Not so Bertie, who found out about it, and went into a regular tantrum. What did Bunny mean by letting his father fall into such hands? It was the worst kind of swindling in the world! And that woman, Mrs. Olivier, it was perfectly obvious what her scheme was—she wanted to marry Dad! Here Bertie and Bunny had worked all their lives to help him accumulate a fortune and save it—and a designing adventuress would jump in and grab the money, and Bunny hadn’t even sense enough to know what was happening! Never had he seen his sister so mad in her whole life—she called him a fool seven times running—when he said that the Spiritualist widow might have her share, if only she could help the poor old man to find happiness.
XI
Then another strange affair for them to discuss: one you would have found still harder to guess! The American newspapers in Paris published a despatch from Angel City, setting forth that Eli Watkins, self-styled prophet of religion, was believed to be drowned. He had gone swimming at the beach, leaving his clothing in a hotel room, and had never been seen since; a search was being made for the body. That was all the news for a time; and Dad shook his head, and said, golly, what a strange thing—a man whose God had saved so many others, but couldn’t save His own prophet! What would become of that big Tabernacle, that had been Eli’s personal property?
Then the New York papers came; and later on, the papers from Angel City, with the story spread all over the front page day after day. The body of Eli could not be found. The people of the temple employed divers—they had searchlights sweeping the water at night, and thousands of the faithful patrolling the sands, holding revival services there, weeping and praying to God to give them back their beloved leader in his green bathing suit. This went on for a week, for two weeks; and it was puzzling, because the longest time a body could stay in the sea without floating was nine days, and never before had it happened that a drowned body had failed to be washed ashore.
Then, more and more amazing, there began to be rumors in the papers—they were afraid to say anything direct, but they hinted, and quoted others who hinted—Eli was possibly not drowned; Eli had been seen here, he had been seen there—and always in the company of a certain young woman, whom rumor declared to have been the keeper of the sacred robes in the Tabernacle. Of course, the first time Dad saw one of those hints, he remembered what he and Bunny had seen that day at the beach hotel, and he went up into the air. “By God, that fellow’s playing a trick! He’s gone off on a spree with a woman!”
There was a thrill for you! Dad talked about it for hours—it almost drove the spooks out of his mind! It was no joking matter, because in the course of the search for Eli’s body two men had lost their lives—one diver had been taken with pneumonia, and a member of the Tabernacle, seeing what he thought was a body, had swam out too far and gone down. And here was Dad with the key to the mystery! Was it his duty to cable the facts to the Reverend Poober?
More sensations yet—the people at the Tabernacle began getting letters from kidnappers, who alleged that they had taken Eli in his green bathing suit, and had him in hiding, and demanded half a million dollars ransom for him! What was that? Nobody in Angel City could be sure. Had the prophet really been kidnapped? Or was it true that he was driving over the state, in company with Miss X, as the newspapers referred to the former keeper of the sacred robes? One of the funniest aspects of the scandal was that various young couples who had gone off on love-expeditions in motorcars—a favorite diversion of the well-to-do—now found themselves in an embarrassing situation; all over the state newspaper reporters and police officials were looking for Eli and Miss X, and woe to any tall blond man who happened to register at a hotel with a girl and no marriage certificate!
The denouement, when it finally came, was so sensational that it got itself cabled, and thus spared Dad a tedious wait. Thirty-five days after Eli’s disappearance, some fishermen, rowing in a harbor several hundred miles from Angel City, encountered a man swimming to shore, and picked him up; and behold, it was a tall blond man in a green bathing suit—in short, it was the prophet! The story he told was that, finding himself being carried out to sea, he had prayed to the Lord, and the Lord had heard his prayer, and had sent three angels to hold him up in the water. The name of one of these angels was Steve, and the second was a lady angel, whose name was Rosie, and the third was a Mexican angel, and his name was Felipe. These angels had taken turns holding onto the shoulder-straps of Eli’s green bathing suit; and when he grew faint, one of them would fly away and bring him food. They had upheld him, even while he slept, quite peacefully in the water. For the entire period of thirty-five days Eli had been thus alternately swimming and sleeping. The devil had come, with wings of flame, and driven the good angels away, and bound Eli’s hands behind him so that he had nearly drowned. But he had prayed to the Lord, and the angels had floated him to a rusty old can, and held it while he rubbed his bonds against the sharp edges, and severed the bonds
