CHAPTER XI

THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES

"Drink this!" the doctor said again to the large lady, and, choking and sputtering, Mrs. Judson did as she was told. Ryder looked on in amazement. Ruth, seeing his face, and Miss Solomon's back being turned, broke into a giggle and cast herself helplessly into Ryder's arms.

"Oh! you funny, funny man!" she murmured. "I like to see a doctor work over a woman with hysterics--they know 'em so well!"

The house detective stalked out, leaving the door of the suite open. Ryder did not know whether to follow her or remain. Mrs. Judson was evidently determined not to give up the role of patient too easily. She caught the hand that had so cruelly wrung her nose and begged the doctor not to leave her.

He said he would not--in that sympathetically disgusted tone that medical men use on such occasions. He felt himself in a foolish position, and another man was looking on.

"Your husband, Madam?" he asked Ruth shortly, nodding toward Ryder.

"Yes," she said with a blush.

"Better ask him to retire while we get Mrs. Judson to bed. She has had these attacks before. She will not be over this one in a hurry." Then he added in a lower tone: "What's the matter now? Is her lapdog sick?"

"Her maid has left her," Ruth said, having hard work, as Ryder saw, to keep from laughing. But he felt no desire to laugh himself. Undress that woman and put her to bed _here_? John Ryder was getting desperate. This nightmare of untoward incidents was altogether too much for his self-control.

"That's a serious matter," grunted the doctor. "Neither of us will get much rest tonight if Mrs. Judson follows her usual course. Perhaps you can get somebody to help you, Madam----"

"I am used to nursing sick people," Ruth told him demurely. "I can follow your instructions exactly, Doctor. In fact, I have had considerable experience in nursing. In the present state of the hotel's affairs it might be difficult to get a maid."

"I suppose that is so," the medical man admitted. "Well, the first thing to do is to get her into bed."

Ryder, who felt that he never, on short acquaintance, had so disliked a man as he did this physician, had edged off to the further end of the room. Ruth came to him, still with laughter expressed in her quivering face and voice.

"You are only a 'mere man'--you cannot stay here, hubby," she whispered, putting her lips up to his. "You will have to go out until we get Mrs. Judson into my bed. Then--if she gets quiet--you may come back. I will sit up to tend to her and you can nap on the couch. But don't go too far away."

"Why, hang it, Ruth!" he complained, not at all the business man now, "can't she be lugged back to her own room?"

"But that would be cruel. She was frightened there, because she was alone and the lights went out. _I_ should have to go with her, you know. Come now! be knightly, Mr. Romeo," she added, her voice trailing off into a laugh as she pushed him gently out of the room.

John Ryder walked away about ten steps. Then he stopped, and smote one clenched fist into his other open palm.

"Well, I am hanged!" he ejaculated, and with fervor, "Some honeymoon! What?

"For a man to be turned out of his rooms at this hour of the night, and for a confounded, silly, hysterical old woman! Bah!"

John Ryder drew out a cigar, bit off the end savagely and lit it in direct contradiction to hotel rules, and puffed away like a donkey engine while he paced the carpeted corridor.

He was no longer the man with the welfare of his fellow guests at heart--particularly of the women and children in Pinewood Inn. He was tired, he was sleepy, and he had had enough excitement to last him for some time to come.

The procession of incidents which had enlivened his existence since the _Minnequago_ had docked were flung upon the screen of his memory again, and he reviewed them like a spectator at a moving picture show.

He remembered in what a nervous state he awaited the steamship's docking, expecting some word from the beautiful girl whom he had learned to love during the passage across the Atlantic.

Having not seen her to speak to for some hours, he had half feared to have her accept his proposal, now that he had made it. But the instant he saw her on the wharf awaiting his coming, he had flung all such hesitation and uncertainty to the winds. She seemed in her appearance all that was good and beautiful.

Then followed in swift succession the obtaining of the license, his own jumbled business at his offices, the drive to the minister's, the marriage ceremony, their hurried departure by train, their arrival at the Pinewood Inn in safety despite the accident at the bridge, their cozy little dinner, and then----

In more somber colors followed the chain of circumstances which had finally culminated in his present plight. Was ever a bridegroom up against such confounded luck?

