HAD Peter Pape been at home in Hellroaring the late afternoon of this crowded day in New York, he doubtless would have saddled Polkadot and climbed to some lonely mesa for meditative fingering of the odd chain into which he had forged himself as a link. Instead, he locked himself in the Astor suite, little used hitherto except for sleep. The telephone he silenced with a towel wrapped around the bell. He closed the windows against distractions from the street and switched off the electric fan, the whirr of which sounded above the traffic roar.
Yet with all these aids to concentration, his résumé of facts newly given out in the affairs of his self-selected lady reached no conclusion. Varying the metaphor, no point or eye could he see to that needle, greater than Central Park itself, which would sew the fate of the Lauderdales. The best he could do in preparation for contingencies ahead was to throw a diamond hitch around his resolve to do and dare unquestioningly in the service to which he now was sworn--to advance from initiate into full membership of the triumvirate.
He planned by the clock. At six sharp, he rang for dinner upstairs. Seven found him again in the garb worn from the West, which appealed to him as more suitable than any of the "masterpieces" tailored for less important functions than that of to-night.
The blond floor-clerk, whose hall desk stood near the entrance door to his suite, awaited his approach with an "Indian sign" of warning. But she and he couldn't have come from the same tribe; at least he did not grasp its import until later developments translated it for him.
"Oh, Mr. Pape," she lisped, as, actually, he was about to pass her by without his usual breezy greeting, "you've had three calls s'evening. You're getting so popular. But I must say I don't wonder at all."
"Three calls--and for me?" He was halted by honest amaze. "How come? I mean, from whom and what about? Say, was one a lady's voice, sort of cool, yet kind, soft yet strong, gentle yet----"
"No such riddle voice helloed you," snapped the girl. "Three adult males they were that wanted you and one of them none too kind or soft or gentle, at that. I told 'em what I thought was the truth. Personally, you know, I make a specialty of the truth when it doesn't do any harm. I said that you hadn't been in since morning. They didn't appear to have any names, no more than messages to leave."