The Streets of Ascalon

Quarren saw him cleverly avoid death with one hand, and laughed.

"Who is stopping with you up here?" he shouted close to Wycherly's ear.

"Nobody – Mrs. Leeds, Chrysos Lacy, and Sir Charles. There are some few neighbours, too – Langly is mousing and prowling about; and that poor Ledwith man is all alone in his big house – fixing to get out of it so his wife can move in from Reno when she's ready for more mischief… Here we are, Quarren! Your stuff will be in your rooms in a few minutes. There's my wife, now – "

He waved his hand to Molly but let Quarren go forward alone while he started across the fields toward his hangar where, in grotesque and vicious-looking immobility, reposed his new winged pet, the little Stinger monoplane, wings set as wickedly as an alert wasp's.

CHAPTER IX

As Quarren came forward between the peonies drooping over the flagged walk, Molly Wycherly, awaiting him on the veranda, laid her forefinger across her lips conjuring caution.

"I didn't tell Strelsa that you were coming," she whispered; "I didn't suppose the child could possibly object."

Quarren's features stiffened:

"Does she?"

"Why – this morning I said carelessly to Jim that I meant to ask you, and Strelsa came into my room later and begged me not to ask you until she had left."

"Why?" inquired the boy, grimly.

"I really don't know, Ricky – "

"Yes, you do. What has happened?"

"You're certainly rude enough – "

"What has happened, Molly?"

"I don't know for certain, I tell you… Langly Sprowl has been roving around the place a great deal lately. He and Strelsa ride together nearly every day."

"Do you think she has come to an understanding with him?"

"She hasn't told me so. Perhaps she prefers Sir Charles."

"Do you believe that?"

"Frankly, no. I'm much more afraid that Langly has persuaded her into some sort of a tacit engagement… I don't know what the child can be thinking of – unless the universal criticism of Langly Sprowl has convinced her of his martyrdom… There'll be a pretty situation when Mary Ledwith returns… I could kill Langly – " She doubled both pretty hands and frowned at Quarren, then her swift smile broke out and she placed the tips of her fingers on his shoulders and stooping from the top step deliberately kissed him.

"You dear fellow," she said; "I don't care what Strelsa thinks; I'm glad you've come. And, oh, Ricky! The papers are full of you and Dankmere and your new enterprise! – I laughed and laughed! – forgive me, but the papers were so funny – and I couldn't help laughing – "

Quarren forced a smile.

"I have an idea," he said, "that our new business is destined to command a good deal of respect sooner or later."

"Has Dankmere anything really valuable in his collection?"

"I'm taking that risk," he said, gaily. "Wait a few weeks, Molly, before you and Jim try to buy the entire collection."

"I can see Jim decorating the new 'Stinger' with old masters," laughed Molly. "Come upstairs with me; I'll show you your quarters. Go lightly and don't talk; Strelsa is wandering around the house somewhere with a bad case of blue devils, and I'd rather she were over her headache before your appearance adds another distressing jolt."

"Has she had another shock recently?"

"A letter from her lawyers. There won't be anything at all left for her."

"Are you sure?"

"She is. Why, Ricky, the City had half a million on deposit there, and even that foxy young man Langly was caught for twice as much more. It's a ghastly scandal – the entire affair. How many cents on a dollar do you suppose poor little Strelsa is going to recover? Not two!"

They paused at the door of his quarters. His luggage had already arrived and a valet was busy unpacking for him.

"Sir Charles, Chrysos Lacy, Jim and I are motoring. We'll be back for tea. Prowl about, Ricky; the place is yours and everything in it – except that little girl over there" – pointing along the corridor to a distant door.

He smiled. "She may be, yet," he said lightly. "Don't come back too soon."

So Molly went away laughing; and presently through the lace curtains, Quarren saw Jim Wycherly whirl up in a yellow touring car, and Molly, Chrysos, and Sir Charles clamber in for one of those terrific and headlong drives which made Jim's hospitality a terror to the majority of his guests.

Quarren watched the car disappear, hopelessly followed by an overfed setter. Then the dust settled; the fat family pet came panting back to lie down on the lawn, dead beat, and Quarren resumed his toilet.

Half an hour later he emerged from his quarters wearing tennis flannels and screwing the stem into a new pipe which he had decided to break in – a tall, well-built, pleasant-eyed young fellow with the city pallor blanching his skin and the breeze stirring his short blond hair.

"Hello, old man!" he said affably to the fat setter, who thumped his tail on the grass and looked up at Quarren with mild, deerlike eyes.

"We're out of the running, we two – aren't we?" he added. "You try very pluckily to keep up with your master's devil-wagon; I run a more hopeless race… For the golden chariot is too swift for me, and the race is to the swift; and the prize, doggy, is a young girl's unhappy heart which is slowly turning from sensitive flesh and blood into pure and senseless gold."

He stood under a tree slowly filling his pipe. The scent of early summer was in the air; the odour of June peonies, and young leaves and clear waters; of grasses and hedges and distant hemlocks.

Leisurely, the fat dog waddling at his heels, he sauntered about the Wycherly place inspecting its renovated attractions – among others the new old-fashioned garden full of new old-fashioned flowers so marvellously developed by modern skill that he recognised scarcely any of them. Petunias, with their great fluted and scalloped blossoms resembled nothing he had known by that name; the peonies seemed to him enormous and exotic; rockets, larkspurs, spiderwort, pinks, all had been so fantastically and grotesquely developed by modern horticulture that Quarren felt as though he were wandering alone among a gardenful of strangers. Only here and there a glimpse of familiar sweet-william or the faint perfume of lemon-verbena brought a friendly warmth into his heart; but, in hostile silence he passed by hydrangea and althea, syringa and preposterous canna, quietly detesting the rose garden where scores of frail and frivolous strangers nodded amid anæmic leaves, or where great, blatant, aniline-coloured blossoms bulged in the sun, seeming to repeat with every strapping bud their Metropolitan price per dozen.

He looked in at the stables and caressed a horse or two; examined the sheepfold; passed by garage and hangar without interest, lingered wistfully by the kennels where a dozen nervous little Blue Beltons, too closely inbred, welcomed his appearance with hysteric emotions.

Beyond the kennels he caught a distant glimpse of blue water glimmering between tall hemlock trees; so he took the lake path and presently rounded a sharp curve where a rustic bench stood, perched high above the rocky shore. Strelsa Leeds, seated there, looked up from the newspaper which she had been reading. Some of the colour faded from her cheeks. There was a second's silence, then, as though a little bewildered, she looked inquiringly into his smiling eyes and extended her hand toward the hand he offered.

"I didn't know you were coming," she said with pallid self-possession.

"I telegraphed for permission. Is your headache better?"

"Yes. Have you just arrived?"

"A little while ago. I was told to wander about and enjoy the Wycherlys' new ancestral palace. Does a ghost go with the place? You're rather pale, Mrs. Leeds. Have they engaged you as the family phantom?"

She laughed a little, then her gray eyes grew sombre; and, watching, he saw the dusky purple hue deepen in them under the downward sweep of the lashes.

He waited for her to speak, and she did not. Her remote gaze rested on the lake where the base of the rocks fell away sheer into limpid depths; where green trees, reversed in untroubled reflection, tinted the still waters exquisitely, and bits of sky lay level as in a looking-glass.

No fish broke the absolute stillness of the surface, no breeze ruffled it; only the glitter of some drifting dragon-fly accented the intense calm.

"Are you – offended?" she said at last, her gaze now riveted on the water.