of the grievousness of his most grievous sin. Never again, he had solemnly sworn, would he attempt any such playfulness as had wrought this catastrophe—never again would he expose himself to the witchery of Susans prone to Susinesses!
“Unless I have corroboration of Miss Parker’s impression before three o’clock I shall break my engagement at the state university. With this article in the Seven Seas’ Review lying on every college library table, citing Geisendanner against me and discrediting me as the discoverer of the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar, I shall never stand upon a platform again—and I must withdraw my book. My reputation, in other words, hangs upon a telegram,” concluded the archæologist gloomily.
“It is inconceivable,” said Mrs. Burgess in a cheerful tone that far from represented her true feelings, “that Miss Parker would have spoken as she did if she hadn’t been reasonably confident. Still it is always best to be prepared for disappointments. I think you and Floy had better take the motor for a run into the country and forget the telegram until it arrives. I dare say Miss Parker will send it over at once when it comes.”
“Thanks, very much,” muttered Pendleton, not highly elated at the thought of motoring with Miss Wilkinson, whose efforts to enliven the breakfast table by talking of things as far removed as possible from the brickyards of oblivion had palled upon the wealthy archæologist. He was an earnest chap, this Pendleton; and the fact that his eligibility as a bachelor was not, in certain eyes, greatly diminished by the failure of his efforts to reëstablish the brick industries of Babylon had not occurred to him. Floy and the Burgesses bored him; but he was dazed by the threatened collapse of his reputation. He declined his host’s invitation to walk downtown; and in an equally absent-minded fashion he refused an invitation to luncheon at the University Club, to meet certain prominent citizens. Whereupon, finding the air too tense for his nerves, Burgess left for the bank.
Pendleton moved restlessly about the house, moodily smoking, while the two women pecked at him occasionally with conversation and then withdrew for consultation. His legs seemed to be drawn to those windows of the Burgess drawing room that looked toward the Logans’. In a few minutes Pendleton picked up his hat and stick and left the house, merely saying to the maid he saw clearing up the dining room that he was going for a walk. It is wholly possible he meant to go for a walk quite alone, but at the precise moment at which he reached the Logans’ iron gates the Logan door opened suddenly, as though his foot had released a spring, and Susie, in hat and coat, surveyed the world from between the lions. Mrs. Burgess and Floy, established in an upper window, saw Susie wave a hand to Brown Pendleton. For a woman to wave her hand to a man she hasn’t known twenty-four hours, particularly when he is wealthy and otherwise distinguished, is the least bit open to criticism. Susie did not escape criticism, but Susie was happily unmindful of it. And it seemed that as she fluttered down between the lions Pendleton grasped her hand anxiously, as though fearing she meditated flight; whereas nothing was further from Susie’s mind.
“Good news!” she cried. “They have just telephoned me the answer from the telegraph office. I think telephoned messages are so annoying; and, as they take forever to send one out, I was just going to the office to get it and send it up to you.”
“Then,” cried Pendleton with fervor, “you must let me go with you. It’s a fine morning for a walk.”
At the telegraph office he read the message from Susie’s friend, the librarian, which was official and final. Whereupon Pendleton became a man of action. To the professor of archæology at Vassar, whom he knew, Pendleton wrote a long message referring to the Seven Seas’ Review’s attack, and requesting that the precious Glosbrenner confession be carefully guarded until he could examine it personally at the college. He wrote also a cable to the American consul at Berlin, requesting that Geisendanner’s whole record be thoroughly investigated.
“Why,” asked Susie, an awed witness of this reckless expenditure for telegrams, “why don’t you ask the State Department to back up your cable? They must know you in Washington.”
“By Jove!” ejaculated Pendleton, staring at Susie as though frightened by her precociousness; “that’s a bully idea! Phillips, the second assistant secretary, is an old friend of mine, and he’ll tear up the earth for me!”
As they strolled back uptown through the long street, with its arching maples, they seemed altogether like the oldest of friends. Pendleton did not appear to mind at all, if he were conscious of the fact, that Susie’s hat was not one of the new fall models, or that her coat was not in the least smart. The strain was over and he submitted himself in high good humor to the Susiness of Susie. It was when they were passing the Public Library that a mood of remorse seized her. There was, she reflected, such a thing as carrying a joke too far. She salved her conscience with the reflection that if she had not yielded to the temptations of her own Susiness and accepted Mr. Burgess’s invitation she would not have been able to point this big, earnest student to the particular alcove and shelf where reposed the one copy in all the world of the only document that would rout the critics of the Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar.
