CHAPTER XIII

THE EAGLE EYE OF THE HOUSE DETECTIVE

George began at once to shout "Hullo!" into the instrument. Finally he got a reply from Suite Three. It was the doctor himself who answered the insistent call from the hotel desk.

"Yes, this is George!" ejaculated the clerk. "Come down here to the office at once, Doc. Something's happened to Mr. White----

"What is it? I dunno. He's fallen in a fit--looks awful--face as black as your hat!"

The clerk was excited and he spread it on rather thick. Still, White did look bad.

George came away from the telephone. "He'll be right down," he said aloud. "I guess your wife's scared, Mr. Ryder. I heard her scream."

Ryder was immediately troubled. His own nerves were jumping. No wonder if Ruth should become frightened. There was nothing he could do for White, and he started for the stairway. Half way up the flight he passed the doctor, bag in hand, charging down. This was certainly a busy night for the hotel physician.

And then, as Ryder reached the top of the stairway, he saw another figure coming along the corridor--a white-faced, gasping woman, with eyes like coals, rushing like a whirlwind into his arms--a whirlwind of laces and ruffles and ribbons, with a boudoir cap over one ear and her tiny bare feet twinkling in and out under her trailing robes.

It was Ruth, and she was the picture of fright.

"My heavens!" gasped Ryder, "what's the matter, girlie? What's frightened you so?"

"Oh!" She saw him then and clutched him tightly about the neck. "I--I thought something had happened to you. They said so--I heard the clerk speaking through the 'phone to the doctor----"

"Oh, no," said Ryder soothingly. "It was another man. He was taken ill down there in the office." He could not tell her, now that she was so disturbed, that it was the stranger who had already annoyed her. "Why, sweetheart, don't sob so! I'm all right. Don't you see I am? Never was sick a day that I remember in my whole life. You couldn't----"

He looked over her head, and there was the sharp face of Miss Solomons at the parlor door. The sharp eye of the house detective seemed devouring them both. Ryder felt a shocking desire to consign both the house detective and Mrs. Judson to the same place--and that a spot not often mentioned in polite company.

But to Ruth he murmured: "Brace up, girlie! It's all right--it's all right, I tell you. You've been overdoing. This confounded Mrs. Judson has been too much for you."

She still clung tightly to him, sobbing, her head buried on his shoulder. He gathered her up in his arms, holding her yielding body close against his breast, and carried her swiftly along the corridor. As he passed the parlor he glared at Miss Solomons.

Once he halted to pick up one of the slippers Ruth had lost in her flight down the hall. The other was in the doorway of their suite. He strode in with her, kicked shut the door, and placed Ruth tenderly upon the couch. The heavy lady was not in sight.

"Poor Mrs. Judson!" Ruth gasped. "The doctor left me to take care of her."

"Hang Mrs. Judson!" exclaimed Ryder. "Is she to be tied about our necks like a millstone? Is she our Old Man of the Sea?"

"Sh!" She put her own lips to his. "Don't be offensive, dear boy!" she gasped after a long breathless kiss which shook both of them. "She--she can't help being--well!--being just what she is."

"Humph!" grunted John Ryder with much doubt. "Where is she?"

"In there," Ruth replied nodding toward the inner room. "Oh! I am so glad you are all right, I could forgive Mrs. Judson everything now!" she whispered, snuggling her face down against his breast again.

"I'm hanged if I forgive her for spoiling this night for us," growled he.

"But there are other nights--hundreds of them--thousands----"

"How do you know?" demanded he. "And we never saw her in our lives before last evening! By thunder! this is the unluckiest old hole of a hotel. I'm almost tempted to ask you to pack up again. Some honeymoon!"

"But how would we get away from here?" she asked, wonderingly. "They say there are no passenger trains on this short line to Pinewood. And until the bridge is repaired, how can we get to the station at Barr, on the main line?"

"There is a combination that runs down to the Junction at eight and another at one o'clock, besides the evening train," John Ryder said. "Of course, it is not very luxurious. But you say the word, and I'll get the telegraph to working in the morning and we'll have a special sent up here."

"A special what?" she asked in wonderment.

"Special train."

