The Sheepfold in Central Park is a U-shaped structure of red brick walls and a low roof that is mostly gables. One of the wings is winter quarters for the Dorset flock. The connecting curve, the lower half of which is an archway, houses in the upper Shepherd Tom and his family. The remaining wing, although built for a different purpose, is now used as a garage for the motor cycle police. Within is parking space for all the machines in regular use in the park and some extras.

Into this garage strode Why-Not Pape, a man in a hurry. His only introduction to the policeman in charge was rather extravagant, if wordless—one made in brute Belgian. He returned Kicko’s greeting—the fact that he and the police dog were friends did the rest. It was amazing how easily his coup was carried out as planned, backed by the dog’s infallible memory.

“Which are the spare fire-crackers?” he asked the uniformed garage keeper with bluff authority. “I’m in a gasoline hurry to get up the line.”

His wait had more intensity than length. He counted upon a long-standing claim among safe-workers, of which he had been assured by that piece of human flotsam out at Hellroaring, that the “big box” in the New York Police Headquarters would be the easiest “cracked” in the city were there anything in it worth stealing. He knew it to be a fact that many never-solved robberies and murders have been “pulled” within the shadow of precinct stations; had seen substantiated in the day-by-day news the theory that the best “hide-out” is under the arresting arm of city government. And his act upon deduction meant nothing against the police. He simply wished to profit for once by his knowledge of human nature reduced to the Nth degree. Even unaided by the dog, he had expected to carry through by daring of a first-draft sort.

“What’s the case, sergeant?”

With the question the attendant member of the force waved a hand toward the sheaf of ten machines which are kept unassigned to particular “speed cops”—an emergency motive-power reserve.

Without necessity of an equivocation as to who he was, without flashing the badge of authority which he did not have—merely by using that slang term for the noisiest of motor vehicles which was in common usage in the Yellowstone as well as in New York, Pape had declared himself in his part.

“Big,” he answered. “Bigger than all the park.”

Frowning and abstracted from a hurry to be off that was by no means assumed, he wheeled one of the emergency machines into the open doorway.

“Want any help?”

The rookie was ready; had grasped the handles of a second cycle.

“No. Do I look like I needed help?” In earnest now he frowned, but not abstractedly. “Don’t want any uniforms following me. Ain’t that kind of a case.”

Without meeting other obstacles, Pape was off upon the marked official machine. About one minute lasted his ride upon this steed, fleeter than Polkadot at his best. As though for the first time noticing the diggers among the park poplars, he stopped with a toot of the cycle siren. Dismounting, he dropped the standard, parked the machine at the side of the road and advanced upon the despoilers. On the way he charged himself that in this “kind of case”—three burlies and a boss to one uniformed objector whose only authority was a woman’s service—mind more than muscle would be needed.

He was met by the thin-faced man. “S’all right, officer. We ain’t looking for Cap’n Kidd’s treasure.”

Pape smiled more inwardly than outwardly, although he felt that he well could afford to do both on being mistaken, a second time within the last few minutes, for a plain-clothes man.

“Who are you and what you up to?” he demanded.

“Name’s Welch—Swinton Welch, contractor. I’m digging a ditch to put in a sub-surface drain. Want to see the permit?”

Producing a worn paper from his breast pocket, the small boss flourished it.

“Sure. Show me.”

“It’s O. K., else I wouldn’t have the navvies at work.”

“Likely it is,” countered Pape, “but show me just the same.”

With somewhat less of a flourish the paper was presented. Pape saw at a glance that it was written on an official form of the Department of Parks, then scanned it closer.

“What—” his demand was louder, gruffer, more combative than before—“what you say you’re doing?”

“Just like the paper says—digging for a drain.” The sharp-faced boss also grew more combative.

It is to be remarked that the Italian laborers had stopped work on the instant of interference. They always do. A shovel wasted—Fortunately the stream of cars on the roadway below flowed on without a ripple of curiosity as to the party on the hillock. The pedestrian paths were further away and, at this hour, preËmpted by the inevitable babies, mothers and nurse-maids. In the great, green mixing-bowl of all races within the world’s most democratic city, no man concerned himself with the by-play near the boundary except those directly involved.

Pape scowled over the operation, with never a glance toward the stone wall, from over the top of which a pair of black-irised blue eyes probably were watching him—a pair of rose-lobed ears were listening. To make “learning” easier he pulled another loud stop in his voice.

“What you going to drain to where?”

“Don’t exactly know myself yet. Going according to orders,” offered Mr. Swinton Welch. “One shovelful at a time is my motto. Don’t make no mistakes that way. What’s eating you, bo? I tell you it’s all O. K. or I wouldn’t be——”

The alleged contractor was stopped in the middle of his defense by the glare lifted to his face from the sheet of paper. An unofficial, yet official acting thumb was jerked over-shoulder.

