Blacksheep! Blacksheep! by Meredith Nicholson (best books for students to read TXT) 📕

"I think we may as well go at once to our rooms," he said. "You understand, Baring, that we dine at seven-thirty—places for three?"

"Very good, sir: I received your telegram."

Amid the various phases of surprise through which he had passed since reaching the station Archie had kept his ears open, thinking the servants would address their employer by a name, but no such clue was forthcoming. The house exhaled an atmosphere of luxury and taste, and the furnishings were rich and consistently chosen. Archie recalled twenty houses in which he was frequently a guest that in nowise approached the Governor's establishment for comfort and charm. If he had been puzzled before he was stupefied now. The enormous effrontery of the thing overwhelmed him. He knew the general neighborhood too well not to be sure that it was not a region where a housebreaker of even the most exalted rank could live unchallenged. To be sure this was summer, and most of the houses along the street were boarded up; but the Governor would certainly not be invading in broad daylight premises to which he had no claim, and the retinue of trained and decorous servants disposed effectually of any such speculations.

On the second floor the Governor lingered in the drawing-room to call his guest's attention to some pictures, contemporary American work, which Archie recognized instantly. Indeed he knew several of the painters very well.

"We must encourage our own artists," remarked the Governor. "It's the only way we shall ever develop an American art."

Continuing up another flight (there was an elevator, the Governor explained, but he preferred the stairs) Archie surveyed approvingly a lounging room, half library and half office.

"If you have a taste for old leather there's stuff here that will please you. No rubbish, you see; a man's room, a little quaint as to furniture, and the telephone and electric fan are the only anachronisms, a concession to the spirit of modern life. Here I have worked out some most abstruse problems in astrology. A capital place to ponder the mysteries. If anything on that tray interests you, help yourself."

Archie tottered toward the stand on which decanters, syphons, and a silver bowl of ice had been placed. He helped himself generously to Scotch; the Governor contented himself with a glass of mineral water—he never took anything else, he explained.

"Odd, but I've never used the stuff at all. Bless you, no fanatical notions on the subject! If you don't see what you like there just press a button and it will probably be found for you. And now, my dear Archie"—he closed the door and turned on the fan—"you are my guest, in every sense my guest. You wouldn't be human if you didn't wonder about me rather more than at any time since we first met; you had not the slightest idea that I should bring you to so decent a shack as this. It may have occurred to you that I may be an interloper here, but such is not the case. I own this house and the ground it stands on and everything in it. You are, of course, not a prisoner; not in any sense, and there's a telephone in your room—you shall see in a moment—by which you can talk to all the world quite freely,—no restrictions whatsoever.

"My name is not Saulsbury, of course, but something quite different. The servants in this house do not know my true name. They might, of course, work it out, for I pay taxes here, and my family history is spread in the public records, but the people you see about here are trained to curb their curiosity; I trust them just as I trust you. They are all from under the crust,—the man who met us at the station is a daring housebreaker; the chauffeur a second-story man, the only one I ever knew who had the slightest judgment; the butler is a hotel thief, and a shrewd operator until he got too corpulent for transom work. Down to the scullery maid, who was a clever shoplifter, all the servants are crooks I've picked up and installed here until they can do what Leary's doing, invest their ill-gotten gains in some legitimate business. When Baring offers you the asparagus or serves your coffee you may derive a thrill from the knowledge that the man at your elbow has enough rewards hanging over him to make any one rich who can telephone his whereabouts to police headquarters in any town in America. As all branches of the profession are represented here my retainers repay my hospitality by keeping me in touch with their comrades everywhere."

Archie wiped the perspiration from his face and groped for the decanter.

"You're not afraid—not afraid of them!"

"Ingratitude, my dear Archie, is reserved for the highbrow moralist; I trust these people with my life and liberty, and they know I'll not only protect them but that my facilities for shielding them and assisting in the liquidation of their loot is theirs to command. While they are here their lives are wholly circumspect, though they are not without their temptations. With a place like this to operate from they could raid this whole block and back vans up to my door and cart it away. Officious caretakers and hidden wires connected with detective agencies would only stimulate their wits. But nothing doing, Archie! A policeman on this beat suggested to Baring, over a bottle of beer in the basement, the lifting of plate in a house round the corner, but what did Baring do but show the fellow the door! And yet Baring has stolen thousands of dollars' worth of stuff of all kinds and has it well planted waiting for me to turn it into cash. By the way, you saw the chap who brought in the tray? You probably noticed his melancholy air? I had just told him of Hoky's death and he's all broken up. He and Hoky ranged the Missouri River towns a few years ago and the police out there are still trying to explain their plunderings."

