It was nearly a week after the beginning of Bar Vernon’s “new time,” and he had never enjoyed anything so thoroughly in all his life, that he returned to his hotel from one of his pleasure trips.
By this time he had struck up a sort of an acquaintance with the clerk, although that gentleman confessed to himself that he had never before fallen in with a boy of that age who behaved so very well and talked so very little.
“Mr. Vernon,” he said to our hero, that afternoon, “there’s been a gentleman in to see you twice while you were gone—a Major Montague.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said Bar.
“Why so? He seems a well got-up, rather fine-looking man.”
“Can’t help that,” said Bar.
“Claimed to be a relative of yours, and seemed quite anxious to see you.”
[Pg 32]“So he is, I suppose,” replied our hero, “but he’s a disreputable old fellow, for all that, and I’m sure my father would not wish me to have anything to do with him. Drinks like a fish.”
“Must say he looks a little on that order,” remarked the clerk. “So we’re not to put him on your track?”
“Not if you can help it,” said Bar, carelessly. “The family doesn’t recognize him at all, and I don’t want to.”
Bar was perfectly sure, in his own mind, that he was telling the exact truth, but it was the first mention he had made of father or family, and, while it made his heart and fingers tingle very curiously and pleasantly, it did not by any means diminish the respect with which he was regarded, for the keen-eyed official was the last man in the world to be taken in by such a face as that of Major Montague.
He had read him through and through at a glance, and had wondered what he could have to do with a quiet, self-respecting young gentleman like Barnaby Vernon.
Bar strolled away into the reading-room, muttering to himself:
[Pg 33]“So he has hunted me up. Saw my name on the hotel register, most likely. Now, I’ll have to get away from this. He’d be sure to make trouble for me. Then he belongs to that horrid old time, and I don’t want anything to do with it. Somehow, I feel as if something were about to happen to me, and I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. Guess I’ll go on an exploring tour, but I’ll fix it so none of that set’ll know me if I come across ’em.”
No doubt there had been something of theatrical experience in Barnaby’s “old time,” for he seemed to know precisely what to do.
He walked out of the hotel in a very decent suit, of which the coat and waistcoat were dark, and the trousers light-gray, but before he had gone a block, he had bought and put on a loose linen duster.
Then at a hat-store he purchased a high black silk “stove-pipe,” to replace the straw he had been wearing.
At another shop he bought a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Then a neat mustache appeared on his upper-lip, a college society pin on his neck-tie, a little cane in his hand, and thus attired he[Pg 34] could have passed muster anywhere as a young collegian of the first water, and even old “Prosper” himself might have passed him without a suspicion of his identity.
He turned aside after that, from the busier thoroughfares, for he felt the need of a little thinking, and quickly found himself sauntering in front of a gray-stone building, facing an open square thickly dotted with trees.
“I know,” he said to himself, “that’s the old University. I wish I knew all the things they teach there. Never was at school in my life, but I’ve picked up a good deal, for all that.”
Bar was only half right.
He had been in a terrible school, indeed, and had grown to be a remarkable sort of fellow, simply by refusing to learn the evil part of the lessons his “professors” had tried to teach him.
Still, he was greatly in need of the other kind of “lessons,” and he felt it bitterly, as he stood and looked up at the gray stone building.
His attention was suddenly diverted by a loud exclamation not many paces from him, and he turned in time to see a shabbily dressed fellow[Pg 35] pick up from the sidewalk what seemed to be a very heavy and well-filled pocketbook.
“Some old trick,” Bar was saying to himself, when the stranger turned to him with the pocketbook in his hand, remarking, furtively:
“Big find that, sir. Just see how full it is. No end of bank notes, and all big ones. There’ll be a whopping reward offered for it.”
“You’re in luck, I should say, then,” drawled Bar, in his character of collegian. “Of course you’ll advertise it?”
“Yes, sir, ought to be advertised,” rattled the stranger; “but I can’t stay to do it. I’m off for Boston to-night. Couldn’t stay on any account. Tell you what I’ll do. You look like a gentleman. Feel sure you’ll see that the right man gets it. Square and honest. You take it and divide the reward. Won’t be less’n a hundred, sure’s you live.”
“Not less than that, certainly,” drawled Bar. “Let me look at it?”
“No right to open it, I s’pose,” said the stranger quickly, as Bar poised the pocketbook in his open hand.
“No,” said Bar. “Private papers, perhaps.[Pg 36] No business of ours, you know. All right, you give me your Boston address and I’ll send you your half soon as I get it.”
So saying, Bar slipped the prize into his inside coat-pocket with a movement so nearly instantaneous that there was no chance for any interference, but the stranger’s countenance fell in spite of himself as he stammered:
“Well, no, sir, that won’t do, exactly. I’m going on North from Boston. Tell ye what I’ll do. You give me fifty dollars down. It’s good security for that. You may get five hundred, for all I know. You keep it all and it’ll only cost you fifty. You didn’t find it, you know. It was all my luck.”
“Don’t think I’ve got so much as that about me,” said Bar, with a quick glance up the street.
“Forty, then. Only be quick about it, or I shall lose my train.”
“Haven’t got forty,” drawled Bar.
