Flaming Youth

CHAPTER XXII

What work Osterhout was able to do in the two days following Pat's revelation was mainly mechanical. Neither his mind nor his real interest were enlisted. Pat's supposed situation absorbed both. There were so many phases to that problem! If only Mona were alive. That thought came to him with more poignancy than for a long time past. He would have taken Pat's secret to her at once, without hesitancy. Could he take it to any other member of the family? Certainly not Ralph Fentriss. Nor the helpless Constance. Dee? He shrank from that idea with an invincible reluctance. Life, he more than suspected, was not treating Dee over-tenderly.

He took his perplexities out into the bluster and whirl of a wild afternoon, and came back weary and a little quieted to find the subject of them stretched out on his divan, fast asleep. Her face, he observed pitifully, showed not only exhaustion but a deeper strain. He touched her limp hand and spoke her name softly. At once she sprang half erect, like a startled animal.

"Oh, Bobs! It's you. I'm so glad you've come. I'm afraid, Bobs."

"No, dear; you mustn't let yourself be," he soothed her. "There's nothing——"

"You don't understand. And I've got to tell you. That's what I'm scared about."

"Haven't you told me the whole thing, Bambina?"

"No. I'll—I'll tell you on the way over to Dee's."

"To Dee's?"

[Pg 232]
"Yes. Dee's ill. You must come at once."

He caught up his hat and gloves; his overcoat he had not taken off. "What is it?"

"Bobs, it's—it's that."

"That? What? Can't you speak out?"

Out in the air she took a deep breath. "It wasn't me at all that was in trouble," she announced desperately.

"Not you?" Stupefaction was in his voice. Gathering wrath superseded it as he demanded, "Is this some kind of an infernal joke?"

"No. It was Dee all the time. As I told you at first."

"Then why in the name——"

"You wouldn't help her because she's married. So I thought you might help me, if you thought it was me, because I wasn't."

"An admirable little game. But I'm still not sure that I quite get the point of it." His voice was so ugly that Pat's shook as she said:

"The point was to get you to tell me, if you wouldn't help me yourself, about one of those men in the newspaper——"

"Dee went to one of them?" he broke in.

She looked up at him piteously, pleadingly. "Bobs, it was terrible. He was so—so ghastly business-like."

"What did you expect?" he returned grimly. "And now she's ill?"

"Yes."

"Fever?"

"I—I think so."

With a barked-out oath he increased his pace. Pat, striding fast to keep up said: "Bobs, dear; Dee doesn't know about it."

"About what?"

[Pg 233]
"About my pretending that I was the one. It was my own notion."

"Then you will tell her," he ordained with chill command, "as soon as she is well enough to hear it. If she gets well enough," he added.

"If? Bobs! You don't think there's any real danger——"

"Of course there is danger. What do you think fever means in such a case? You take things into your own hands, perpetrate a piece of criminal folly——"