“Thank Heaven—thank you, Peter Pape—they’ve gone!”
“But they’ll come back.” Her father’s voice echoed none of her relief. “Allen and Harford must have reason to suspect that you, at least, are here in the old house. Otherwise they’d not have come. If my presence, too, is suspected, it won’t be long until that other pack comes to hound me down. Jane, you can’t go on with this search, vital though it be. Come what may, you shan’t be sacrificed. It’s no business for a girl alone and unprotected. We’ll have to give it all up, dear. I’ll go away somewhere—anywhere.”
“But Jane ain’t alone and unprotected.” Pape crossed the room and faced them both. “Looks clear enough to me why I sloped out of the West and into the far East just in the nick o’ time. I’m hoping the reason will soon get clear to you.”
The girl’s lips moved, although she did not speak. She looked and looked at him. Her father, unable to see, worded the demand of her eyes.
“Exactly what do you mean, Mr. Pape? What do you offer and why?”
“Why? Why not?” he asked in turn. “From this moment on, just as from the same back to that Zaza night, I am at Miss Lauderdale’s service. I have a trusty bit of hardware myself—” in substantiation he drew from somewhere beneath his coat a blue-black revolver of heavy caliber—“and I am not so slow on the draw as some. If this pack you say is trailing you is determined to get itself shot up, it would be better for me to do it than for her, wouldn’t it? And while we’re waiting for the mix-up, I could dig for whatever it is she is looking for. Oh, you needn’t tell me what that is! I’ve worked blind before. You folks just tell me when and where to dig and I’ll dig!”
The girl turned to her parent. “I think, after all, I’ll tell Mr. Pape——”
“I think it is time—high time, Jane.” He nodded in vehement approval.
Rising, she faced their guest; spoke rapidly, although in a thinking way.
“You’ve earned the partial confidence that dad wished to give you, Why-Not Pape. This old house belonged to my grandfather. He grew eccentric in later life. The more this East Side section ran down, the tighter he clung to it. Toward the end, he fitted up this top-floor flat for himself and rented out the others. From sentiment my father didn’t sell the house, although we could have used the money. We are not rich like the Sturgis branch of the family.”