Leonidas swung his pince-nez from their broad black ribbon.
Perhaps it was all his fault for not outgrowing the E. Phillips Oppenheim tradition, but he had never entirely been able to banish a conviction that on every train or every ship there should be at least one intensely beautiful woman, who, furthermore, should be guarding a pouch stuffed with stolen emeralds. Lacking emeralds, the beautiful woman should have crammed beneath her girdle a handful of secret treaties, or pilfered designs for superdreadnoughts, or anyway a plan for Der Tag.
But if such exciting creatures existed, they always avoided the conveyances on which Leonidas traveled. Very likely the throngs of mousy women scared them off, which he considered a great pity.
Swinging his pince-nez, he watched more fields rush past. The snow became increasingly deeper as they neared Boston, and the sky was gloomy and overcast.
“Not an inspiring sight.”
Leonidas turned around. Busy with his bitter thoughts concerning mousy women, he hadn’t noticed the young man in the blue suit who had emerged from Car Nine, and was standing almost at his elbow.
“Not— My God, you do look like Shakespeare, don’t you?”
“So,” Leonidas said, “I have been told.”
He started to move along up the corridor, but the young man, apparently entranced by his discovery, continued to block the way and stare at him raptly.
“I say, when I was a youngster, I went to Meredith’s Academy, and there was a professor in the upper school they used to call Bill Shakespeare. I’ve forgotten his real name. No one ever called him by it, anyway. Aren’t you him?”
“Were you graduated from Meredith’s?” Leonidas asked gently.
“No, I went on to Dumbert,” the young man said.
Leonidas nodded. “I felt sure that if you had come under my jurisdiction in the English Department, you would not ask me if I wasn’t him. Actually, I am he.”
A more sensitive ear would have caught the faint implication of a snub, but the young man only laughed.
“Well, you know Dumbert. Just a bunch of illiterates. We went in more for football and stuff. I can’t spell, either— Say, will you look out at those drifts? The porter said Boston got two feet of snow yesterday, and there’s supposed to be a cold wave coming, too. New England in March! Honestly, did you ever see anything drearier than those fields in this light? Doesn’t it depress you?”
There was something infectious about the young man’s buoyant vigor, and Leonidas took off his pince-nez and gave up trying to remain aloof.
“Ordinarily,” he said, “I should avert my eyes. But this morning, I find the landscape rather stimulating.”
“What? Now you don’t mean,” the young man waved a hand toward the window, “that—that Godforsaken vista gives you any lift?”
“It does. You see, I’m going home. And it’s the first time in years I’ve had a home to go to.” Leonidas, who had no intention of doing anything of the kind, suddenly found to his surprise that he was unburdening himself to this chatty young fellow. “A brand new house, built just for me. A small white house with green blinds. And I’ve never seen it.”
“How come?” the young man asked interestedly as he lighted a cigarette. “If I ever built me a house, I’d sit and watch every nail get driven, and stick my fingers in the concrete, and play with the shavings—why, that’s half the fun of building a house!”
“I suppose so,” Leonidas said. “But I was in a hurry to see the world once more while there was still some world left to see, and the tangle of my uncle’s estate wasn’t settled enough for me to spend more money before I went. Then when I heard the estate was settled, I cabled my friends to get busy—”
“You let your friends build you a house while you were away? It’s fantastic!” the young man said. “It’s incredible!”
Leonidas shook his head. “Not really. I had the land, and the plans. In fact, I had the plans long before I had the land, or the money to build a house with.”
“Sort of a dream house, huh?”
“In a way,” Leonidas said. “I’ve never seen it, but I know just how it’s going to look, and how the staircase curves, and where each book will go. And— What did you say?”
“I choked. Just a stray New Haven cinder. Well, sir, I think you had courage to let other people build your dream house— My God, it’s six-thirty, and I promised to wake Mike at six! I’ve got to rush. Good luck to you in your new house!”
Leonidas watched his departure with amusement. He didn’t for a moment believe that there was anyone named Mike who had to be awakened. The young man had invented him as an excuse to escape hearing further details about the new house. It served him right, Leonidas thought, for being so chatty with strangers.
Putting on his pince-nez, he turned back to the window. In an hour he would be in the South Station, and in another hour he would be home. Once settled, he would start the new Lieutenant Haseltine book, for which his publishers clamored. He never intended to continue the Haseltine series now that he had an income again, but the Haseltine habit proved too strong to break. He had written three Haseltine books a year for so many years that he automatically wrote about the daring lieutenant whether he meant to or not.
He wondered what his friends would say if they knew he was the author of the Haseltine books. He wondered what the mousy women would make of that intrepid officer.
Chuckling at the thought, he started up the corridor. A cup of coffee in the club car would help while away the time.
He stopped suddenly in front of the water cooler, and stared reflectively at the “Out of Order” sign dangling from the faucet lever.
That, he reflected, was odd. It hadn’t been