Some honeymoon, indeed!

He tried to laugh; but his position was too serious, and his laugh was choked off by the time it was started. He swore softly again and paced on down the hallway. Coming to the door of the parlor, he looked in.

Old Cudger was asleep in the invalid's chair with a rug thrown over him. Candles, in saucers for sconces, burned before the picture, all other lights in the room being extinguished. Marching up and down the rug like a sentinel with his master's gold-headed cane upon his shoulder, was James, the colored factotum of the owner of Van Scamp's "Cheesemonger."

"It does look as though the hotel were in a state of siege," muttered Ryder. "It's an experience that none of us will forget for many a long day. Heigh ho! I wish I'd never come into the ranch," and he stretched his arms above his head and yawned. "This isn't my idea of a nice, quiet honeymoon."

At this end of the parlor the shadows were heavy. But Ryder saw the outlines of several comfortable looking chairs. Plowing up and down the corridor waiting for Ruth to call him back, began to pall upon his mind. He ventured into the big room.

His feet made no sound upon the rugs. James marched back and forth in perfect unconsciousness of his presence. Ryder made his way to a big, sleepy-hollow chair, fumbled for the arms, found them, and sank back restfully into--some other person's lap!

It would be hard telling whether John Ryder or the person in the easy chair, was the most startled. The former leaped up with a surprised grunt. The other darted out of the chair and, before the man could get more than a yard away, he felt the end of a revolver thrust right against his waistline!

"Hold on!" hissed an excited voice. "What you doing here? Trying to get fresh with me, or are you just a ninny?"

John Ryder, had he not been for the moment speechless, would certainly have owned to the final accusation. "Ninny" it was! If he were not one, he certainly would not be wandering about this hotel instead of peaceably occupying the suite for which he was paying thirty dollars a day.

"March out there under the lamp till I get a look at you! Quick now!" jerked out the person with the weapon.

Ryder began to do as he was told--backward. He could see the lighted end of the room. James, his face graying with fear, was squatting down behind the invalid chair in which his sleeping master reclined. Evidently the row at the upper end of the room had startled the negro more than it had the two who were taking part in it.

Ryder's brusk antagonist jerked him swiftly around into the corridor, under the nearest bracket lamp.

"Hugh!" exclaimed Miss Solomons. "So it's you? I've had my eye on you for some time. What you doing here, anyway? And what you doin' back there in those rooms where that Judson had a fit? You one of her friends? What's your name?"

"I am Mr. Ryder," he told the house detective mildly, noting that the paper novel was still clutched fast in her left hand.

She grunted, tucking the revolver out of sight. Evidently, whatever she suspected John Ryder of, she did not consider him dangerous.

"Ryder, heh?" jerked out the house detective. "Same one that beat 'em all to the lamps and candles? Not a crook, then. Anyway, not a _little_ crook. What you doin' in those rooms just now?" she repeated. "Mrs. Judson still there?"

"Yes," Ryder said with vast disgust. "They are putting her to bed. Turned me out."

"And why not?" snapped Miss Solomons. "You didn't expect to stay there all night, did you?"

"Why not?" Ryder demanded with sudden vexation. "I'm paying for them."

"That may be. I don't doubt it," the house detective said sharply. "But we don't allow anything like that here."

She gave Ryder a little shove toward the stairs, and turned abruptly back into the parlor.

"All right, Je-eames!" he heard her drawl to the colored man. "No gun-play this time. Come out and do your goose-step up and down the rug. And if anybody else blunders in here while I'm napping, keep 'em out of my lap, will you?"

To tell the truth John Ryder was so utterly amazed that he could not reply to the house detective. He scarcely knew what she meant by her innuendo; yet he felt rising anger. She seemed to have doubted the status of Ruth and himself as a properly wedded pair!

Nightmare? It was a saturnalia of misunderstanding and vexing incidents! John Ryder would have been glad right then and there to take Ruth and escape from the Pinewood Inn, even if they had to walk through the night to some other shelter. Later he wished with all his heart that he had done just that.