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Page 28
"Don't sit there saying 'Father!' What's the use of saying
'Father!'? Do you think it is going to help--your saying
'Father!'? I'd rather the old pirate had taken the house and lot
than that scarab. He knows what's what! Trust him to walk off
with the pick of the whole bunch! I did think I could leave the
father of the man who's going to marry my daughter for a second
alone with the things. There's no morality among
collectors--none! I'd trust a syndicate of Jesse James, Captain
Kidd and Dick Turpin sooner than I would a collector. My Cheops
of the Fourth Dynasty! I wouldn't have lost it for five thousand
dollars!"
"But, father, couldn't you write him a letter, asking for it
back? He's such a nice old man! I'm sure he didn't mean to steal
the scarab."
Mr. Peters' overwrought soul blew off steam in the shape of a
passionate snort.
"Didn't mean to steal it! What do you think he meant to do--take
it away and keep it safe for me for fear I should lose it? Didn't
mean to steal it! Bet you he's well-known in society as a
kleptomaniac. Bet you that when his name is announced his friends
pick up their spoons and send in a hurry call to police
headquarters for a squad to come and see that he doesn't sneak
the front door. Of course he meant to steal it! He has a museum
of his own down in the country. My Cheops is going to lend tone
to that. I'd give five thousand dollars to get it back. If
there's a man in this country with the spirit to break into that
castle and steal that scarab and hand it back to me, there's five
thousand waiting for him right here; and if he wants to he can
knock that old safe blower on the head with a jimmy into the
bargain."
"But, father, why can't you simply go to him and say it's yours
and that you must have it back?"
"And have him come back at me by calling off this engagement of
yours? Not if I know it! You can't go about the place charging a
man with theft and ask him to go on being willing to have his son
marry your daughter, can you? The slightest suggestion that I
thought he had stolen this scarab and he would do the Proud Old
English Aristocrat and end everything. He's in the strongest
position a thief has ever been in. You can't get at him."
"I didn't think of that."
"You don't think at all. That's the trouble with you," said Mr.
Peters.
Years of indigestion had made Mr. Peters' temper, even when in a
normal mood, perfectly impossible; in a crisis like this it ran
amuck. He vented it on Aline because he had always vented his
irritabilities on Aline; because the fact of her sweet, gentle
disposition, combined with the fact of their relationship, made
her the ideal person to receive the overflow of his black moods.
While his wife had lived he had bullied her. On her death Aline
had stepped into the vacant position.
Aline did not cry, because she was not a girl who was given to
tears; but, for all her placid good temper, she was wounded. She
was a girl who liked everything in the world to run smoothly and
easily, and these scenes with her father always depressed her.
She took advantage of a lull in Mr. Peters' flow of words and
slipped from the room.
Her cheerfulness had received a shock. She wanted sympathy. She
wanted comforting. For a moment she considered George Emerson in
the role of comforter; but there were objections to George in
this character. Aline was accustomed to tease and chat with
George, but at heart she was a little afraid of him; and instinct
told her that, as comforter, he would be too volcanic and
supermanly for a girl who was engaged to marry another man in
June. George, as comforter, would be far too prone to trust to
action rather than to the soothing power of the spoken word.
George's idea of healing the wound, she felt, would be to push
her into a cab and drive to the nearest registrar's.
No; she would not go to George. To whom, then? The vision of Joan
Valentine came to her--of Joan as she had seen her yesterday,
strong, cheerful, self-reliant, bearing herself, in spite of
adversity, with a valiant jauntiness. Yes; she would go and see
Joan. She put on her hat and stole from the house.
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