The Unspeakable Perk

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"Now, if I could see behind those glasses," said Miss Polly
Brewster to her wicked little self, "I'd probably BITE myself
rather than say it again. Just the same--And a little bit sorry?"
she persisted aloud.

"Does that matter?" said the man quietly.

Miss Polly Brewster forthwith bit herself on her pink and wayward
tongue.

"Don't think I'm not grateful," she employed that chastened member
to say. "I am, most deeply. So will father be, even if he decides
not to leave. I'm afraid that's what he will decide."

"He mustn't."

"Tell him that yourself."

"I will, if it becomes necessary."

"Let me be present at the interview. Most people are afraid of
dad. Perhaps you'd be, too."

"I could always run away," he remarked, unsmiling. "You know how
well I do it."

"I must do it now myself, and get arrayed for the daily tea
sacrifice. Au revoir."

"Hasta manana," he said absently.

She had turned to go, but at the word she came slowly back a pace
or two, smiling.

"What a strange beetle man you are!" she said softly. "I have no
other friends like you. You ARE a friend, aren't you, in your
queer way?" She did not wait for an answer, but went on: "You
don't come to see me when I ask you. You don't send me any word.
You make me feel that, compared to your concerns with beetles and
flies, I'm quite hopelessly unimportant. And yet here I find you
giving up your own pursuits and wasting your time to plan and
watch and think for us."

"For you," he corrected.

"For me," she accepted sweetly. "What an ungrateful little pig you
must think me! But truly inside I appreciate it and thank you, and
I think--I feel that perhaps it amounts to a lot more than I
know."

He made a gesture of negation.

"No great thing," he said. "But it's the best I can do, anyway. Do
you remember what the mediaeval mummer said, when he came bearing
his poor homage?"

"No. Tell it to me."

"It runs like this: 'Lady, who art nowise bitter to those who
serve you with a good intent, that which thy servant is, that he
is for you.'"

"Polly Brewster," said the girl to herself, as she walked, slowly
and musingly, back to her room, "the busy haunts of men are more
suited to your style than the free-and-untrammeled spaces of
nature, and well you know it. But you'll go to-morrow and you'll
keep on going until you find out what is behind those brown-green
goblin spectacles. If only he didn't look so like a gnome!"

The clause conditional, introduced by the word "if," does not
always imply a conclusion, even in the mind of the propounder.
Miss Brewster would have been hard put to it to round out her
subjunctive.

VI

FORKED TONGUES

"Pooh!" said Thatcher Brewster.

Thatcher Brewster's "Pooh!" is generally recognized in the realm
of high finance as carrying weight. It is not derisive or
contemptuous; it is dismissive. The subject of it simply ceases to
exist. In the present instance, it was so mild as scarcely to stir
the smoke from his after-dinner cigar, yet it had all the intent,
if not the effect, of finality. The reason why it hadn't the
effect was that it was directed at Thatcher Brewster's daughter.

"Perhaps not quite so much 'Pooh!' as you think," was that
damsel's reception of the pregnant monosyllable.

"A bug-hunter from nowhere! Don't I know that type?" said the
magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the
capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment of his life.

"He knew about the Dutch blockade."

"Or pretended he did. I'm afraid my Pollipet has let herself
romanticize a little."

"Romanticize!" The girl laughed. "If you could see him, dad!
Romance and my poor little beetle man don't live in the same
world."

Out of the realm of memory, where the echoes come and go by no
known law, sounded his voice in her ear: "'That which thy servant
is, that he is for you.'" Dim doubt forthwith began to cloud the
bright certainty of Miss Brewster's verdict.

"If he's gone to all the trouble that I told you of, it must be
that he has some good reason for wanting to get us safely out,"
she argued to her father.

"Perhaps he feels that his peace of mind would be more assured if
you were in some other country," he teased. "No, my dear, I'm not
leaving a full-manned yacht in a foreign harbor and smuggling
myself out of a friendly country on the say-so of an unknown
adviser, whose chief ability seems to lie in the hundred-yard
dash."

"I think that's unfair and ungrateful. If a man with a sword--"

"When I begin a row, I stay with it," said Mr. Brewster grimly.
"Quitters and I don't pull well together."

"Then I'm to tell him 'No'?"

"Positively."

"Not so positively at all. I shall say, 'No, thank you,' in my
very nicest way, and say that you're very grateful and
appreciative and not at all the growly old bear of a dad that you
pretend to be when one doesn't know and love you. And perhaps I'll
invite him to dine here and go away on the yacht with us--"

"And graciously accept a couple of hundred thousand dollars bonus,
and come into the company as first vice-president," chuckled her
father. "And then he'll wake up and find he's been sitting on a
cactus. See here," he added, with a sharpening of tone, "do you
suppose he could get a cablegram for transmission to Washington
over to the mainland for us by this mysterious route of his?"

