Part 14 (1/2)
”Pardon me, but I must see Mr. Thatcher. Where is he, please?”
”He's gone, skipped! No manner of use in looking for him. On my honor, he's not in town.”
”Then why didn't you say so and be done with it?” demanded Dan angrily.
”Please keep your seat,” replied the young fellow from the workbench. ”I really wish you would.”
He drew on his pipe for a moment, and Dan, curiously held by his look and manner and arrested by the gentleness of his voice, awaited further developments. He had no weapons with which to deal with this composed young person in overalls and scarlet hose. He swallowed his anger; but his curiosity now clamored for satisfaction.
”May I ask just who you are and why on earth you brought me up here?”
”Those are fair questions--two of them. To the first, I am Allen Thatcher, and this is my father's house. To the second--” He hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and laughed. ”Well, if you must know,--I was so devilish lonesome!”
He gazed at Harwood quizzically, with a half-humorous, half-dejected air.
”If you're lonesome, Mr. Thatcher, it must be because you prefer it that way. It can't be necessary for you to resort to kidnapping just to have somebody to talk to. I thought you were in Europe.”
”Nothing as bad as that! What's your name, if you don't mind?”
When Dan gave it, Thatcher nodded and thanked him.
”College man?”
”Yale.”
”That's altogether bully. I envy you, by George! You see,” he went on easily, as though in the midst of a long and intimate conversation, ”they took me abroad, and it never really counted. They always treated me as though I were an invalid; and kept me for a year or two squatting on an Alp on account of my lungs. It amused them, no doubt; and it filled in my time till I was too old to go to college. But now that I'm grown up, I'm going to stay at home. I've been here a month, having a grand old time; a little lonesome, and yet I'm a person of occupations and Hans cooks enough for me to eat. I haven't been down town much, but n.o.body knows me here anyhow. Dad's been living at the club or a hotel, but he moved up here to be with me. Dad's the best old chap on earth. I guess he liked my coming back. They rather bore him, I fancy. We've had a bully day or two, but dad has skipped. Gone to New York; be back in a week. Wanted me to go; but not me! I've had enough travel for a while.
They gave me a dose of it.”
These morsels of information fell from him carelessly. His ”they,” Dan a.s.sumed, referred to his mother and sisters somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic; and young Thatcher spoke of them in a curiously impersonal and detached fas.h.i.+on. The whimsical humor that twinkled in his eyes occasionally was interesting and pleasing; and Dan imagined that he was enjoying the situation. Silk socks and overalls were probably a part of some whim; they certainly added picturesqueness to the scene. But the city editor must be informed that Edward G Thatcher was beyond his jurisdiction and Dan rose and moved toward the door.
Allen jumped down and crossed to him quickly.
”Oh, I say! I really wish you wouldn't go!”
There was no doubt of the pleading in his voice and manner. He laid a hand very gently on Dan's arm.
”But I've got to get back downtown, if your father has really gone and isn't hidden away here somewhere.”
”I've cut you a slice right out of the eternal truth on that, old man.
Father will be in New York for breakfast in the morning. Search the house all you please; but, do you know, I'd rather like you to believe me.”
”Of course, I believe you; but it's odd the office didn't know you were here. They told me you and your mother and sisters were abroad, but that your father was in town. A personal item in the 'Courier' this morning said that you were all in the Hartz Mountains.”
”I dare say it did! The newspapers keep them all pretty well before the public. But I've had enough junketing. I'm going to stay right here for a while.”
”You prefer it here--is that the idea?”
”Yes, I fancy I should if I knew it; I want to know it. But I'm all kinds of crazy, you know. They really think I'm clear off, simply because their kind of thing doesn't amuse me. I lost too much as a kid being away from home. They said I had to be educated abroad, and there you see me--Dresden awhile, Berlin another while, a lot of Geneva, and Paris for grand sprees. And my lung was always the excuse if they wanted to do a winter on the Nile,--ugh! The very thought of Egypt makes me ill now.”
”It all sounds pretty grand to me. I was never east of Boston in my life.”