To Pape’s daily inquiries since Jasper had replied with consistent politeness, if with consistent lack of information. The Westerner hated him for his very perfection in his part; was inclined to the belief that America was no place for an intelligence limited to being a butler.
What about his—Why-Not’s—peace and quiet? Wasn’t he entitled to any such? Indignation had flung with him out of the booth that first morning; had matched his pace since; was riding with him to-day.
In the interval Pape had made efforts other than over the Sturgis telephone to locate geographically the rural resting-place mentioned all too vaguely by Jasper. His first visit to that mountainous district known to the Metropolitan Police as “below the dead-line” was not in the squaring of certain overdue accounts of his own which had been the basic impulse of his Eastern exile, but in the hope of locating the other members of that Zaza box-party.
In a cloud-piercer near the corner of William and Wall Streets he found the office suite occupied by ex-Judge Samuel Allen and associated attorneys, evidently an affiliation of standing “at the bar”—a phrase which, since Volstead, is no longer misunderstood as meaning anything but “in the Law.” He gained admittance into the reception room, but, so far as achieving audience with the head of the firm, the legal lair proved more impregnable than the ranger-guarded Yellowstone to a tusk-hunter.
The “line-fence” was ridden by thick-rouged, thin-bloused office girls who doubtless had been instructed that all unexpected callers were suspicious characters and to be treated accordingly. Once the judge was in court, which court no one seemed to know. Pape left his name. On a second visit he was allowed to “dig his spurs” into chair rungs most of an afternoon under the hopeful glances of the “dolls,” while awaiting the end of an alleged conference, only to be told with none-too-regretful apologies that Mr. Allen, having been called to attend the directors of the Hardened Steel Corporation, had departed without knowing that Mr. Pape awaited him. A third time——
But it is enough—was more than enough for him—that he never broke through the barrier of too-red lips with their too-patent, stock lies; never caught even a long-distance glimpse of the jurist of small person and large personality.
Failure to find the likeable Mills Harford came more quickly and saved a deal of time. “Harfy’s” trail showed plainly in the City Directory and his “ranch” proved to be another of those “places of business” where everything but business was attended, a real-estate office in one of the block-square structures that surround the Grand Central Terminal. Mr. Harford had departed on a yachting trip around Long Island, Pape was told—a statement which he had no cause to doubt.
Although Peter Pape had signaled Broadway in general with what he liked to call the “high sign,” his desire for adventure had particularized. He could not be satisfied to go on to a next, with the first only begun. He finished what he started, unless for some reason stronger than his will.
More than by the beauty of Jane Lauderdale’s face, he was haunted by its look of fear. The little drama at the Sturgis house that night could not have been staged for benefit of himself, whose presence there was purely accidental. Its unaccountable denouement had terrorized the aunt as well as niece. Much more was unexplained than the nature of the stolen treasure and the cause of that false report anent the severed telephone wires.
To epitomize the present state of mind of Why-Not Pape, “making ’em notice him” had boiled down into one concentrated demand that the high-strung girl whom he had self-selected and later approved by instinct instead of rule—that Jane Lauderdale should notice his readiness to do or die in her service.