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Show Synthetic Gentleman L channing riri 7 POLLOCK- M- copyright, Channing pollock. WNU service to town for cream, and bacon, and bread, and the Duke's courage rose with every sip of the steaming coffee. cof-fee. "What's this?" he Inquired, his eye falling upon an envelope at his plate. "A letter for your mother, sir," Willetts replied. "Mrs. Kidder expected ex-pected some mail from the employment employ-ment agency, and places like that She said you was to open it, sir." Barry hesitated, then opened the envelope. A hundred dollar bill dropped out. "Well," echoed the Duke, with that new courage born of steaming steam-ing coffee. "Well, and likewise good. I can use this." "Yes, sir," said the butler. "A little more coffee, sir?" "Thank you," assented the Duke. "And just one more piece of toast." Alone in the cheerful breakfast room he read the letter. "Dear Mother: I'm returning the money. I can't keep it, and I can't go to Southampton. Southamp-ton. I'm sending this special delivery, deliv-ery, so you'll have time to get rid of the servants, if you decide not to open the house. For your sake, I hope father improves at Bad Nau-hcim, Nau-hcim, but I don't want anything that comes from him, and I sha'n't write again. Thanks, all the same. John." The Duke picked up the envelope again. It had been posted the previous morning in New Tork, and there was no special delivery stamp. Back with the toast and coffee, Willetts Inquired, "Anything important, impor-tant, sir?" "The letter?" asked the Duke, as though that had been farthest from his present thoughts. "No. I'll send It to Bad Nauheim when I write, and keep the money until my mother moth-er returns." "What time shall you want the car?" His Grace reflected. It was a long walk to Montauk Point And, apparently, ap-parently, there was no possibility of overplaying his luck. Why should not he ride to Montauk in comfort or, at least, to within a few miles of Montauk and disappear there, Instead of at Southampton? "I might take a drive," he said. Out of sight of the house, he took the precaution of burning that letter from "John." "I'll return that money from Montauk," mused the Duke. "I don't want to be hooked for robbing the mails." This was certainly a beautiful place. "If it were mine " . And he grinned again. It was, for the moment. Life had never been dull for him or for his father. "Keep moving" mov-ing" that was the old man's slogan. slo-gan. And that was all he ever kept. Barry's memories began in Pittsburg. Stranded, Francis Gilbert Gil-bert had tutored there. Barry had discovered that he should have a mother. The old man had never mentioned it, so his son raised the question. "I lost her," his father said. "How?" "In Algiers. You were born there." (TO BE CONTINUED) "Mr. Evans is lighting the furnace," fur-nace," she said. "The house is that cold. I wonder you didn't think of it But, of course, you're a stranger here, too." "A stranger!" What did she mean by that?" Where had he been, he wondered? Evidently, not home, at any rate. So that was why Willetts Wil-letts hadn't known he wasn't Mr. Ridder. The Duke ventured half a question. "Willetts isn't a stranger?" "Of course not," Annie replied. "Nor Mr. Evans. Just Mrs. Mulligan Mulli-gan and me. We was taken on when Madam and Mr. Ridder expected ex-pected to spend the summer here, and we've been let out, I guess, when they decided to go to Germany, Ger-many, If it hadn't been for your coming back." Returning to the library, trousers still in hand, Barry Gilbert encountered encoun-tered the ubiquitous Willetts. I'll take those, sir," said the butler, taking them. "Oh, never mind !" "They'll need pressing." "I'll need them." "They'll be ready for you In the morning," Willetts said, with a note of fiuality. "Did you bring any pyjamas, sir?" Any lie would do for now. "Yes," answered the Duke, "but, like an idiot, I checked my suitcase, suit-case, and God knows what happened hap-pened to the check !" "I'll get you a pair of your father's," fa-ther's," Willetts volunteered. "You are very much of a size." The Duke didn't mind. It was all "a lucky break," only how long would it last? "Mustn't over-play my luck," thought the Duke. But the real Mr. Ridder "wasn't coming until tomorrow." Why make a break for it tonight? The butler returned with a pair of purple silk pyjamas. "Anything else, sir?" "No, thanks." "I'll be leaving you then. What time breakfast, sir?" "Oh, say eight o'clock." "Right, sir. Good night, sir," said the butler, bowing himself out. "Easy !" thought the Duke, standing stand-ing before the fire, with the pyjamas pyja-mas In his hand. "Too damned easy ! There's a catch in it somewhere some-where !" Willetts implied that he had been with the family