"Very likely."

"You're really sure you want to go, Pollipet? This is your cruise,
you know."

"Yes, I do."

Hitherto Miss Polly had been declaring to all and sundry,
including the beetle man himself, that it was her firm intent and
pleasure to stay on the island and observe the presumptively
interesting events that promised. That she had reversed this
decision, on the unsolicited counsel of an extremely queer
stranger, was a phenomenon the peculiarity of which did not strike
her at the time. All that she felt was a settled confidence in the
beetle man's sound reason for his advice.

"Very good," said Mr. Brewster. "If I can get through a message to
the State Department, they'll bring pressure to bear on the Dutch,
and we can take the yacht through the blockade. It's only a
question of finding a way to lay the matter before the Dutch
authorities, anyway. I've been making inquiries here, and I find
there's no intention of bottling up neutral pleasure craft. I dare
say we could get out now. Only it's possible that the Hollanders
might shoot first and ask questions afterward."

"It would have to be done quickly, dad. They may quarantine at any
time."

"Dr. Pruyn ought to be here any day now. Let's leave that matter
for him. There's a man I have confidence in."

"Mr. Perkins says that Dr. Pruyn will bottle up the port tighter
than the Dutch."

"Let him, so long as we get out first. Now, Polly, you tell this
man Perkins that I'll pay all expenses and give him a round
hundred for himself if he'll bring me a receipt showing that my
cablegram has been dispatched to Washington."

"I don't think I'd quite like to do that, dad. He isn't the sort
of man one offers money to."

"Every one's the sort of man one offers money to--if it's enough,"
retorted her father. "And a hundred dollars will look pretty big
to a scientific man. I know something about their salaries. You
try him."

"So far as expenses go, I will. But I won't hurt his feelings by
trying to pay him for something that he would do for friendship or
not at all."

"Have it your own way. When is he coming in?"

"He isn't coming in."

"Then where are you going to see him?"

"Up on the mountain trail, when I ride tomorrow afternoon."

"With Carroll?"

"No; I'm going alone."

"I don't quite like to have you knocking about mountain roads by
yourself, though Mr. Sherwen says you're safe anywhere here.
Where's that little automatic revolver I gave you?"

"In my trunk. I'll carry that if it will make you feel any
easier."

"Yes, do. But I can't see why you can't send word to Perkins that
I want to see him here."

"I can. And I can guess just what his answer would be."

"Well, guess ahead."

"He'd tell you to go to the bad place, or its scientific
equivalent." She laughed.

"Would he?" Mr. Brewster did not laugh. "And perhaps you'll be
good enough to tell me why."

"Because you sent word that you were out when he called."

"Humph! I see people when _I_ want to see THEM, not when they want
to see me."

"Then Mr. Perkins is likely to prove permanently invisible to you,
if I'm any judge of character."

"Well, well," said Mr. Brewster impatiently, "manage it yourself.
Only impress on him the necessity of getting the message on the
wire. I'll write it out to-night and give it to you with the money
to-morrow."

After luncheon on the following day, Polly, with the cablegram and
money in her purse and her automatic safely disposed in her belt,
walked in the plaza with Carroll. The legless beggar whined at
them for alms. Handing him a quartillo, the Southerner would have
passed on, but his companion stood eyeing the mendicant.

"Now, what can there be in that poor wreck to captivate the
scientific intellect?" she marveled.

"If you mean Mr. Perkins--" began Carroll.

"I do."

"Then I think perhaps the reason for some of that gentleman's
associations will hardly stand inquiry."

The girl turned her eyes on him and searched the handsome, serious
face.

"Fitz, you're not the man to say that of another man without some
good reason."

"I am not, Miss Polly."

"You think that Mr. Perkins is not the kind of man for me to have
anything to do with?"

"I--I'm afraid he isn't."

"Don't you think that, having gone so far, you ought to tell me
why?"

Carroll flushed.

"I would rather tell your father."

"Are you implying a scandal in connection with my timid, little
dried-up scientist?"

"I'm only saying," said the other doggedly, "that there's
something secret and underhanded about that place of his in the
mountains. It's a matter of common gossip."

The girl laughed outright.

"The poor beetle man! Why, he's so afraid of a woman that he goes
all to pieces if one speaks to him suddenly. Just to see his
expression, I'd like to tell him that he's being scandalized by
all Caracuna."

