Lady Larkspur

by Meredith Nicholson

"It was to be for the Kaiser, for Germany," declared Antoine bitterly. "And she was to be careful about Flynn. I always thought Flynn was straight—I did indeed, sir!"

"I think Flynn and his wife are both honest, but we'll take no chance. Warn the guards to be on the alert. We don't want Elsie to get the idea that she's being watched; so tell the men to keep away from the garage. I'll keep an eye on the Flynns. You go home and go to bed...."

The deep calm of the country night had settled upon the shore, and the Flynns' quarters were perfectly tranquil. It didn't seem possible that an international episode was in process of incubation in that quiet neighborhood. I began to think that the general distrust of the German woman by her associates might be responsible for Pierre's story. But, viewed in any light, I had a duty to perform. If Elsie had visited the house and purloined the fan, she would be very likely to get rid of it as quickly as possible, and I determined to keep watch. I drew the blinds, got into my dressing-gown and, reinforcing the lampshade with a newspaper to deaden the light, proceeded to read.

It was on toward one o'clock and I was dozing when a sound roused me. A door on the Flynn side of the hall creaked; there was silence, then I heard furtive steps on the stair. I snapped out my light and peered out of the window just as Elsie's robust figure disappeared into the shadows. I was about to follow when the creaking of the Flynn door was repeated. In a moment another peep through the shade showed me Flynn himself, and he, too, quickly vanished. Here was a situation indeed! If Elsie was keeping tryst with her co-conspirator of the afternoon and her husband was spying upon her, a row of large proportions was likely to result at any moment. I leaned from the window as far as I dared, and saw the woman close to the wall at the farther end of the building. The scene was well set for trouble, and I was wondering what I could do to avert a disturbance and the exposure of the foolish woman when the whole matter was taken out of my hands.

"You fool! You scoundrel!" she bellowed in German. "That you should think me a plaything to commit a robbery for you! That I should steal from my mistress to satisfy you, you piece of swine-flesh!"

I had often heard Elsie vocally disciplining her Irish husband and knew the power of her lungs and the vigor of her invective, but she seemed bent upon apprising the whole commonwealth of Connecticut of the fact that she was vastly displeased with the person she was addressing, who was certainly not Flynn. Amid sounds of a scuffle and the continuous outpouring of billingsgate the light over the garage door flashed on suddenly and disclosed Flynn in the act of precipitating himself into the fray. Elsie had grasped, and was stoutly clinging to a tall man who was trying to free himself of her muscular embrace. Her cries meanwhile included some of the raciest terms in the German dictionary and others—mouthfuls of frightfulness—that I didn't recognize.

When I reached the open Flynn was dancing round the belligerents like an excited boxer, occasionally springing in to land a blow; and all the while Elsie continued to address her captive and the world at large in her native tongue. Flynn was rather more than sixty, and Elsie was not much his junior, while the invader was young and agile. The man had loosened one arm and drawn a revolver with which he was pounding Elsie in the face. I knocked the gun from his hand with my walking-stick and shouted to Elsie to let go of him. Her shouts had roused the guards and, hearing answering cries and the beat of hurrying feet on the walks, he redoubled his efforts to escape. I had hardly got my hands on him when with a twist of his body he wrenched himself free and sped away in the darkness.

I hadn't gone far in pursuit of him before I tripped over the skirts of my dressing-gown and fell into a bed of cannas. This would have been less melancholy if Flynn, hard behind, hadn't stumbled over me and, believing he had captured the enemy, gripped my legs until I could persuade him to let go.

The lights now flared on all the walks and driveways, and Antoine was bellowing orders to the guards to surround the sunken garden. I surmised that the fugitive, surprised by the attack, had lost his bearings and was now far from the boundary wall back of the garage from which presumably he had entered the grounds. With the Sound cutting off his exit beyond the residence, there was a fair chance of catching him if Antoine's veterans were at all vigilant.

I found Antoine, armed with a club and swinging a lantern, majestically posed at the nearer entrance to the garden. With a swallow-tail coat over his night-shirt and his nightcap tipped over one ear, he was an enthralling figure. As he strode toward me his slippers flapped weirdly upon the brick walk. "There's somebody in the garden, sir," he whispered huskily. "The troops has it surrounded." No general in all history, reporting in some critical hour the disposition of his army, could have been more composed.