  Horace Chadwick was stirring the next morning before anyone else in the house. He crept down the main stairway in a suit of pink pajamas and a purple bathrobe and made straight for the front door. He opened it and peered out on the porch. The morning papers had not yet arrived. He slipped back in the hallway and sat down on a settee. He had had a sleepless night and he was in a rotten humor. The wife of his bosom hadn’t spoken a word to him since the affair of the breakfast table the day before and he had been so unmercifully “guyed” by every friend he met that he had taken refuge in his library early in the afternoon and had smoked three times as many black cigars as were good for him. Chilvers had been inaccessible since the visit of the deputation and every effort to get in touch with anyone on the Bulletin had been met with the response that “explanations will be made in tomorrow’s paper.” To make matters worse the Rev. Dr. Chaddow had called to offer spiritual consolation to “dear, kind Mrs. Chadwick.” He had heard the cleric intoning his sympathy in the drawing room and had been obliged to stand at an open window to cool off and keep himself from rushing in and laying violent hands on the reverend gentleman. The story was the talk of the town and telephonic reports from other members of the aggrieved group of prominent citizens brought word of the continuance of violent hostilities in nearly a score of households. The memory of these things seethed in Mr. Chadwick’s mind as he sat with his aching head bent forward on his hands and heard the library clock chime six. Presently a dull thud was heard against the door. Mr. Chadwick jumped up and stepped out on the porch again. He picked up the tightly rolled little bundle of newspapers a boy had just thrown in from the sidewalk, and slammed the door shut behind him. He eagerly unrolled the package, picked out the Bulletin and held up the front page under the shade of a tall hall-lamp. Della, the cook, who was coming down the front stairs in direct violation of a household rule at this particular moment, was frozen in her tracks by the incisive explicitness of a blistering exclamation which came up out of the hall below. It was followed by murmurs and mumbles which she couldn’t quite make out, then by a chuckle or two and finally by a hearty laugh that sent her scurrying upstairs again and down the back way, convinced that the gentleman of the house had suddenly gone out of his mind. Mr. Chadwick followed her up with the nimbleness of a school boy, waving the paper in his hand. He knocked loudly at his wife’s door. “Elizabeth,” he shouted, “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world.” “What’s that?” came a sleepy voice from behind the locked door. “The blonde peril has passed on out to sea,” he said gayly. “Take a look at this morning’s Bulletin.” Mrs. Chadwick unlocked the door and admitted her husband. He blithely escorted her over to the window, drew up the curtain and flashed the paper in front of her blinking eyes. At first she saw only a smear of black type and a dancing set of little pictures. The type presently resolved itself into a five column headline which told a story that the whole town would be chuckling over in another hour: Mrs. Chadwick gazed bewilderingly at the flaming headline and at the pen and ink sketches illustrating the story which followed—sketches picturing with comic effect little scenes like that which transpired at her own breakfast table the morning before. “I don’t understand,” she said weakly. “Read the first few paragraphs and you will,” chuckled her husband. His wife obediently read the introduction to the long story which Crandall had written. On a certain Spring night a score of years ago a certain Baltimorean gazed up at the star spangled heavens on the desolate shores of a little inlet of Chesapeake Bay twenty long miles from a railroad and fifteen from any human habitation and swore by all the nine gods that sometime, somehow, some place he would get even collectively and appropriately with two dozen of his fellow club members who had just played him what he considered the scurviest trick known to mortal man. He had been kidnapped on his wedding night and dumped without ceremony on the loneliest spot in this corner of the world—all by way of a joke. This same man sat yesterday in the living room of his country home with a perpetual grin on his face and a heartful of joy. He knew that every living man of that party of jokesters was suffering something approximating the torments he suffered on that night of nights and that he had stirred up more trouble in a score of households than a half a hundred genuine vampires might have succeeded in doing. Opportunity chose the disguise of a theatrical press agent when she finally knocked after all these years—which statement leads naturally to an account of the real inside of the story of the projected millionaires’ chorus girl joy ride party which amused and startled this city yesterday. |
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