"I suppose, I suppose," Archie timidly ventured, "you've told them about me?"

"Not a word! They'd be jealous: wouldn't understand how I made you a guest when all the rest of 'em have to work for a living. You will act exactly as though you were a visitor in the house of an old friend. And now I must go through this mail—I've got a chap who collects my stuff from some of the unofficial post-offices up-state and here it is all ready for inspection. The first room to the right is yours.

"A few pretty good pastels stuck around here," he continued, opening a door. "That 'Moonrise on the Grand Lagoon' is rather well done. Everything seems to be in order; if you want your clothes pressed poke the button twice."

Archie snapped his fingers impatiently. When he went to Washington to say good-by to his sister he had ordered a trunk packed with the major portion of his wardrobe and held for orders. How to possess himself of the trunk without disclosing his presence in town to the valet of the Dowden Apartments was beyond his powers.

"If you have something tucked away that you'd like to get hold of—" suggested the Governor with one of his intuitive flashes.

"It's a trunk at my—er—lodgings. A man who works there packed it for me—"

"Why don't you come out with it and say that the syndicate valet in one of these palatial bachelor chambers somewhere uptown packed it for you? I can tell a man who's been valeted as far as my eyes will reach. Now I have no curiosity whatever about your personal identity or affairs of any sort, as I've told you before. I'll ring for my own valet, who was an honest tailor before he became a successful second-story worker, and you may confide your predicament to him. He'll ride home on the trunk. There was never yet a valet who wouldn't steal the trousers off a bronze statue, and I'll lift the ban on crooked work here long enough for Timmons to call at your lodgings and either by violence or corruption secure your trunk. No! Not a cent. Remember that you are my guest."

The trunk was in Archie's room in just one hour. Timmons, who had received his instructions without the slightest emotion, gravely unpacked it.

"You've got to admit the service in this house is excellent. If you don't mind we'll dress for dinner," remarked the Governor lounging in the doorway. "I forgot to say that there's a lady dining with us—"

"A lady!" demanded Archie with a frown. He had assumed, when the Governor reminded Baring that dinner was to be served for three, that he was to be introduced to some prominent member of what the Governor was fond of calling the great fraternity. But the threatened projection of a woman into the household struck Archie unfavorably. The Governor's tale of his love affair with a bishop's daughter he had discounted heavily; it was hardly possible that any respectable woman would dine in the house. The Governor, with his usual quick perception, noted his companion's displeasure.

"Your qualms and your concern for the proprieties are creditable to your up-bringing. But how ungenerous of you to suspect me of wishing to mix you up with anything even remotely bordering upon an intrigue, a vulgar liaison! One thing I am not, my boy; one thing I may, with a degree of assurance, say for myself, and that is that with all my sins I am not vulgar!"

"Of course I didn't mean that," said Archie clumsily, knowing that this was exactly what he had meant. "But I thought you might be—er—more comfortable if I didn't appear."

"The suspicion had sunk deep! But once more I shall forgive you. Your presence will help me tide over a difficult situation. I am not only showing you once more the depth of my confidence and trust but, more than that, I pay you the compliment of asking your assistance. You bear yourself so like a gentleman that your presence at my table can hardly fail to reassure the lady and contribute to her own ease and peace of mind. And without you we might quarrel horribly. You will act as a buffer, a restraining influence; your charming manners will mitigate the violence of her resentment against me. The lady—"

Archie waited for what further he might have to say about the lady. The Governor had grown suddenly grave. He crossed the room, stared at the floor for a moment, and then said from the door:

"The lady, my dear boy, is my sister."

The Governor maintained so evenly his mood of irresponsible insouciance that the soberness with which he announced that it was his sister who was to join them at dinner sent Archie's thoughts darting away at a new tangent of speculation. He had so accommodated himself to the idea that the Governor was a man without ties, or with all his ties broken, that this intimation that he had a sister who was still on friendly enough terms with him to visit his house—an establishment which with all its conventionalities of comfort and luxury was dominated by a note of mystery—left Archie floundering. As the man himself had said, it would not be so difficult a matter to penetrate the secret of his identity. Archie knew several men in town who were veritable encyclopedias of the scandal of three generations, and if the scion of some old New York house had gone astray these gentlemen could furnish all