Seven Keys to Baldpate/Chapter 22

ELLO, Mr. Hold-up Man!" The girl seized Mr. Magee's proffered hand and leaped down from the truck to his side.

"Bless the gods of the mountain," said Magee; "they have given me back my accomplice, safe and sound."

"They were black lonesome gods," she replied, "and they kept whispering fearful things in my ear I couldn't understand. I'm glad they didn't keep me."

"So am I." The crowd surged about them; many in it smiled and spoke admiringly to the girl. "It's great to be acquainted with the heroine of the hour," Mr. Magee continued. "I congratulate you. You have overthrown an empire of graft, it seems."

"Alone and unaided," she quoted, smiling mockingly up into his face.

"Absolutely alone and entirely unaided," said Billy Magee. "I'll swear to that in court."

Mrs. Norton panted up to them.

"Hello, dearie!" she cried. "Thank heaven you're safe. Have you been up to the house? How's Sadie getting along? I just know everything is topsyturvy."

"Not at all," replied Miss Rhodes. "Breakfast passed off like clockwork at seven, and even Mr. Golden had no complaints to offer. Dear, I must thank you for all you've done for me. It was splendid—"

"Not now," objected Mrs. Norton. "I got to get up to the house now. What with Christmas only two days away, and a lot of shopping to be done, I can't linger in this drafty station for thanks. I want you to bring Mr. Magee right up to the house for lunch. I'll have a meal ready that'll show him what suffering must have been going on inside me while I sat still watching that hermit man burlesquing the cook business."

"Delighted," said Magee. "I'll find you a cab." He led the way to a row of such vehicles, Mrs. Norton and the girl following.

"Seems like you're always putting me in a cab," remarked the older woman as she climbed inside. "I don't know what Mary and me would have done if it hadn't been for you. You're a mighty handy person to have around, Mr. Magee. Ain't he, dearie?" She winked openly at Magee.

"And a delightful one," agreed the girl, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Mrs. Norton was driven away up the snowy street. As Mr. Magee and the girl turned, they beheld the Hermit of Baldpate staring with undisguised exultation at the tall buildings of Reuton.

"Why, it's Mr. Peters!" the girl cried.

"Yes," replied Magee. "His prediction has come true. We and our excitement proved too much for him. He's going back to Brooklyn and to her."

"I'm so glad," she cried. She stretched out her hand to the hermit. He took it, somewhat embarrassed.

"Glad to see you," he said. "You certainly appear to have stirred things up, miss. But women are good at that. I've always said—"

"Mr. Magee tells me you're going back, after all?" she broke in.

"Yes," returned Peters. "I knew it. I told you so. It was all right in the summer, when the bands played, and the warm wind was hermiting on the mountain, too. But in the fall, it's always been hard, and I've heard the white lights calling, calling—why, I've even heard her—heard Ellen. This fall you came, and there was something doing on Baldpate—and I knew that when you went, I'd just naturally have to go, too. So—I'm going."

"Splendid," commented the girl.

"It'll be somewhat delicate," continued the hermit, "bursting in on Ellen after all these years. As I told Mr. Magee, I wish I had an inaugural address, or something like that."

"I have it," responded Evelyn Rhodes. "I'll write a story about you for to-morrow morning's paper. All about how the Christmas spirit has overcome the Hermit of Baldpate, and how he's going back to his wife, with his heart filled with love for her—it is filled, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," agreed Mr. Peters. "I reckon you might call it that."

"And then you can send her a copy of the paper, and follow it up in person."

"A good idea," commented Billy Magee.

"At first glance, yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody or other."

"Once more," smiled Magee, "big business muzzles the press."

"Not that I ain't obliged to you for the offer," added the hermit.

"Of course," said the girl, "I understand. And I wish you the best of luck—along with a merry Christmas."

"The same to you," replied the hermit heartily.

"Miss—er—Miss Rhodes and I will see you again," predicted Mr. Magee, "next summer at Baldpate Inn."

The hermit looked at the girl, who turned her face away.

"I hope it'll turn out that way, I'm sure," he said. "I'll let you have a reduction on all post-cards, just for old times' sake. Now I must find out about the New York trains."

He melted into the crowd, an odd figure still, his garb in a fashion long forgotten, his clumsily hacked hair brushing the collar of his ancient coat. Magee and the girl found the check room, and after he had been relieved of the burden of his baggage, set out up the main street of Reuton. It was a typical up-state town, deep in the throes of the holiday season. The windows of the stores were green with holly; the faces of the passers-by reflected the excitements of Christmas and of the upheaval in civic politics which were upon them almost together.

"Tell me," said the girl, "are you glad—at the way it has turned out? Are you glad I was no lady Captain Kidd?"

"It has all turned out—or is about to turn out—beautifully," Mr. Magee answered. "You may remember that on the veranda of Baldpate Inn I spoke of one summer hotel flirtation that was going to prove more than that. Let me—"

Her laugh interrupted.

"You don't even know my name."

"What's the matter with Evelyn Rhodes?" suggested Magee.

"Nothing. It's a perfectly good name. But it isn't mine. I just write under it."

"I prefer Mary, anyhow," smiled Billy Magee. "She called you that. It's Mary."

"Mary what?"

"You have no idea," said he, "how immaterial that is."

They came upon a throng blocking the sidewalk in front of a tall building of stone. The eyes of the throng were on bulletins; it muttered much as they had muttered who gathered in the station.

"The office of the Star," explained the girl. "The crowd is looking for new excitement. Do you know, for two whole hours this morning we had on exhibition in the window a certain package—a package of money!"