“Thirty, then, and that’s awful low,” pleaded the stranger, anxiously.
“Thirty dollars is a good deal of money to risk,” considered Bar.
[Pg 37]“Twenty-five, then. Say twenty, or give me back the pocketbook.”
“Why,” said Bar, beaming benignly on the stranger, through his new spectacles, “it isn’t your pocketbook. I’ve been considering the matter, and I’ve decided to turn the property over to the police authorities. There’s a policeman now, just turned the corner.”
A great oath burst from the lips of the stranger, which were white with rage and disappointment, but Bar had buttoned his coat over the pocketbook and was standing in an attitude which looked very much as if he had learned it from a boxing-master.
There was no joke about the approach of the policeman, however, and one look at his blue coat and brass buttons seemed quite enough for the stranger. At all events, he swore another ugly oath, shook his fist savagely at Bar, and darted briskly away across the square.
“Anything the matter, sir?” asked the policeman, as he stepped quickly up to our hero.
“Can’t say,” drawled Bar, “but I’m half inclined to think that gentleman had improper designs. I do not like his appearance and[Pg 38] have declined to transact any business with him.”
“That’s right, sir. Well known—bad character. Strangers can’t be too much on their guard,” responded the representative of the law, as a broad grin spread across his face.
When he had walked on a few steps, however, he growled to himself:
“Wonder what game it was? Anyhow, that prig in spectacles isn’t the sort that’ll be swallowed whole. Sometimes those green-looking, respectable chaps knows more’n we think they do, and where on earth they can pick it up beats me.”
As for Bar Vernon, he turned once more towards the great thoroughfare, only remarking:
“That fellow don’t come up to Major Montague. Now, what’ll I do with the pocketbook? It’s a right good one, and I must see what it’s stuffed with.”
It was not difficult to find an out-of-the-way corner, and Bar quickly satisfied himself that his prize contained little more than a few coarse counterfeits, a lot of fanciful advertising cards, in the shape of bank-notes, and enough wrapping-paper[Pg 39] to fill out the pile and make it look “rich.” The book itself was of the best Russia leather, however, and well calculated to catch the eye of such a “greenhorn” as he had been mistaken for.
On, now slowly, now hurried by the afternoon up-town tide of foot-passengers, strolled Barnaby, until, right in front of one of the busiest retail commercial establishments, he saw a sudden flurry in the crowd, and a rapid coming together as if one spot on the sidewalk had acquired an overpowering attraction.
“Another game?” asked Bar of himself, but he pushed his way vigorously through the throng, nevertheless, as determined as anybody to learn the meaning of it all.
It was by no means the easiest thing in the world, for there was really a good deal of excitement.
“Awful fit!” exclaimed one.
“Fell right flat and began to kick without a word.”
“Lucky for him that Dr. Manning happened on hand so quickly.”
“Best doctor in the city.”
[Pg 40]A shower of remarks reached Bar’s ears from all sides, but he could not divest himself of a feeling which made him extremely watchful, and he almost instinctively kept one hand upon his very worthless prize, as if it contained a fortune.
He was “two or three deep” back in the crowd from the central point where the sufferer was supposed to be lying, and around him were men of every sort, seeming pretty closely wedged in.
Sharp as was the watch which Bar was keeping, he very nearly missed seeing the deft and dexterous passage from hand to hand of a wallet which seemed the very counterpart and image of the one in his own pocket, but it disappeared in the capacious outer garment of a tall, thin, foreign-looking gentleman at his side.
The thought flashed through Bar’s brain with a rapidity compared to which lightning is a stage-coach, and his fingers moved with only less quickness and with marvelous skill.
“The weight must be about the same,” thought Bar, “and he’ll never know the difference. It’s splendid fun to have got in on old Prosper himself. The Major must be inside there somewhere.[Pg 41] No, there go both of them, making off as fast as they can.”
Just then a clear and somewhat scornful voice arose above the rest, exclaiming:
“Get up, you wretched fraud. There’s nothing at all the matter with you. Don’t give him a cent, gentlemen, if that’s what he’s after. He’s no more in a fit than you and I are.”
“Hurrah for the doctor!” shouted a somewhat youthful bystander, but the physician, a tall, fine-looking, benevolent-faced gentleman, forced his way to the edge of the sidewalk, sprang into a carriage which seemed to be waiting for him, and drove away, with the disgusted air of a professional man whose sympathies had been imposed upon.
He had not been deceived, however, except for the first few moments, by even the admirable acting of the halfway genteel scamp, who now picked himself up so sheepishly and sneaked around the corner amid the jeers of the wayfarers, just in time to evade the fingers of the police.
“It was a regular put-up job,” exclaimed Bar, as he walked away. “Anyhow, it won’t be difficult for me to find out who this thing belongs to.[Pg 42] Maybe it’s the doctor himself, only I can’t see how he should have such a thing about him and push right into a crowd with it.”
Bar had not seen the doctor’s carriage pull up as it did, with the first intimation that a human being might be in need of his skill, nor could he know how completely such an affair, in the first place, and his chagrin at being “sold,” in the second, had driven out of the worthy doctor’s mind for the moment all other considerations.
For all that, however, Dr. Manning’s carriage was in front of police headquarters in less than an hour from that time.