CHAPTER IV

A MORNING OF SURPRISES

The following morning at ten I was ordered round with the touring car, and Miss Gelette saw me for a moment alone before her uncle appeared. She had to look twice before recognizing me, for now I wore putties and the maroon livery supplied to Jules. It wasn't a half bad fit, though I couldn't bend over without experiencing certain misgivings.

She eyed my shaven lip and said: "I don't know if it's an improvement or not. Did you mind very much?"

"Not a bit, madam. I was thinking of getting rid of it in the hot weather, anyway."

"You're a philosopher, Peter, and very good-natured. I'm so glad you are." And then Mr. Varney appeared, leaning on the gold-knobbed Malacca cane he always carried.

In the bright morning sun his complexion looked more startling and sinister than ever, and, for all his immaculate and youthful foppishness of dress, so haggard and feeble did he seem that instinctively I stepped forward to assist him.

This was a mistake, for he drew himself up and said angrily: "To your seat, my man! When I need a nurse, I'll engage one." And he strutted down the steps, twirling his cane, like a macaroni of the old school.

I came mighty near losing my job right there, it being on the tip of my tongue to tell him what was on my mind, for my humor wasn't very good that morning, despite Miss Gelette's observation to the contrary. After my half year's holiday, getting up at six o'clock in the morning and overhauling three cars wasn't the joke it seemed the previous night. Nor was I used to being talked to in that fashion. Moreover, the Demon was awake and stirring within me, clamoring lustily for his customary morning drink. The fight to the finish had only commenced, but already I was sparring for wind.

I felt very irritable and despondent as I took the wheel, and, pursuant to a curt command from Mr. Varney, headed for the Ocean Boulevard at a maddeningly sedate pace.

"Not more than seven miles an hour, mind!" he emphasized, tapping me smartly on the shoulder with his cane. "You're at liberty to break your own neck, but not mine."

A mad desire possessed me to seize the cane and throw it in his face, then let out the engine for all she was worth. I was beginning to see the other side of the servant question, and I wondered guiltily if Jensen and his predecessors had ever felt like smashing me. Could I ever have been so overbearing as old Varney? Perhaps more so, when under the influence of the Demon.

At mention of my real name, I pricked up my ears. Mr. Varney was talking, and I could hear plainly above the soft pur of the engine. He was discussing the previous night's tragedy, reading snatches of the account from the morning paper, which I hadn't seen.

"Well, that's the last whelp of a vile brood gone, and a good riddance," he concluded, with marked satisfaction. "It's the end I always predicted."

"Why, did you know the family?" asked his niece in surprise.

"Yes, long before your time," as if her youth were a defect. "Peter Lawton, this one's Father, was at Harvard with me. Married Sally Canning, of Baltimore, against her parents' wishes--she was a noted beauty--broke her heart and died a drunkard at thirty. A bad, worthless lot."

"I don't know," said the girl slowly. "There was nothing ever wrong with them but this, was there?"

"Well, isn't that enough?" he snapped, banging his cane on the floor. "Is it nothing to be a dipsomaniac, and, knowing that, marry an innocent young girl? Is it nothing to beget progeny and perpetuate a degenerate endless chain----"

"I know, uncle. I was only thinking that the first Lawton who started this curse, perhaps hundreds of years ago, was the real culprit. Think of the tragedy of it, of inheriting such a thing through no fault of your own----"

"Pooh! A nice bread-poultice philosophy! Is there no such thing as free will? A fine world this would be if we were to yield to every mad desire! During my long experience I've found that when a blackguard perpetrates some characteristically dirty business, he always lays it to heredity. It's never himself that's to blame, but his ancestors--though they get precious little credit for any virtues he may have. And I say that for Peter Lawton to marry was a blackguardly business. It was a crime, and the State should punish such crimes or make them impossible."

"That's all very well. But if two people love each other----"

"Pooh! If he'd loved her half as well as he loved himself he never would have married her."

It took some effort to sit there quietly and hear my father called a blackguard. Having but the vaguest memory of him, I had no means of knowing that he had been acquainted with Theodore Varney. But as the Canning family had never anything to do with me--I was brought up by an impoverished maiden aunt of my father--it would seem Varney had his facts right when he said my mother married against her parents' wishes. Indeed, they had never forgiven her, my father, or me. But whether that made my father a blackguard was another matter.

On the whole, however, Varney's remarks did me an immensity of good. They stilled the clamoring voice of the Demon; I forgot about it in my anger at old Varney. I gritted my teeth and swore that I'd show him the "last whelp of a vile brood" was still very much alive, and would _not_ end the way he had predicted. I would never touch another drop if only to spite him. Thus a second unexpected ally came to my help in my fight with the Demon; the first was spontaneous liking for Brenda Gelette; the second, spontaneous dislike for her uncle.

The girl having been effectually squelched in her attempted mild defense of my worthless family, they proceeded to talk of other matters; that is, old Varney talked, giving his opinion like a magistrate from the bench, and not caring whether he had an auditor or not.

It was evident that he had read and traveled widely. I gathered that their home was in Philadelphia, but they spoke of high official circles in Washington, and of New Yorkers I had heard of and others I knew rather intimately. It was a caution the way the Varney tongue opened out on most of them; he had piled up a whole library of scandal during his long life, and had forgotten none of it. He seemed to take a malicious pleasure in saying nasty things about everybody, and the worst of it was I felt they were right. In many instances I knew them to be.

