“It’s out there,” whispered Percy, facing the sea.
“Forward we go!” muttered Doctor Gallup tensely. “I’m inclined to think this is all a question of nerves.”
They moved slowly and silently along the sand, until suddenly Percy caught hold of the doctor’s arm.
“Listen!” he whispered sharply.
They all became motionless. Out of the neighboring darkness a dim, indistinguishable figure had materialized, walking with unnatural rigidity along the shore. Pressed against his body he carried some long, dark drape that hung almost to the sand. Immediately he disappeared into the mist, to be succeeded by another phantom walking at the same military gait, this one with something white and faintly terrible dangling from his arm. A moment later, not ten yards away from them, in the direction in which the figure had gone, a faint dull glow sprang into life, proceeding apparently from behind the largest of the dunes.
Huddled together, they advanced toward the dune, hesitated, and then, following Doctor Gallup’s example, dropped to their knees and began to crawl cautiously up its shoreward side. The glow became stronger as they reached the top, and at the same moment their heads popped up over the crest. This is what they saw:
In the light of four strong pocket flash lights, borne by four sailors in spotless white, a gentleman was shaving himself, standing clad only in athletic underwear upon the sand. Before his eyes an irreproachable valet held a silver mirror which gave back the soapy reflection of his face. To right and left stood two additional men-servants, one with a dinner coat and trousers hanging from his arm and the other bearing a white stiff shirt whose studs glistened in the glow of the electric lamps. There was not a sound except the dull scrape of the razor along its wielder’s face and the intermittent groaning sound that blew in out of the sea.
But it was not the bizarre nature of the ceremony, with its dim, weird surroundings under the unsteady light, that drew from the two women a short, involuntary sigh. It was the fact that the face in the mirror, the unshaven half of it, was terribly familiar, and in a moment they knew to whom that half face belonged—it was the countenance of their niece’s savage wooer who had lately prowled half naked along the beach.
Even as they looked he completed one side of his face, whereupon a valet stepped forward and with a scissors sheared off the exterior growth on the other, disclosing, in its entirety now, the symmetrical visage of a young, somewhat haggard but not unhandsome man. He lathered the bearded side, pulled the razor quickly over it and then applied a lotion to the whole surface, and inspected himself with considerable interest in the mirror. The sight seemed to please him, for he smiled. At a word one of the valets held forth the trousers in which he now incased his likely legs. Diving into his open shirt, he procured the collar, flipped a proper black bow with a practiced hand and slipped into the waiting dinner coat. After a transformation which had taken place before their very eyes, Aunt Cal and Aunt Jo found themselves gazing upon as immaculate and impeccable a young man as they had ever seen.
“Walters!” he said suddenly, in a clear, cultured voice.
One of the white-clad sailors stepped forward and saluted.
“You can take the boats back to the yacht. You ought to be able to find it all right by the foghorn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When the fog lifts you’d better stand out to sea. Meanwhile, wireless New York to send down my car. It’s to call for me at the Marsden house on Montauk Point.”
As the sailor turned away, his torch flashed upward accidentally wavering upon the four amazed faces which were peering down at the curious scene.
“Look there, sir!” he exclaimed.
The four torches picked out the eavesdropping party at the top of the hill.
“Hands up, there!” cried Percy, pointing his rifle down into the glare of light.
“Miss Marsden!” called the young man eagerly. “I was just coming to call.”
“Don’t move!” shouted Percy; and then to the doctor, “Had I better fire?”
“Certainly not!” cried Doctor Gallup. “Young man, does your name happen to be what I think it is?”
The young man bowed politely.
“My name is George Van Tyne.”
A few minutes later the immaculate young man and two completely bewildered ladies were shaking hands. “I owe you more apologies than I can ever make,” he confessed, “for having sacrificed you to the strange whim of a young girl.”
“What whim?” demanded Aunt Cal.
“Why”—he hesitated—“you see, all my life I have devoted much attention to the so-called niceties of conduct; niceties of dress, of manners, of behavior——”
He broke off apologetically.
“Go on,” commanded Aunt Cal.
“And your niece has too. She always considered herself rather a model of—of civilized behavior”—he flushed—“until she met me.”
“I see,” Doctor Gallup nodded. “She couldn’t bear to marry anyone who was more of a—shall we say, a dandy?—than herself.”
“Exactly,” said George Van Tyne, with a perfect eighteenth-century bow. “It was necessary to show her what a—what an——”
“——unspeakable egg,” supplied Aunt Josephine.
“——what an unspeakable egg I could be. It was difficult, but not impossible. If you know what’s correct, you must necessarily know what’s incorrect; and my aim was to be as ferociously incorrect as possible. My one hope is that some day you’ll be able to forgive me for throwing the sand—I’m afraid that my impersonation ran away with me.”
A moment later they were all walking toward the house.
“But I still can’t believe that a gentleman could be so—so unspeakable,” gasped Aunt Jo. “And what will Fifi say?”
“Nothing,” answered Van Tyne cheerfully. “You see, Fifi knew about it all along. She even recognized me in the tree that first day. She begged me to—to desist until this afternoon; but I refused until she had kissed me tenderly, beard and all.”
Aunt Cal stopped suddenly.
“This is all very well, young man,” she said sternly; “but since you have so many sides to you, how do we know that in one of your off moments you aren’t the murderer who’s hiding out on the Point?”
“The murderer?” asked Van Tyne blankly. “What murderer?”
“Ah, I can explain that, Miss Marsden.” Doctor Gallup smiled apologetically. “As a matter of fact, there wasn’t any murderer.”
“No murderer?” Aunt Cal looked at him sharply.
“No, I invented the bank robbery and the escaped murderer and all. I was merely applying a form of strong medicine to your niece.”
Aunt Cal looked at him scornfully and turned to her sister. “All your modern ideas are not so successful as mah-jongg,” she remarked significantly.
The fog had blown back to sea, and as they came in sight of the house the lamps were glowing out into the darkness. On the porch waited an immaculate girl in a gleaming white dress, strung with beads which glistened in the new moonlight.
“The perfect man,” murmured Aunt Jo, flushing, “is, of course, he who will make any sacrifice.”
Van Tyne did not answer; he was engaged in removing some imperceptible flaw, less visible than a hair, from his elbow, and when he had finished he smiled. There was now not the faintest imperfection anywhere about him, except where the strong beating of his heart disturbed faintly the satin facing of his coat.
