“She means, if they didn’t accept my disappearance as legitimate news,” explained the girl “That would be very disappointing. But surely there was no harm in making the experiment.”
“They’re a clever lot, those newspaper guys,” sneered Mr. Bland, “in their own opinion. But when you come right down to it, every one of ’em has a nice little collection of gold bricks in his closet. I guess you’ve got them going. I hope so.”
“Thank you,” smiled the girl. “You are very kind. You are here, I understand, because of an unfortunate — er — affair of the heart?”
Mr. Bland smoothed back his black oily hair from his forehead, and smirked. “Oh, now—” he protested.
“Arabella,” put in Mr. Magee, “was her name. The beauties of history and mythology hobbled into oblivion at sight of her.”
“I’m quick to forget,” insisted Mr. Bland.
“That does you no credit, I’m sure,” replied the girl severely. “And now, mamma, I think we had better select our rooms—”
She paused. For Elijah Quimby had come in through the dining-room door, and stood gazing at the group before the fire, his face reflecting what Mr. Magee, the novelist, would not have hesitated a moment in terming “mingled emotions”.
“Well,” drawled Mr. Quimby. He strode into the room. “Mr. Magee,” he said, “that letter from Mr. Bentley asked me to let you stay at Baldpate Inn. There wasn’t anything in it about your bringing parties of friends along.”
“These are not friends I’ve brought along,” explained Magee. “They’re simply some more amateur hermits who have strolled in from time to time. All have their individual latch-keys to the hermitage. And all, I believe, have credentials for you to examine.”
Mr. Quimby stared in angry wonder.
“Is the world crazy?” he demanded. “Any one’d think it was July, the way people act. The inn’s closed, I tell you. It ain’t running.”
Professor Bolton rose from his chair.
“So you are Quimby,” he said in a soothing tone. “I’m glad to meet you at last. My old friend John Bentley has spoken of you so often. I have a letter from him.” He drew the caretaker to one side, and took an envelope from his pocket. The two conversed in low tones.
Quickly the girl in the corduroy suit leaned toward Mr. Magee. She whispered, and her tone was troubled:
“Stand by me. I’m afraid I’ll need your help.”
“What’s the matter?” inquired Magee.
“I haven’t much of any right here, I guess. But I had to come.”
“But your key?”
“I fear my — my press-agent — stole it.”
A scornful remark as to the antiquated methods of that mythical publicity promoter rose to Mr. Magee’s lips, but before he spoke he looked into her eyes. And the remark was never made. For in their wonderful depths he saw worry and fear and unhappiness, as he had seen them there amid tears in the station.
“Never mind,” he said very gently, “I’ll see you through.”
Quimby was standing over Mr. Bland. “How about you?” he asked.
“Call up Andy Rutter and ask about me,” replied Bland, in the tone of one who prefers war to peace.
“I work for Mr. Bentley,” said Quimby. “Rutter hasn’t any authority here. He isn’t to be manager next season, I understand. However the professor wants me to let you stay. He says he’ll be responsible.” Mr. Bland looked in open-mouthed astonishment at the unexpected sponsor he had found. “And you?” went on Quimby to the women.
“Why—” began Miss Norton.
“Absolutely all right,” said Mr. Magee. “They come from Hal Bentley, like myself. He’s put them in my care. I’ll answer for them.” He saw the girl’s eyes; they spoke her thanks.
Mr. Quimby shook his head as one in a dream.
“All this is beyond me — way beyond,” he ruminated. “Nothing like it ever happened before that I’ve heard of. I’m going to write all about it to Mr. Bentley, and I suppose I got to let you stay till I hear from him. I think he ought to come up here, if he can.”
“The more the merrier,” said Mr. Magee, reflecting cheerfully that the Bentleys were in Florida at last accounts.
“Come, mamma,” said Miss Norton, rising, “let’s go up and pick out a suite. There’s one I used to have a few years ago — you can see the hermit’s shack from the windows. By the way, Mr. Magee, will you send Mr. Peters up to us? He may be able to help us get settled.”
“Ahem,” muttered Mr. Magee, “I–I’ll have a talk with Peters. To be quite frank, I anticipate trouble. You see, the Hermit of Baldpate doesn’t approve of women—”
“Don’t approve of women,” cried Mrs. Norton, her green eyes flashing. “Why not, I’d like to know?”
“My dear madam,” responded Mr. Magee, “only echo answers, and it but vacuously repeats, ‘Why not?’. That, however, is the situation. Mr. Peters loathes the sex. I imagine that, until to-day, he was not particularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he has even gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble of the world to woman.”
“The idiot!” cried Mrs. Norton.
“Delicious!” laughed the girl.
“I shall ask Peters to serve you,” said Magee. “I shall appeal to his gallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as our cook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a new cook. I’ll appeal to his better nature.”
“Don’t do it,” cried the girl. “Don’t emphasize us to him in any way, or he may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We’ll play at being our own bell-boys.”
“Ignore you,” cried Mr. Magee. “What Herculean tasks you set. I’m not equal to that one.” He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way up-stairs. “I’m something of a bell-boy myself, when roused,” he said.
The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor from Magee’s apartments. “It’s the very one I used to have, years and years ago — at least two or three years ago,” she said. “Isn’t it stupid? All the furniture in a heap.”
“And cold,” said Mrs. Norton. “My land, I wish I was back by my own fire.”
“I’ll make you regret your words, Mrs. Norton,” cried Magee. He threw up the windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furniture. The girl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Norton managed to get consistently in the way. When he had the furniture distributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then he stood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart very gay, before the girl of the station.
“I hope you don’t expect a tip,” she said, laughing.
“I do,” he said, coming closer, and speaking in a voice that was not for the ear of the chaperon. “I want a tip on this — do you really act?”
She looked at him steadily.
“Once,” she said, “when I was sixteen, I appeared in an amateur play at school. It was my first and last appearance on the stage.”
“Thanks, lady,” remarked Mr. Magee in imitation of the bell-boy he was supposed to be. He sought number seven. There he made himself again presentable, after which he descended to the office.
Mr. Bland sat reading the New York paper before the fire. From the little card-room and the parlor, the two rooms to the right and left of the hotel’s front door, Quimby had brought forth extra chairs. He stood now by the large chair that held Professor Bolton, engaged in conversation with that gentleman.
“Yes,” he was saying, “I lived three years in Reuton and five years in New York. It took me eight years — eight years to realize the truth.”
“I heard about it from John Bentley,” the professor said gently.