Captivating Mary Carstairs | Page 7

both
in this!"
He examined Peter's face hopefully, but found unaffected apathy there.
"Suppose," he cried boastfully, "that the Associated Press got on to it!
Think of the disgrace of it! 'Millionaire Maginnis Caught Kidnapping!'
Think of being fired from the Curzon and having to leave New York a
hunted and broken man! Think," he added in an inspired climax, "of
having your photograph in the Sunday Herald!"
Maginnis perked up visibly at this. "There is no chance of that really,
do you think?"
"None in the world," said Varney desperately.
He felt sure that this had cost him Peter, whom he had come to as his
oldest and best friend. Having no idea whom he could turn to next, he
rose, tentatively, and for the moral effect, to go.
"After all," he said aloud, "I have another man in my mind who would,
on second thoughts, suit me better."
"Oh, sit down!" cried Peter, impatiently.
Larry sat down. His face showed, in spite of him, how really anxious he
was to have Peter go. There was a brief pause.
"Since you are so crazy to have me," said Peter, "I'll go."
"Thank you," said Varney. He picked up his glass, which he had
hitherto not touched, drained it at a gulp and pushed the bell vigorously.
"I knew," he cried, "that you'd see the possibilities when once your

brain began to work."
Peter's faint smile was an insult in its way. "Three things have decided
me to go with you, old son, and none of them has anything to do with
your possibilities. The first is that I'm the one man in a million you
really need in case of trouble."
"Peter, your modesty is your curse."
"The second is--did you read the Sun this morning? It seems that this
little town of Hunston is having a violent spasm of politics right now.
Rather lucky coincidence, I should say. The dispatch I read was pretty
vague, but I gather that there's an interesting fight on between a strong
machine and a small but firm reform movement."
"Ha! Occupation for you while I beat the woods for little Mary."
"I'll need it."
"Well, what was your other wonderful reason?"
"Don't you know? It is that sixty horse-power oath your uncle made
you swear."
"Because it committed me, you mean?"
The door opened, men entered noisily, and Peter had to draw Varney
aside to explain darkly: "Because it committed me to wondering what
difficulties foxy old Carstairs made a point of concealing from you."
"Meet me upstairs in ten minutes," said Varney, "and we'll talk about
plans."

CHAPTER II
THEY EMBARK UPON A CRIME

Varney was wrong in one thing: Mr. Carstairs's Cypriani was not ready
to start anywhere at half a day's notice. For that reason it did not start
for Hunston on the following afternoon. As always happens, the
preparations for the little expedition took four times as long as anybody
would have thought possible.
For these delays no blame could be attached to Peter Maginnis. He had
no getting ready to do beyond bidding his father's man to pack him for
a week, and obtaining from his hatter's, at an out-of-season cut-price,
an immense and peculiar Panama with an offensive plaid band.
Possibly it was the only hat of its kind in the world. One might picture
the manufacturer as having it made up as an experiment, becoming
morose when he looked at it, and ordering his superintendent to make
no more like it at the peril of his life.
Peter, however, was delighted with it. Gazing at himself with smirking
satisfaction in the hat-shop mirror, he ordered the old one sent home
and was all ready to go to Hunston and kidnap Mary Carstairs.
But other preparations could not be completed with such speedy
satisfaction. The yacht had to coal, take on supplies, and pick up two or
three extra men for the crew. A Sunday came in and threw everything
back a day. Lastly the sailing-master's wife, whom Mr. Carstairs was
sending along to take charge of Mary on the homeward trip, chanced to
be down with an influenza.
As the details of getting ready multiplied about him, Varney's interest
in his novel undertaking imperceptibly grew. The thing had come upon
him so unexpectedly that it had not yet by any means lost its
strangeness. To the old friend of his mother's girlhood, Elbert Carstairs,
he was sincerely devoted, though knowing him for an indulgent man
whose indulgences were chiefly of himself. But when, responding to
his excited summons that night, he had sat and listened while Mr.
Carstairs unfolded his mad little domestic plot, he had been first utterly
amazed and then utterly repelled. And it was not until a final sense of
the old man's