“Out!” bellowed a voice of command—Pape’s. “You don’t go wrecking this park with an order that’s a year old, signed by a commissioner that’s already in the discard—leastways you don’t while I’m above sod. Call off your men and beat it!”

“I’ll call off nobody nor nothing.” Evidently the “boss” wasn’t amenable to being bossed. “I know my rights and I’ll stand on ’em in spite of all the plain-clothes crooks out of Sing Sing. That permit’s good until it’s been used. If you had half an eye in your head you’d see that it’s never been canceled.”

Pape folded the slip and tucked it into his coat pocket. “You’ll get off lighter if you call it canceled,” he advised. Turning to the laborers, he added: “Go home, you—no matter what lingo you speak. Beat it—make tracks—vamoose!”

The huskies did not look to their foreman for advice. To them the voice of him who had appeared upon the thunder-bike was fuller of authority than a noon whistle. Shouldering their implements, they straggled toward the nearest exit. Their wage? The boss of their boss would produce that. Sufficient unto the day was the pay thereof. Weren’t they muscle workers—weren’t they therefore always paid?

“You give me your number—I dare you—your number!”

The small foreman had lost the sangfroid of his type. Like a cockroach inadvisedly investigating a hot griddle, he danced toward the taller man.

“You don’t need to dare me twice. My number’s a darned good one for you to know. I’m 23—that means skidoo!”

Pape’s sidewise spring he had learned from one of his Hellroaring cayuses. It brought within his reach this second disturber of Jane Lauderdale’s peace and quiet. Only one wrench did he need to apply to the wrist of the hand which he had interrupted on its way into a side pocket of a sack coat.

“Not this morning,” he objected.

The foreman, gone startlingly white from pain after the recent red of his chagrin, of necessity permitted his hand to be withdrawn empty. And he had no power to prevent Pape’s reaching into the pocket and confiscating a snub-nosed automatic. He did, however, risk some contentious comment.

“Nothing a real citizen loathes like you plain-clothes pests. I’ll show you up proper in court, you big bully. I got a permit from a judge to carry that gun, I’ll have you know.”

“But not to use it on me. I put quite a value, I’ll have you know, on my birthday suit-of-clothes.”

The “pest’s” chortle was pitched to carry reassurance to and over the park wall.

Removing and pocketing the cartridges, he returned the “permitted” weapon’s frame to its owner. In consideration of his utterly unofficial status, he probably would have found an attempt to enforce New York State’s anti-pistol law embarrassing. At that, the fellow probably did have a permit—he had been told that such were easy enough to get. He would, he felt, be satisfied if the “drain” excavation was postponed until Jane had that coveted hour for the finish of her own mysterious investigation.

Perhaps the small boss regained some of what would seem constitutional bravado from the fact that his license to carry concealed weapons had not been demanded. At any rate, he started fresh protest.

“Say, if you’d any idea who I was working for——”

“I know who I’m working for. That’s idea enough for me and for you.”

Pape sat down with his back against the trunk of the most aged and sturdy poplar. He looked as likely to stay there as the tree. The foreman, with a final sputter of indignation, stamped off down the hill, having made no secret of his objective—the nearest telephone. The Westerner saw him pause beside the motorcycle and make note of the number on its P. D. plate—a last amusing touch to a uniquely pleasurable experience. Small satisfaction would Welch get if he tried to trace and punish the particular “cop” who had ridden that particular police “firecracker” that particular afternoon. Kicko alone could give him away and Kicko was too much of a Belgian to tell on a friend.

Some minutes after the foreman had disappeared in the general direction of Columbus Circle, Pape arose and sauntered toward the park wall. He did not trouble himself further about his steed of raucous breath, steel ribs and rubber hoofs. A “sparrow cop” would happen upon that sooner or later and trundle it back to the Sheepfold garage. The Force could take for granted that its plain-clothe’s borrower had found necessity to abandon it in course of duty. Plainly labeled as a piece of city property by its official number plate, it was safe enough.

He scaled the wall at a calculated point and gave himself completely to the joys of victory when he saw her who had sent him into the arena seated on a shaded bench a short distance above. He joined her. Gallantly as some champion of old he handed her the trophy brought back from the fight—the venerable drain-building permit.

“This is all the authority they had for daylight digging,” he remarked.

“Then—then they haven’t deciphered it?” she breathed with manifest relief, after a moment’s study of the official sheet.

“It? Just what—” he began to ask, then stopped.

Let her tell him if and when she liked. Until and unless, he would continue his rudderless, questionless course.

“Don’t you see,” she was generous enough to add, “if they had solved the cryptogram, they never would have been using this? With their influence they’d have secured a special permit. It may be that one of the gang saw me digging there last night and assumed that I knew more than I really do. There have been signs recently that I was followed by more than—than yourself. That man on the knob last night—Don’t you suppose he had watched me—trailed me—lain in wait for me to take from me whatever I might have dug up?”