"You're going to see him again?"

"Certainly. This afternoon."

"I don't think you should, Miss Polly."

"Have you any actual facts against him? Anything but casual
gossip?"

"No; not yet."

"When you have, I'll listen to you. But you couldn't make me
believe it, anyway. Why, Fitz, look at him!"

"Take me with you," insisted the other, "and let me ask him a
question or two that any honorable man could answer. They don't
call him the Unspeakable Perk for nothing, Miss Polly."

"It's just because they don't understand his type. Nor do you,
Fitz, and so you mistrust him."

"I understand that you've shown more interest in him than in any
one you know," said the other miserably.

Her laugh rang as free and frank as a child's.

"Interest? That's true. But if you mean sentiment, Fitz, after
once having looked into the depths of those absurd goggles, can
you, COULD you think of sentiment and the beetle man in the same
breath?"

"No, I couldn't," he confessed, relieved. "But, then, I never have
been able to understand you, Miss Polly."

"Therein lies my fatal charm," she said saucily. "Now, to the
beetle man, I'm a specimen. HE understands as much as he wants to.
Probably I shall never see him after to-day, anyway. He's going to
get a message through for us that will deliver us from this land
of bondage."

"He can't do it--too soon for me," declared Carroll. "And, Miss
Polly, you don't think the worse of me for having said behind his
back what I'm just waiting to say to his face?"

"Not a bit," said the girl warmly. "Only I know it's nonsense."

"I hope so," said Carroll, quite honestly. "I would hate to think
anything low-down of a man you'd call your friend."

Carroll had learned more than he had told, but less than enough to
give him what he considered proper evidence to lay before Polly's
father. After some deliberation as to the point of honor involved,
he decided to go to Raimonda, who, alone in Caracuna City, seemed
to be on personal terms with the hermit. He found the young man in
his office. With entire frankness, Carroll stated his errand and
the reason for it. The Caracunan heard him with grave courtesy.

"And now, senior," concluded the American, "here's my question,
and it's for you to determine whether, under the circumstances,
you are justified in giving me an answer. Is there a woman living
in Mr. Perkins's quinta on the mountains?"

"I cannot answer that question," said the other, after some
deliberation.

"I'm sorry," said Carroll simply.

"I also. The more so in that my attitude may be misconstrued
against Mr. Perkins. I am bound by confidence."

"So I infer," returned his visitor courteously. "Then I have only
to ask your pardon--"

"One moment, if you please, senor. Perhaps this will serve to make
easy your mind. On my word, there is nothing in Mr. Perkins's life
on the mountain in any manner dishonorable or--or irregular."

In a flash, the simple solution crossed Carroll's mind. That a
woman was there, and a woman not of the servant class, could
hardly be doubted, in view of almost direct evidence from
eyewitnesses. If there was nothing irregular about her presence,
it was because she was Perkins's wife. In view of Raimonda's
attitude, he did not feel free to put the direct query. Another
question would serve his purpose.

"Is it advisable, and for the best interests of Miss Brewster,
that she should associate with him under the circumstances?"

The Caracunan started and shot a glance at his interlocutor that
said, as plainly as words, "How much do you know that you are not
telling?" had the latter not been too intent upon his own theory
to interpret it.

"Ah, that," said Raimonda, after a pause,--"that is another
question. If it were my sister, or any one dear to me--but"--he
shrugged--"views on that matter differ."

"I hardly think that yours and mine differ, senior. I thank you
for bearing with me with so much patience."

He went out with his suspicions hardened into certainty.

VII

"THAT WHICH THY SERVANT IS--"

A man that you'd call your friend. Such had been Fitzhugh
Carroll's reference to the Unspeakable Perk. With that
characterization in her mind. Miss Brewster let herself drift,
after her suitor had left her, into a dreamy consideration of the
hermit's attitude toward her. She was not prone lightly to employ
the terms of friendship, yet this new and casual acquaintance had
shown a readiness to serve--not as cavalier, but as friend--none
too common in the experience of the much-courted and a little
spoiled beauty. Being, indeed, a "lady nowise bitter to those who
served her with good intent," she reflected, with a kindly light
in her eyes, that it was all part and parcel of the beetle's man's
amiable queerness.