some time. Why had he never seen the son? Or even a picture of him? Why did he take those trousers? "I'm trapped," mused the Duke. "Or else he's no more a butler than I am Mr. Ridder. There's a lot of mighty valuable junk in this house." It was with that thought in his mind that His Grace of Hollywood finally turned the other cheek on an Irish linen pillow slip, and dropped off to sleep. The trousers were beside his bed when he awoke. And all that cinema nonsense had evaporated from his mind. Just a "lucky break." He squared his shoulders, and sauntered down the carpeted stairs. Already, he felt a new dignity; a new, stiffening self-respect. The trousers were neatly pressed, and "Good morning, sir," said the butler, but-ler, as he entered the breakfast room. There was nothing "make shift" about the meal. Evans had been CHAPTER I ' I HIE house stood alone on a sand dune overlooking the sea-dark, sea-dark, deserted, and silent, except for the swish of the rain blowing against Its shingles. Wet to his skin, and shivering, the Duke struggled strug-gled to pry open a window. From his dank coat pocket, the Duke drew a cheap jackknife and a tiny searchlight. The Duke's thumb pressed the button, and, momentarily, the ray revealed waving wet beach-grass, and a single scrub pine bent in the wind. Then, carefully, he began cutting away the dry putty that held a pane of glass. It was slow work. "Why don't I break the damned thing?" the Duke asked himself, and, a minute later, felt the unshattered glass drop into his hand. It was easy to open the window, then, and easy for a slim and agile man to climb through. Once inside in-side the house, he paused. Would the electric lights be working, and would it be safe to turn them on? Why not? Half the summer residences resi-dences in Southampton had been opened for the season. The Duke touched a switch his searchlight had disclosed beside a door. It was exactly the sort of room he had expected a luxurious breakfast break-fast room in a luxurious summer residence. Most of the furniture was covered, but a gay breakfast table stood In the center, and, beyond be-yond it, was an open door to a pantry. The Duke walked through, and into the kitchen, turning on lights as he went. After all, why should they mind an extra weekend week-end guest? He grinned, and anyone who had seen that grin might have found It hard to mind. It was an ingratiating ingra-tiating grin, in a pleasant, likeable face. A lean face, weather-beaten and a little boney, but with large, kind, steel-gray eyes, surmounted by a thatch of unruly brick-red hair. The Duke's trim figure stretched a tidy six feet above the worn soles of his untidy boots, but his gray suit, though worn, too, and wet, was well cut and well made, revealing square shoulders and firm muscles. "Wonder If there's any grub," said the Duke. Above the shelves was a cupboard, cup-board, and in that cupboard were rows of canned things each can neatly wrapped in paper sardines, anchovies, caviar, chicken, ham, tongue all sorts of things. college, and out again into papa's office sure, I'd run straight. Why not? Who couldn't be a knight in armor? But being a knight without with-out armor that's different. Still, he had struck reasonably, at least In the face of what seemed almost a conspiracy of discouragement. discourage-ment. Fired out of Hollywood for a theft of which he was innocent as an unborn babe. "All right," he had said. "I'll go East, and start all over again." He had nearly frozen in Chicago. He had nearly starved. And then he had hitchhiked hitch-hiked to New York, riding freights when he could. A pal had christened chris-tened him "the Duke," because of his clothes, and his English, and the grand manner he had acquired in Filrudom. New York with those Hollywood shoes wearing thin, and that Hollywood Holly-wood gray suit, that had cost .$12.".. getting frayed and baggy. Part of a jobless army in a city without jobs. He bad eaten his overcoat or the proceeds from it, at any rate and paid the last dime for a bunk in a flophouse. A love of books, a sense of humor, hu-mor, and the wanderlust these he had inherited from an Irish father, whose name was Francis X. Gilbert, Gil-bert, and whose proudest boast was that he came from the University of Dublin. He had died in China, nearly six years ago, leaving the seventeen-year-old boy, Barry, to fight his way from Hong Kong to Hollywood, and from Chicago to New York. He found himself on the edge of Southampton. It was black night, and beginning to rain. A cold wind had sprung up from the northeast. His teeth were chattering by now, and his feet squished in his wet shoes. And this house had seemed so utterly deserted, so entirely en-tirely safe and secure. "Ten o'clock," said the Duke. "What's the