They? Their? The gang?

These succinct demands Pape did not put in words although, telepathically, he did not restrain his curiosity. Probably she got something of his vehemence and decided that something was due him. She abstracted her attention completely from the passers-by and gave it to him.

“You were fine, Peter Pape, fine. After dark to-night I’ll come back and finish my search. If I’d stopped to think—except for my desperation, you know—I never should have asked you to put those people out, it was so impossible. But you were inspired with the one-best idea. You handled the expulsion act as artistically as—as an actor in his big scene.”

Now, had there been time for Pape to foreplan his curtain speech he might have continued to be artistic. But Jane’s applause seemed to go to his head. He honestly had meant to continue histrionically suppressed, unasking, admirable. Yet he didn’t; just couldn’t. He stretched his arm along the back of the bench until his finger-tips touched the tweed of her sleeve. Perhaps the contact was unnerving. Perhaps her eyes were too earnest. Perhaps her faint, wistful smile was falsely promising. At any rate, he proceeded to do what he had determined not to do.

“It was quite a stunt. I admit it,” he said. “Don’t you think you sort of ought to—That is, don’t you want to reward me?”

“Reward you?”

She drew away from him and his suggestion.

“Of course I don’t mean just that.” Pape’s eyes were on her lips. “You paid me beforehand. What I wish you’d do is to get me in your debt again. The credit system is the one for me. I can do anything to make good when I’m deep in debt. Will you—won’t you——”

“Odious!”

A second or so he blinked into the blast of her interruption. By its flare he saw her interpretation of his bad beginning. He tried an extinguisher.

“Wait a minute. Don’t flay me before you understand. I’m not such a jasper as to mean to exact—What I wish you’d do—What I want to ask—Jane, have a little mercy on me. Tell me who and what to you is that man living in your flat.”

From the look of her, judging dispassionately as possible, all was over between them. She got to her feet, as he to his. She looked strengthened by righteous rage, he weakened by unrighteous humility. She made the only utterances—and they did not help much, being rather fragmentary.

“You think that I—You have assumed that he—You believe that we—So that is why——”

In the pause that preceded the lash of further language, Peter Pape realized what it was to be a dumb brute. He felt as must certain dogs he had tried to understand—faithful, well-intentioned, unequal to explaining themselves. He knew that he did not deserve chastisement at the beloved hand, yet could not resent or avert it. Like a dog he leveled his eyes on hers and looked—silent, honest, worshipful.

And Jane Lauderdale proved to have a heart for dumb brutes.

A taxi with flag out had slowed at her gesture. She was about to enter it. In quiet, crisp tones she gave her address to the driver; then these instructions to Pape:

“Get the next cab that comes along and follow me to East Sixty-third Street. Under the circumstances you will excuse me for preferring to ride over alone. I’ll wait for you on the stoop.”

She did. And without a word she preceded him up the three screeching, scrooping, shrieking flights, which were not nearly so uncommunicative as his guide.

“Life’s a shaky thing. But love is worse—worse—worse”—the first. And the scroopy second: “Things get queerer every step—queerer—queerer.” Shrieked the third: “Look out. Like as not he’ll leap and lam you. Look out lest he leap and lam!”

The fourth floor front was empty when they entered. Pape noted its quaint consistency during the moment she left him alone—an oblong room fitted sparingly with Colonial antiques, with a round rag rug over the boards of its floor, with several old, interesting engravings on its walls. He merely glanced at the horsehair Davenport to which she had waved him; turned and stood with face toward the sliding door through which she had disappeared.

Soon this door was drawn open. Forward she led by the hand the man. A tall, fit specimen he was, his face clean-shaved and strong-featured, his hair a tawny mass which probably once had been auburn, but now was blond from a two-thirds admixture of gray.

The light of devotion irradiated the girl’s uplifted face as she stopped before him. She looked like a slender white taper beside some shrine, her lips the live red, her eyes the blaze blue, her hair the waving suggestion of its lighted tip.

“Dear,” she said to her companion, “I want to introduce Mr. Why-Not Pape, the Westerner I told you about.”

The man’s smile was cordial, beautiful. He stepped forward with outstretched hand.

“Welcome to our city, Why-Not Pape,” he quoted from the Times CaÑon sign which, patently, had been part of Jane’s tale.

But Pape didn’t—just couldn’t meet the advance. He stood stubbornly still before the Davenport, his arms stiff at his sides, his suffering eyes upon the lit taper—upon Jane.

And into her devotional mood seemed to return that gentling comprehension of dumb brutes.

“I beg your pardon,” she said to him. “Mr. Pape, my father.”