Still musing upon this queerness, she strolled back to find her
mount waiting at the corner of the plaza. In consideration of the
heat she let her cream-colored mule choose his own pace, so they
proceeded quite slowly up the hill road, both absorbed in
meditation, which ceased only when the mule started an argument
about a turn in the trail. He was a well-bred trotting mule,
worth six hundred dollars in gold of any man's money, and he was
self-appreciative in knowledge of the fact. He brought a singular
firmness of purpose to the support of the negative of her
proposition, which was that he should swing north from the broad
into the narrow path. When the debate was over, St. John the
Baptist--this, I hesitate to state, yet must, it being the truth,
was the spirited animal's name--was considerably chastened, and
Miss Brewster more than a trifle flushed. She left him tied to a
ceiba branch at the exit from the dried creek bed, with strict
instructions not to kick, lest a worse thing befall him. Miss
Brewster's fighting blood was up, when, ten minutes late, because
of the episode, she reached the summit of the rock.

"Oh, Mr. Beetle Man, are you there?" she called.

"Yes, Voice. You sound strange. What is it?"

"I've been hurrying, and if you tell me I'm late, I'll--I'll fall
on your neck again and break it."

"Has anything happened?"

"Nothing in particular. I've been boxing the compass with a mule.
It's tiresome."

He reflected.

"You're not, by any chance, speaking figuratively of your
respected parent?"

"Certainly NOT!" she disclaimed indignantly. "This was a real
mule. You're very impertinent."

"Well, you see, he was impertinent to me, saying he was out when
he was in. What is his decision--yes or no?"

"No."

A sharp exclamation came from the nook below.

"Is that the entomological synonym for 'damn'?" she inquired.

"It's a lament for time wasted on a--Well, never mind that."

"But he wants you to carry a message by that secret route of
yours. Will you do it for him?"

"NO!"

"That's not being a very kind or courteous beetle man."

"I owe Mr. Brewster no courtesy."

"And you pay only where you owe? Just, but hardly amiable. Well,
you owe me nothing--but--will you do it for me?"

"Yes."

"Without even knowing what it is?"

"Yes."

"In return you shall have your heart's desire."

"Doubted."

"Isn't the dearest wish of your soul to drive me out of Caracuna?"

"Hum! Well--er--yes. Yes; of course it is."

"Very well. If you can get dad's message on the wire to
Washington, he thinks the Secretary of State, who is his friend,
can reach the Dutch and have them open up the blockade for us."

"Time apparently meaning nothing to him."

"Would it take much time?"

"About four days to a wire."

She gazed at him in amazement.

"And you were willing to give up four days to carry my message
through, 'unsight--unseen,' as we children used to say?"

"Willing enough, but not able to. I'd have got a messenger through
with it, if necessary. But in four days, there'll be other
obstacles besides the Dutch."

"Quarantine?"

"Yes."

"I thought that had to wait for Dr. Pruyn."

"Pruyn's here. That's a secret, Miss Brewster."

"Do you know EVERYTHING? Has he found plague?"

"Ah, I don't say that. But he will find it, for it's certainly
here. I satisfied myself of that yesterday."

"From your beggar friend?"

"What made you think that, O most acute observer?"

"What else would you be talking to him of, with such interest?"

"You're correct. Bubonic always starts in the poor quarters. To
know how people die, you have to know how they live. So I
cultivated my beggar friend and listened to the gossip of quick
funerals and unexplained disappearances. I'd have had some real
arguments to present to Mr. Brewster if he had cared to listen."

"He'll listen to Dr. Pruyn. They're old friends."

"No! Are they?"

"Yes. Since college days. So perhaps the quarantine will be easier
to get through than the blockade."

"Do you think so? I'm afraid you'll find that pull doesn't work
with the service that Dr. Pruyn is in."

"And you think that there will be quarantine within four days?"

"Almost sure to be."

"Then, of course, I needn't trouble you with the message."

"Don't jump at conclusions. There might be another and quicker
way."

"Wireless?" she asked quickly.

"No wireless on the island. No. This way you'll just have to trust
me for."

"I'll trust you for anything you say you can do."

"But I don't say I can. I say only that I'll try."

"That's enough for me. Ready! Now, brace yourself. I'm coming
down."

"Wh--why--wait! Can't you send it down?"

"No. Besides, you KNOW you want to see me. No use pretending,
after last time. Remember your verse now, and I'll come slowly."

Solemnly he began:--

"Scarab, tarantula, neurop--"
"'Doodle-bug,'" she prompted severely.
"--doodle-bug, flea,"--

he concluded obediently.

"Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea.
Scarab, tarantula, doodle--"

"Oof! I--I--didn't think you'd be here so soon!"

He scrambled to his feet, hardly less palpitating than on the
occasion of their first encounter.

"Hopeless!" she mourned. "Incurable! Wanted: a miracle of St.
Vitus. Do stop nibbling your hat, and sit down."

