Wanda replied quietly, though she kept her dancing eyes away from him.

Willie Dart lifted his shoulders.

"Them rummies don't qualify for finals, when you come to know 'em, Wanda. Honest, they don't. I never got the mit of one of 'em in my fist it didn't feel like a dead fish. There ain't a one. Say! Didn't Red ever tell you about Helga?"

"Helga?" She shook her head. "Who is Helga?"

"The only decent piece of n.o.bility I ever sat across the table from,"

enthusiastically. He had produced a pack of Little Soldier cigarettes and lighted one before resuming. "She's Roosian, is Helga; a Roosian Princess. Funny Red never told you about her. Gee, he's just like an oyster, that kid, ain't he? Here's the straight dope on that business; I know because I was along."

It seemed that Mr. Dart and Red had been two of a fashionable yachting party that had gone frisking down under the Palisades and out into the open sea. The Princess Helga, a sure enough stunner, take it from Mr.

Dart, had the men all dippy from the crack of the gun to the break of the tape. He admitted with a sigh which absorbed a great deal of his cigarette smoke, which after an eloquent pause made pale exit through his nostrils, that he hadn't got over her effect on him yet.

Well, they were out beyond Sandy Hook, and the wind was blowing and the white foam flying and the yacht beating it down the coast like the mill tails of--like anything, you know. Suddenly there was a scream and the Princess Helga was overboard. The yacht pa.s.sed her about a half mile before anybody thought about turning it around, they were all that excited. But Red, say he didn't lose his head two seconds, not him.

Say, he was overboard like a shot, and he had gone down under the water and had come up with the Princess Helga in his arms. After that--

Well, Mr. Dart rather guessed, with another sigh and subsequent expulsion of cigarette smoke, that it was a pretty hard case. The Princess Helga hadn't looked at another man since.

Wanda having conceded merrily that Mr. Dart's tales were intensely interesting and marked by the ring of truth, was further informed concerning the private affairs of Mr. Dart himself. He had taken the notion to come out and see his old friend; his one reason in the world for being here lay in that determination.

"I'm surprising him," he admitted complacently. "Red'll be clean tickled to death to see me. Most likely we'll go into business out here together. I'm looking for an invest--"

Suddenly he let out a wild scream, scrambled to his feet, and fled behind Wanda, his ruddy cheeks suddenly paling.

"My G.o.d!" he chattered. "Look at that thing!"

Wanda looked and saw what since a child she had called a "Snake-lizard," a very frightened snake-lizard at that, which with tail aloft was scampering wildly from near Dart's place at luncheon into the nearby thicket. Her own sudden fright that had been aroused by Dart's headlong dash and piercing yell gave way to a peal of laughter.

"Look here, Wanda," he said sharply. "On the level, that thing ain't deadly, is it? I been setting on it for half an hour, I know. It might have been biting me all the time, I'm so numb I wouldn't have felt it."

She a.s.sured him, chokingly, that there was no cause for alarm. Dart rubbed himself and brightened. But his face fell again as she went on to inform him that the creatures were so numerous that in his walk home he might encounter a dozen.

So it was that Mr. Willie Dart changed his mind and decided to ride the three miles across the valley.

CHAPTER XIII

SLEDGE HUME MAKES A CALL AND LAYS A WAGER

"Now, my erstwhile n.o.ble Benefactor, brighten up and look happy. I've got some red, white and blue news for you. I like you first rate, I'm strong for the grub and I guess I can stand for the country being stood on edge. I've come to stay!"

The door had been flung open and Mr. Willie Dart came gaily into Wayne Shandon's bed room carrying a big book in his hands, trailing a long wisp of fragrant smoke from one of his host's cigars behind him.

Shandon looked at him with a sober, thoughtful frown, and seemed in no way hilariously impressed with Mr. Dart's glad tidings.

Already the latter had been at the Bar L-M several days. During this time Shandon had not seen Wanda; he had come close to blows with Ruf Ettinger; he had been variously and grievously annoyed by Mr. Dart; certain other matters had gone wrong; and altogether he was in no pleasant mood.

"Look here, Dart," he replied savagely, kicking off his boot so hard that it struck against the far wall of the room, and continuing his undressing with a fierceness that brought a momentary speculative squint into Mr. Dart's innocent eyes. "What's your game, anyhow?"

"Game?" Willie Dart put a great deal of reproach into his tone. "Nix on that, Red, old sport. When a man travels three thousand miles in a d.a.m.ned stuffy car and then on top of that rides a horse like I did clean over the backbone of the universe, just through grat.i.tude to his n.o.ble Ben--"

"Oh, d.a.m.n the grat.i.tude," cried Shandon. "I'm tired of hearing of it.

I most heartily wish that I'd let matters take their own course."

"Now," resumed Dart, again smilingly, having softly closed the door and made himself comfortable in a chair, "what's the use of pals getting off wrong with one another? You slipped up and got your tongue twisted when you said what's my game. What you'd ought to have said was what n.o.ble purpose is kicking around in my manly boosum. You don't seem to put any faith in me, Red."

Shandon's short laugh prefixed his short answer.

"Do you wonder I don't?"

Then Mr. Dart chuckled.

"Come right down to it, Red, I don't! But you wrong me. Grat.i.tude, my n.o.ble--"

"Call me that once more and I'll heave you through the window," snapped Shandon. "If you've got anything to say, say it. I'm going to bed."

"Don't mind me," Dart hastened to say. "It won't bother me at all.

What I was going to say was this: Here I've come all the way from New York--"

"No doubt because you were run out!"

"Just through a sense of grat.i.tude. What can I do to show that grat.i.tude has been the only worry to keep my appet.i.te down to capacity?

I've been here a week, ain't I? Well, the first thing after I got rested up which has been about four days now, I begun thinking about that. And it come to me like this: Old Red's got troubles; he needs a friend that would live in a temperance town just to help him. Here's a place for Willie Dart to fit in and do some good!"

Shandon groaned.

"If you start in--"

"I've started already," beamed Dart. "I ain't had much time for fine work, yet, and I don't know the play quite as well as I might, but I've been planting little seeds of kindness promiscuous."

"What do you mean?" frowned Shandon.

"Now don't go to getting excited. I'm going to tell you, ain't I?

First place, the day I got into these forests primeval, I run across a fairy that could be Mrs. Willie Dart in a minute if I wasn't sworn to single harness by my dad on his dying bed down in Argentine."

"Last time he died it was in Nova Scotia," remarked Shandon drily. "Go ahead."

"As I was saying she was fine and foxy," resumed Dart pleasantly. "We made up a little lunch and went out for a picnic, just her and me.

Soon as we got to feeling like old friends and I found out she knew you, I said, 'Look here, Wanda--"

"What!" cried Shandon, bolt upright.

Mr. Willie Dart blew a playful puff of smoke at him and picked up the tale:

"I said, 'Look here, Wanda--'"

"Wanda who?" sharply.