He paid no more attention to me than as if I were part of the car, and when his niece tried to steer him off, or hinted diplomatically that he lower his voice, he raised it the louder and banged on the floor with his cane.

Jules had called him an old devil, and I was ready to concur in the opinion. I wondered why Brenda Gelette put up with him, for assuredly she did not seem the kind that licks dirt for sake of their daily bread or an expected inheritance. But what love could a viper like him engender in any one? And if not love, then was it fear? These were questions I had been asking myself since that interview in the study.

On our way back through Sea Bright, after a funeral procession to the casino in Allenhurst, we stopped at the Octagon drug store--a branch of a well-known Philadelphia house--and old Varney and his niece entered. This was where the girl had gone yesterday.

With characteristic amiability he now remarked he could attend very well to his own business without her help, but she said she wished to do some shopping herself, and so, grumbling, he let her accompany him. He strutted as I had seen him do before, puffing out his flat chest and swinging his cane as if challenging the universe, and for all my dislike of the man, I felt a pang of sudden pity. I sensed that all this was play acting, a pose to deceive the world. That buoyant step and swaggering manner were as artificial as his teeth.

I am not a person of inspirations, but I got one just then. For all Varney's words about will power, did he possess a Demon like myself? Was he a secret "dope fiend," and did his niece suspect it? I knew precious little about medicine, but it seemed to me that might account for his peculiar color and emaciation; and it would account for his not wishing the girl to accompany him into the store which supplied him through the Philadelphia one.

I was thinking over this hypothesis when that queer sixth sense which we all possess warned me that some one was staring at me, and, glancing up, I saw a man standing on the corner. He wore a leather cap, with motor goggles shoved up over the peak, and he had the high, bulging forehead of a mathematician and the rudimentary chin of a degenerate. As our eyes met, he slowly closed one, whose color put me in mind of skimmed milk.

I looked hastily away, shocked as any old maid, so secure had I felt about my disguise. To the best of my recollection, I had never seen this fellow before, but then, during the past few months, people occasionally spoke to me whom I had no recollection of meeting previously, for the Demon was not an aid to memory. Clearly this fellow knew me for all my changed appearance, and in spite of the fact that I was supposed to be dead and buried. It would prove rather awkward if he greeted me as Peter Lawton before old Varney, who might appear at any moment.

I kept my head turned away, but, out of the tail of my eye, I saw him leave the corner and come strolling toward me. I heard him coming close to the car, something touched my hand, and when I looked up there he was, going across the street while a small piece of folded paper lay on the seat at my side. He was a clever sort, for I doubt if any watching eye, from among the many that surrounded us, could have detected his deft transference of that paper.

I decided to be equally discreet, and, pretending to examine the magneto, unfolded the little cocked hat and read:

The King's pawn is to meet the Bishop's at Knight's.

Feeling somewhat as did Alice when she went through the Looking Glass and met the Red Queen, I looked round hastily for the man with the bulging forehead, but he had vanished.

"Now is he a chess crank gone insane?" I asked myself, thinking aloud. "They ought to put him in the booby hatch."

"Eh, what's that?" roared old Varney in my ear.

"I--I didn't mean you, sir," I stammered, jumping out and opening the door. "I was thinking of a chess problem."

"Don't talk to me about chess problems," he snapped. "Only idiots play chess, and the only problem you have is how to earn the money I pay you."

I put the note in my pocket and thought of the incident on the way home. "Knight's what?" I asked myself irritably. "Even if the fellow is crazy, why couldn't he name the square and be done with it?"

It seemed to be a morning of surprises, for when I pulled in from the road toward the house, I passed an empty "bobcat" standing at the curb, and when I drew up under the porte-cochère a man of about my own age was coming down the steps. I gave one look, and then ducked, for it was Arnold Frean, the person of all others whom I cared least to see.

"How d' do, Miss Brenda? Hello, there, Mr. Varney!" he exclaimed, coming forward with sleek, bared head and welcoming hand. "What luck! Old Horace was just telling me he didn't know when you'd be back."

The greetings of both the girl and her uncle were cordial; indeed, it was the first time I'd heard old Varney do anything but snap. However, like us all, it was evident he could be very nice when he so wanted. He called Frean "my boy," and inquired after his family.

"Oh, the folks aren't coming down," said Frean. "They're off to Lenox, and the governor'll be doing good if he can snatch a week-end now and then. I'm down here on my lonely. Been working overtime, and got a bit under the weather. Doctor ordered sea air and the governor voted me a month's holiday. I heard you were trying your first dose of the Jersey coast----" And so he rattled on, with a very engaging ingenuousness which I knew cloaked an experience beyond his years.

I sat stolidly at the wheel, waiting to drive round to the garage when old Varney condescended to alight, and, after his first careless glance, Frean never gave me another. He had not recognized me, but if he was going to prove a frequent visitor during his stay, which seemed quite possible, I determined to run no chances. I would develop "motor eye" and take to wearing goggles.

All in all, things were looking up, and here was something more to take my thoughts off the Demon, for I knew that Arnold Frean had lied to old Varney, and that he was a young man well worth watching.