"I don't think it's as bad as it was," he murmured, obeying. "One
gets accustomed to you."

"One gets accustomed to anything in time, even the eccentricities
of one's friends."

"Do you think I'm eccentric?"

"Do I think--Have you ever known any one who didn't think you
eccentric?"

Upon this he pondered solemnly.

"It's so long since I've stopped to consider what people think of
me. One hasn't time, you know."

"Then one is unhuman. _I_ have time."

"Of course. But you haven't anything else to do."

As this was quite true, she naturally felt annoyed.

"Knowing as you do all the secrets of my inner life," she observed
sarcastically, "of course you are in a position to judge."

Her own words recalled Carroll's charge, and though, with the
subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet
the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant
sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a
severely judicial expression.

"Mr. Beetle Man, will you lay your hand upon your microscope, or
whatever else scientists make oath upon, and answer fully and
truly the question about to be put to you?"

"As I hope for a blessed release from this abode of lunacy, I
will."

"Mr. Beetle Man, have you got an awful secret in your life?"

So sharply did he start that the heavy goggles slipped a fraction
of an inch along his nose, the first time she had ever seen them
in any degree misplaced. She was herself sensibly discountenanced
by his perturbation.

"Why do you ask that?" he demanded.

"Natural interest in a friend," she answered lightly, but with
growing wonder. "I think you'd be altogether irresistible if you
were a pirate or a smuggler or a revolutionary. The romantic
spirit could lurk so securely behind those gloomy soul-screens
that you wear. What do you keep back of them, O dark and shrouded
beetle man?"

"My eyes," he grunted.

"Basilisk eyes, I'm sure. And what behind the eyes?"

"My thoughts."

"You certainly keep them securely. No intruders allowed. But you
haven't answered my question. Have you ever murdered any one in
cold blood? Or are you a married man trifling with the affections
of poor little me?"

"You shall know all," he began, in the leisurely tone of one who
commences a long narrative. "My parents were honest, but poor. At
the age of three years and four months, a maternal uncle, who,
having been a proofreader of Abyssinian dialect stories for a
ladies' magazine, was considered a literary prophet, foretold that
I--"

"Help! Wait! Stop!--

"'Oh, skip your dear uncle!' the bellman exclaimed,
And impatiently tinkled his bell."

Her companion promptly capped her verse:--

"'I skip forty years,' said the baker in tears,"--

"You can't," she objected. "If you skipped half that, I don't
believe it would leave you much."

"When one is giving one's life history by request," he began, with
dignity, "interruptions--"

"It isn't by request," she protested. "I don't want your life
history. I won't have it! You shan't treat an unprotected and
helpless stranger so. Besides, I'm much more interested to know
how you came to be familiar with Lewis Carroll."

"Just because I've wasted my career on frivolous trifles like
science, you needn't think I've wholly neglected the true
inwardness of life, as exemplified in 'The Hunting of the Snark,'"
he said gravely.

"Do you know"--she leaned forward, searching his face--"I believe
you came out of that book yourself. ARE you a Boojum? Will you,
unless I 'charm you with smiles and soap,'

"'Softly and silently vanish away,
And never be heard of again'?"

"You're mixed. YOU'D be the one to do that if I were a real
Boojum. And you'll be doing it soon enough, anyway," he concluded
ruefully.

"So I shall, but don't be too sure that I'll 'never be heard of
again.'"

He glanced up at the sun, which was edging behind a dark cloud,
over the gap.

"Is your raging thirst for personal information sufficiently
slaked?" he asked. "We've still fifteen or twenty minutes left."

"Is that all? And I haven't yet given you the message!" She drew
it from the bag and handed it to him.

"Sealed," he observed.

The girl colored painfully.

"Dad didn't intend--You mustn't think--" With a flash of generous
wrath she tore the envelope open and held out the inclosure. "But
I shouldn't have thought you so concerned with formalities," she
commented curiously.

"It isn't that. But in some respects, possibly important, it would
be better if--" He stopped, looking at her doubtfully.

"Read it," she nodded.

He ran through the brief document.

"Yes; it's just as well that I should know. I'll leave a copy."

Something in his accent made her scrutinize him.

"You're going into danger!" she cried.

"Danger? No; I think not. Difficulty, perhaps. But I think it can
be put through."

"If it were dangerous, you'd do it just the same," she said,
almost accusingly.

"It would be worth some danger now to get you away from greater
danger later. See here, Miss Brewster"--he rose and stood over
her--"there must be no mistake or misunderstanding about this."

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