"I think," smiled Magee, "I've seen it somewhere."

"I think you have. Drayton came and took it from us as soon as he heard. But it was the very best proof we could have offered the people. They like to see for themselves. It's a passion with them. We've done for Cargan forever."

"Cargan says he will fight."

"Of course he will," she replied. "But this will prove Napoleon's Waterloo. Whether or not he is sent to prison—and perhaps he can escape that, he's very clever—his power in Reuton is broken. He can't possibly win at the next election—it comes very soon. I'm so glad. For years our editor has been fighting corruption, in the face of terrible odds and temptations. I'm so glad it's over now—and the Star has won."

"Through you," said Magee softly.

"With—some one—to help," she smiled. "I must go up-stairs now and find out what new task is set for me."

Mr. Magee postponed the protest on the tip of his tongue, and, climbing the gloomy stairs that newspapers always affect, they came into the city room of the Star. Though the paper had been long on the street, the excitement of the greatest coup of years still lingered in the place. Magee saw the deferential smiles that greeted the girl, and watched her as she made her way to the city editor's desk. In a moment she was back at his side.

"I've got my assignment," she smiled ruefully. They descended to the street. "It's wonderful," she went on, "how curt a city editor can be with any one who pulls off a good story. The job I've got now reminds me of the experience of an old New York reporter who used to work on the Star."

With difficulty they threaded their way through the crowd, and moved along beside the green-decked windows.

"He was the first man sent out by his paper on Park Row on the Spanish War assignment," she went on, "and he behaved rather brilliantly, I believe. Well, he came back after the fight was over, all puffed up and important, and they told him the city editor wanted him. 'They're going to send me to the Philippines,' he told me he thought as he went into the presence. When the city editor ordered him to rush down to a two-alarm fire in Houston Street he nearly collapsed. I know how he felt. I feel that way now."

"What was it—a one-alarm fire?" asked Magee.

"No," she replied, "a sweet little story about the Christmas toys. I've done it to death every Christmas for—three years. Oh, well, I can do it again. But it'll have to wait until after Mrs. Norton's lunch."

She led him into a street where every house was like its neighbor, even to the "Rooms" sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a table. Mrs. Norton came breezily forth to meet them.

"Well, Mr. Magee," she said, "I certainly am glad you've came. I'm busy on that lunch now. Dearie, show him into the parlor to wait."

Mr. Magee was shown in. That rooming-house parlor seemed to moan dismally as it received him. He strolled about and gazed at the objects of art which had at various times accrued to Mrs. Norton's personality: a steel engraving called Too Late, which depicted an angry father arriving at a church door to find his eloping daughter in the arms of stalwart youth, with the clergy looking on approvingly; another of Mr. John Drew assuming a commanding posture as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew; some ennuied flabby angels riding on the clouds; a child of unhealthy pink clasping lovingly an inflammable dog; on the mantel a miniature ship, under glass, and some lady statuettes whose toilettes slipped down—down.

And, on an easel, the sad portrait of a gentleman, undoubtedly the late lamented Norton. His uninteresting nose appeared to turn up at the constant odor of cookery in which it dwelt; his hair was plastered down over his forehead in a gorgeous abandoned curve such as some of the least sophisticated of Mr. John T. McCutcheon's gentlemen affect.

Mr. Magee stared round the room and smiled. Was the romance of reality never to resemble the romance of his dreams? Where were the dim lights, where the distant waltz, where the magic of moonlight amid which he was some day to have told a beautiful girl of his love? Hardly in Mrs. Norton's parlor.

She came and stood in the doorway. Hatless, coatless, smiling, she flooded the place with her beauty. Mr. Magee looked at the flabby angels on the wall, expecting them to hide their faces in shame. But no, they still rode brazenly their unstable clouds.

"Come in," he cried. "Don't leave me alone here again, please. And tell me—is this the gentleman who took the contract for making Mrs. Norton happy?"

"I—I can't come in," she said, blushing. She seemed to wish to avoid him. "Yes, that is Mr. Norton." She came nearer the easel, and smiled at the late lamented's tonsorial crown. "I must leave you—just a moment—"

Billy Magee's heart beat wildly. His breath came fast. He seized her by the hand.

"You're never going to leave me again," he cried. "Don't you know that? I thought you knew. You're mine. I love you. I love you. It's all I can say, my dearest. Look at me—look at me, please."

"It has happened so quickly," she murmured. "Things can't be true when they—happen so quickly."

"A woman's logic," said Mr. Magee. "It has happened. My beautiful girl. Look at me."

And then—she looked. Trembling, flushed, half frightened, half exultant, she lifted her eyes to his.

"My little girl!" he cried down at her.

A moment longer she held off, and then limply she surrendered. And Billy Magee held her close in his arms.

"Take care of me," she whispered. "I—I love you so." Her arm went timidly about his shoulders. "Do you want to know my name? It's Mary—"

Mary what? The answer was seemingly of no importance, for Mr. Magee's lips were on hers, crushing the word at its birth.

So they stood, amid Mrs. Norton's gloomy objects of art. And presently she asked:

"How about the book, dear?"

But Mr. Magee had forgot.

"What book?" he asked.

"The novel you went to Baldpate to write Don't you remember, dearest—no melodrama, no wild chase, no—love?"

"Why—" Mr. Magee paused for a moment in the joy of his discovery. Then he came back to the greater joy in his arms.

"Why, darling," he explained gently, "this is it."