Jane first felt the spell of the two brown eyes focused upon them through a patterned veil of brush. Nervously she caught his arm; pointed. Soon a long, black-tipped nose rent the veil, sniffing through a fountain spray of vine abloom with pale blue, bell-shaped flowers.
The police dog had located them. But why the delay of his bayed alarm? A moment more and he answered for himself. With suppressed whines and insinuating wriggles there broke from the clutch of the vine none other than Kicko of the Sheepfold, his sense of duty evidently overcome by delight at the reunion.
Pape’s joy transcended the Belgian’s. Never had he bestowed a more fervid embrace than that which encircled the ruffed neck. Jane, too, patted their four-footed friend and bedecked his collar with a spray of the flowering vine which had been torn down by his impetuous entrance.
“Pin one of those blues roses on me,” Pape asked; when she had done so, added: “Out home we call that ‘matrimony vine.’ I wonder whether its use here as a decoration is any sort of sign that——”
“I wonder,” Jane interrupted more crisply than he would have thought possible in her wilted state, “whether Kicko will lie low like a good dog instead of a police officer while you explain about those papers you took from the judge?”
Because he believed absolutely in signs—hadn’t a sign pointed his way to her?—Pape was willing to wait for the answer to his question. Indeed, he had not earned her answer until after the Granddad Lauderdale riddle had been solved. With a shrug and a sigh he took from his pocket the sheaf of brown engravings.
“These, as you may have surmised, are certificates for stock in the Montana Gusher Oil Company. See.” He opened and handed her one. “They are signed with names of dummy officers, as were the others. But they are blank as to owner and number of shares—right strong evidence that the honorable Samuel is the man behind the fraud—that his fat little neck is the one I came East to wring.”
Jane nodded. “I was waiting to see Aunt Helene and make sure before I told you what I suspected. You see, it was a good while ago when a salesman interested her in the stock. She was about to invest when Judge Allen interfered. Rather, he told her that he knew the stock wasn’t worth the paper on which it was engraved. Except that my time has been—well, a bit full since yesterday afternoon, I’d have got the facts at once and given them to you for what they were worth. In predicaments like ours, the rule of noblesse oblige should hold.”
“Do we need rules to hold?”
Illustratively Pape seized with one hand the slim, ringless fingers still caressing the spray of matrimony vine—his other had a firm grip on Kicko’s collar. His touch, voice and eyes were full of appreciation for her good intentions. It was hard to have such a good—or bad—memory about the absolute justness of one’s desserts; hard to crush those blue bells within her pink palms and not entirely forget—She was so appealing in her languor and dependency that there seemed ample excuse for his asking the right to protect and sustain her. Looking at the matter in this tempting light of the underbrush, he might be expected to owe her an explanation of that kiss in the cab—to tell her that to him it was their betrothal.