“That Geisendanner,” said Susie, rather more soberly than he had yet heard her speak, “was, beyond doubt, an awful liar and a great fraud; but I am a much greater.”
“You!” exclaimed Pendleton, leaning for a moment on his stick and staring at her.
“Even so! In the first place, I went to Mrs. Burgess’s house for dinner last night through a mistake; she had never seen or heard of me before, and Mr. Burgess asked me merely because he had exhausted the other possibilities and was desperate for some one to fill a chink at his wife’s table. And the worst thing I did was to make you think I knew all about Newport, when I was never there in my life—and never saw any of the people I mentioned. Everything I said I got out of the newspapers. It was all just acting, and I put it on a little more because I saw that Mrs. Burgess and her sister didn’t like me; they didn’t think it was a joke at all, my trying to be Susie again—just once more in my life before I settled back to being called Miss Susan forever. And the way I come to be living in that fine house is simply that I’m borrowed from the library for so much a week to catalogue the Logans’ library and push a paperknife through the books. Now you see that Geisendanner isn’t in it with me for downright wickedness and most s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g m-e-n-d-a-c-i-t-y!”
“But if you hadn’t done all those terrible things where should I be?” demanded Pendleton. “But, before dismissing your confession, would you mind telling me just how you came to know—well, anything about me?”
“I’m almost afraid to go that far,” laughed Susie, who, as a matter of fact, did not fear this big, good-natured man at all.
“Tell me that,” encouraged Pendleton, “and we will consider the confession closed.”
“Well, I think I’ll be happier to tell you, and then the slate will be cleaned off a little bit anyhow. A sample copy of the Seven Seas’ Review had strayed into the house; and, in glancing over the list of book reviews on the cover, I saw the Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar among the books noticed. I spent ten minutes reading the review; and then I grabbed the Britannica—four minutes more! And then in Who’s Who I saw that you were a Newporter. It’s remarkable how educated one can become in fifteen minutes! And, as I said last night when Mrs. Burgess asked me how I came to be interested in that sort of thing, my father ran a brickyard!”
She was looking straight ahead, but the Babylonian expert saw that there were tears in her eyes, as though called forth by the recollection of other and happier times.
“Thank you,” he said gravely; “and now let us forget all about this.”
They walked in silence for several minutes, not looking at each other, until she said as they neared the Burgess gate:
“After all, I’m the foolishest little Susie in the world; and it’s a lot better for me to go back and be Susan again, and not go to dinner parties where I’m not expected.”
And what Pendleton seemed to say, though she was not sure of it, was:
“Never!—not if I know myself!”
“Do you suppose,” Mrs. Burgess asked her sister as they saw Susie tripping along beside Pendleton, “that she has carried it through?”
“From Brown Pendleton’s looks,” said Floy, “I should judge she had. But—it can’t be possible that she’s coming in here again!”
Susie and Pendleton lingered at the gate for an instant, in which he seemed to be talking earnestly. Then together they entered; and in a moment Mrs. Burgess and Floy faced them in the drawing room, where Pendleton announced with undeniable relief and satisfaction the good news from Poughkeepsie.
“Then I suppose you will make the address at the university after all?” said Mrs. Burgess. “I find that so many matters are pressing here that I shall have to forego the pleasure of joining you; and Floy, of course, will have to be excused also.”
“On the other hand,” said Pendleton with the most engaging of smiles, “I must beg you not to abandon me. Our party of last night was so perfect, and the results of it so important to me, that I shall greatly regret losing any member of it. I propose in my address tonight to assert my claims to the discovery of the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar as against all the assertions that contradict me in Geisendanner’s romantic fiction about the bronze gates of Babylon. I should like you all to be present, and I am going to beg you, as a particular favor, Mrs. Burgess, to invite Miss Parker to accompany us; for, without her helpful hint as to the existence of that copy of Glosbrenner’s confession, where, I should like to know, would I be?”
Mrs. Burgess prided herself upon being able to meet just such situations; and Susie was so demure—there was about the child something so appealing and winning—that Mrs. Burgess dipped her colors.
“Certainly, Mr. Pendleton. I’m sure that Mr. Merrill will feel honored to be included. And I shall be delighted to chaperon Miss Parker.”
“Miss Parker has agreed to help me run down some obscure authorities on the mound-builders a little later, and the trip will give her a chance to see what they have in the university library. I can’t afford to take any more chances with so much doubtful scientific lore floating about.”
“I should think,” remarked Floy carelessly, “you would find help of some kind almost essential in your future work.”
“I think, myself,” said Susie with an uncontrollable resurgence of her Susiness, “that it would save an a-w-f-u-l l-o-t o-f t-r-o-u-b-l-e!”