chance of anyone finding me In here tonight? I'll be on my way again at daybreak." Now, fed and warm, he was growing grow-ing drowsy before the fire. "It must be swell to live like this all the time," he brooded, dreamily. His head fell forward, and his eyes were closing, when he heard an automobile door slam, and, an instant later, voices and the shuffling shuf-fling of feet on the porch directly beneath him. The Duke sprang up. The breakfast room window that was It I But not in dressing gown and slippers. "Damned fool, Thirty minutes later, ms urace had dined sustainingly, If not well. Half the contents of the pot of coffee still bubbling on the stove warmed him comfortably, and he washed the dishes. Then he put everything back in place, turned out the lights, and, whistling merrily, mer-rily, went upstairs. At the top of the steps was a kind of library book-lined, with doors on either side, and, at Its end, windows win-dows facing the sea. Again he touched a switch, and, this time, lights sprang into being in shaded table-lamps, doubly shaded shad-ed now by winter wrappings. A fire had been laid in the grate. He lit the fire, and a cigar, and then opened a door on his right. This was a man's room, gracious and Inviting. The Duke felt the mattress drawn back over the footboard foot-board of the bed, and, sniffing a pungent odor of cedar and camphor, turned his attention to a closet across the room. A very large closet, with an electric light in it, and built-in drawers, and a cedar chest. Atop the chest were two pairs of slippers, and above it hung the only garment visible, a blue-striped blue-striped dressing gown of soft, light flannel. His own apparel still clinging cling-ing damply, the Duke took the dressing gown and slippers back to the blazing fire, and, standing luxuriously luxu-riously before it, changed his clothes. Still neat, he carried the gray suit and the wet undergarments back to the bedroom. He returned to the tire, stretching himself lazily In a huge, overstuffed over-stuffed chair. Outside, tire storm was growing steadily worse. Wind-flung Wind-flung against the windows, the rain kept up its incessant swish. In the thick of it he had been nn hour before. Penniless, over-coatlcss, over-coatlcss, trudging along the cement-paved cement-paved road from I'.ridgehampton, five miles to the east. On foot, he had left New Tork that morning just after daybreak. Jobless and flat broke. For a month all through April, In fact the Duke had tramped the streets looking for "a regular job." "What the h I makes me want to keep straight?" he had asked himself,- again and again. "That's all right for guys with an income. If somebody'd started me a rubber-tired rubber-tired pram, and wheeled me into to take my ciotnes on i rnougiu the Duke. Who were these people, peo-ple, anyway, driving up to a closed house at this hour? Well, what next? Jail, probably. And then he heard' the lower door open and a woman's voice in the hall. "Maybe I can talk my way out," he thought, and started down the stairs. "Who's there?" he called, bravely. A man answered. "Willetts," he said. "Willetts, the butler. Is that you, Mr. Ridder?" And the ligiits went on. Standing on the landing, the Duke fouud himself facing a party of four. Willetts, with his hat in his hand, squat and powerfully built and ludicrously bald. Another man in a chauffeur's uniform, and two women one jnite young, and the other middle-aged and stout. They seemed propitiatory, and the fact gave him instant courage. "Is that you, Mr. Ridder?" The question had been asked first in the dark, but now it was repeated repeat-ed in a glare that made every face plainly visible. The butler didn't know Mr. Ridder, then. That was "a lucky break." It would give him time to dress, and get away. "Yes," he answered quietly. "You are a little late, aren't you?" "Sorry, sir," said the butler. "I didn't have any idea you'd be here, sir. Your mother said you wasn't coming until tomorrow. Evans had to take 'em down to the ship her and your father, sir. I hope you aren't going to be put out, sir." "I hope not." the Duke replied, grinning broadly, and, seeing that grin, the four servants smiled, too. "This is Evans, sir," the butler continued. "This is Mrs. Mulligan. Cook, sir. And Annie Jeffers, the parlor maid. If you don't mind, sir, I'll get them set, and then I'll come upstairs to report." "Fine!" said the Duke, calculating calculat-ing that live minutes would get him into his clothes, and out the front door. lie was climbing the steps again when Willetts called. "I never thought, sir. Your bed isn't made. I'll get the linen out, and have Annie up there right away. lie had scarcely got his trousers when Annie appeared with a small load of immaculate sheets and pillow pil-low cases. |