"Oh! You foolish boy! How extravagant! Why, you talk as though you were a millionaire!" cried Ruth, laughing up into his face.

"Why, I----"

Ryder halted. Did she not know he was very wealthy? He had not boasted of his money, but surely, on the _Minnequago_, he had told her enough about his circumstances for her to realize that she had married a very wealthy man.

She was speaking again now, and rather seriously. "I don't really think I want to go, dear. Not right away. I want time to look about the old place. We must walk through the pines--and down to the inlet where the crabbing used to be so good. You know the places we want to see, John."

"Oh! Do I?" asked John Ryder in growing surprise.

"Of course. Now, don't make believe you are not sentimental. I know you are," and she squeezed him tightly about the throat until there was grave danger of his choking.

Ryder had moved over into a big armchair and had taken Ruth with him. "So I am sentimental, am I?" he said. "You seem to know a deal about me for a man you've seen so short a time."

"Oh, but," she responded, "remember how often I have thought of you since--well, since I was a tiny girl. I've often imagined just how you'd look and just the sort of man you'd be."

"The deuce you did!" muttered Ryder. Then: "Do all girls dream about their future husbands and wonder what they will look like?"

"I suppose so. Only, all of them are not so sure of the kind of man he will be as I was."

John Ryder was vastly puzzled again. He gazed down at her as she lay there in his arms and asked: "Do--do you think I fill the bill?"

"Oh, not altogether as to looks, perhaps. You know, hubby, you are not a bit romantic looking." and she smiled at him roguishly.

"No. I suppose I am not--thank fortune!" and he grinned in return. "If I wore my hair long, and sported a velvet jacket and broad collar, for instance---- Well! what do you suppose they would do with me in business?"

"I know. You are awfully practical. That really is surprising," she murmured. "But the minute you took my hands and I looked into your eyes----"

"On the dock, you mean?" he asked.

"Yes, on the dock where I waited for you."

"And _then_?"

"Why, then I knew I loved you. I wasn't sure before. If you hadn't been--well--just you, I'd have run away and you'd never have seen me again, hubby. I made up my mind to that."

"To run away from me if I didn't suit?"

"Yes."

"And yet you sent your trunks to the station just the same?" and he laughed into her blushing face.

"Oh, but that was only so as to be ready to go with you if you proved to be as nice as you did. Otherwise--well, there are other places on the Pennsylvania Road to go to, besides Pinewood."

"So I measured up, when you had considered everything, to your idea of what a husband should be?"

"Oh, yes, dear! You were all that was to be desired," and she patted his cheek tenderly.

"Say!" exclaimed Ryder, "I'm not sure I'll be able to wear my hat tomorrow. I can feel my head increasing in size momently. You'll make me conceited."

"No. Only proud."

"Ah, I'm the proudest man alive to get you!"

"Now, you mustn't say that. I am just a poor girl. I would have to work hard for my living all my life if you hadn't come for me."

"Nobody else, of course, would have taken pity on you?" he laughed.

"Ah, but there could have been nobody else. You were meant for me. You were the only one."

"I'm glad you saw it that way," he laughed, "and realized what a stage career meant before it was too late."

She turned squarely to look at him then, a puzzled little frown marring her brow. "What--what did you say?" she asked.

They were both startled the next moment by a shriek from the inner room.

"Help! I'm--I'm robbed! My rings--my brooches--my necklace! I know I am robbed!"

It was the hysterical voice of Mrs. Judson. They heard her bound out of bed. The whole house seemed to rock when she landed on the bedroom floor.

"Huh!" ejaculated a sharp voice behind the bride and bridegroom, "about what I expected."

It was Miss Solomons. How she had got into the suite Ryder did not ask. His wife had started for the inner room, crying:

"Oh, poor Mrs. Judson! I really forgot her."

"Heaven forgive me!" groaned the bridegroom, shaking both fists in the air, as he sat in the armchair from which his wife had leaped. "I wish that woman would either be gathered peacefully to her ancestors, or--or get married again!"

Then he turned to find the eye of the house detective upon him.

"Huh!" said that individual, "if you dared maybe you'd add murder to larceny! How about it?"