Red Fleece | Page 2

The next day at the same time and place Mowbray
was there, and saw her coming from afar.
She seemed both afraid and angry, stopped abruptly and asked in Polish
what he wanted. He was startled. It was a hard moment. He explained
with difficulty that her language was as yet an inconvenient vehicle for
him.
"You are not Russian?" she said in French.
He shook his head. She seemed to be relieved and he wondered why.
"What do you want?" she asked, though not quite with the original
asperity.
"It did not occur to me you would notice," he said in the language she
had ventured. "I saw you yesterday. You made me think of New York.

As I was near to-day, I hoped to see you again---" "You are
American?" She spoke now in English, and with a still softer
intonation.
"Yes,--you speak English, too?"
"I like it. It is---" she checked herself and asked with just a shade of
coldness, "Is there anything I can do for you?"
It might be construed as a courtesy to a stranger from one who lived in
Warsaw. Peter liked it, a certain vista opening. However, there was no
answer within reach except the truth, and he plunged:
"I should like to know you better."
The red lower lip disappeared beneath the other. Her gray eyes grew
very wide; something intrepid and exquisite in her manner as she
searched his face. Whatever she knew of the world, she dared still to
trust her intuition--this was something of the revelation he drew.
"Why?"
Many people were passing. He looked toward the quieter center of the
Square.
"Will you walk with me there?" he asked. "It is not easy to explain this
sort of thing---"
"No. I must go on. You may walk a little way."
"You are very good.... You see, I cannot tell just why--as you asked. If I
knew you well, I could tell you. Yesterday I was quite unromantic---"
She made it hard for him and did not let him see her smile. "You mean
you are romantic to-day?"
Peter laughed. "What a trap--and I was trying so hard to tell you."
"You were trying---"

"I don't need to tell you. All there is to say is that I want you to be my
friend."
"I should have to think," she answered.
"Of course. ... Do you pass here every day?"
"I should have to think," she said.
It was the third day afterward that she passed again.
Chapter 2
The first time that Boylan of the Rhodes News Agency of New York
saw Peter Mowbray was in the office of Lonegan of The States,
Mowbray's chief in Warsaw. Lonegan had known Peter in New York
and had wanted him for his second many months before the fact was
brought about. This was the Boylan of the Schmedding Polar Failure,
of various wars and expeditions, a huge spectacle of a man, an
old-timer, and very fond of Lonegan, though as representative of
Rhodes' he was structurally the competitor of The States in this
territory.
"Young Mowbray may be all right," Boylan observed, "but the curse of
the student is on him. I should say that he isn't gusty enough for hard
work--vest buttons too safe--"
"You can't measure health by the pound," Lonegan observed, regarding
the other's bulk with one eye shut. "I never heard of Mowbray spending
much time in bed outside of the small hours." "How old is he?"
"Twenty-six or seven."
"I suppose he put on his gear all in a year or two?"
"There is that look about him, but he's safely over it. Some people
never stop, but I've had to look up at him from the same angle now and
then during the last five years.... It was just a little before that he
happened into--his route like mine--his cub-year in London, then

assistant in Antwerp, then in Dresden. He had Dresden alone for a year.
I've been angling for him some time----"
"Yes," Boylan remarked, "you need the right kind of help to stand up
with Rhodes from this end----"
"You do make it wildly exciting," Lonegan answered gently. "We'll
rock Peter yet."
This chat took place in June. Ten weeks afterward Boylan came in with
the big news, and found Lonegan bending over the following
cablegram, almost the last that came through in the private cipher of
The States:
Get Mowbray post with Russians. We are mailing influential matters.
Warsaw key-desk for northern campaigns. We are to be congratulated
on having Lonegan there.
It was from the Old Man, who in certain cases ventured thus to be
expensively felicitous....
"I'm sorry, Lonegan," Boylan said. "I thought you would be taking the
field---"
"No, the Old Man's got the right eye for these affairs. I'm