Evening Star Newspaper, April 21, 1930, Page 22

FIRST INSTALLMENT. LD Wiliam B. Latham lay on a wicker chaise longue on the veranda of his country house, Hillcrest, and pretended to be asleep—a subterfuge Quite in keeping with a certain salient characteristic of his which, quite early in his career, had carned for him the not inappropriate sobriquet of “Crooked Bill.” Not that the old rascal was crooked in the commonly accepted gense of that term as employed in the quaint patois of our times (indeed, he was a most honorable man), but be- cause he was possessed of an uncom- mon degree of craft, of audacious and generally amusing slyness, in business and out of it—a sort of superprudence born of uncanny innate ability to read human nature. Such men are rarely deficient in a gense of humor, and Crooked Bill had found life more abundantly provocative of laughter than of sighs. His friends, who were legion, always remarked when the subject of his happy existence was broached that there was not a reason on earth why it shouldn't be happy. He was popularly believed to have more money than some folks have hay; he had no wife to bother his life and he paddled his own canoe; he enjoyed ex- cellent health—in fact, he had spent| | | stituted the one regret of his placid | but §2.50 on his physical upkeep in the last half century, and this outlay con- existence. In an absent-minded mo- ment he had once swallowed two tab- lets of bichloride of mercury, mistak- ing them for headache tablets. Hav- ing discovered his error almost in- stantly, he had dashed to a doctor's office & block distant and had been treated to an emetic of mustard and water. Since both these simple ingredi- | ¥! ents were to have been found in his own house, he had never ceased to re- gret the ignorance which had cost him that doctor’s office fee. Every night be- fore retiring he drank a glass of old port and ate half a dozen walnuts, which he cracked with his own teeth. It pleased William B. Latham this late afternoon to pretend to be asleep, in order that he might, from under the drawn-down rim of his hat, watch his late wife's niece engaged in a pastime peculiarly dear to that most attractive young woman—to Wit, snaring and breaking the heart of a youth whose manifest decencies appeared, to Crooked Bill, sufficient justification for receiv- ing’ from the young lady in question what her uncle and guardian described as “a whole lot of letting alone.” Although attached to this Circe by the bonds of an affection somewhat more than avuncular and somewhat less than paternal, Crooked Bill was, nevertheless, entirely out of sympathy with her method of extracting from life a degree of interest and amusement necessary to making it worth the liv- ing; albeit her coquetry, so obvious to the old worldling, but so thoroughly un- suspected by her victims, never failed to titillate his sense of the ridiculous. Safely hidden behind a screen of pas- sion vines, through an aperture in which he could see the young people without being seen (his pretense of sleep being merely an additional pre- caution and quite in keeping with his motto of “safety first”), Crooked Bill estimated the situation and found it not to_his liking. With the ordinary run of young gen- tlemen who laid their vealy hearts at the feet of Miss Roberta Antrim, Crooked Bill had little sympathy and less patience. He was of the opinion that the receipt of their passports from Roberta was not a tragedy that weighed very heavily on them very long. The majority of them were he-flirts, amus- ing themselves with Roberta as out- rageously as she amused herself with them, or else frankly attracted to her as a moth is attracted to a candle flame. And, of course, when the candle is extinguished the moth flies away, unless, indeed, bhe has al- ready foolishly immolated _himself. Up to the present none of Roberta’s Tejects had committed suicide, although not less than four had avowed so to do. Crooked Bill had more than a susp clon, too, that, in addition to Roberta’ undoubted charms, the fact that she was his heir was not a negligible at- traction to her continuous and shifting entourage. In the case of the young gentleman who sat with Roberfa on the stone bench under the elm at the end of the garden in the soft Summer twilight, Crooked Bill could find no extenuating circumstances to adduce as to why Roberta should not be convicted of in- flicting cruel and unusual punishment. Glenn Hackett, to begin with, was of good family, where brains and money, in evidence for three generations, had always been used wisely. He was not the collar advertisement type of man. On the contrary, he was rather tall, loose-jointed and angular, with a plain, honest face like a kind horse. He was apt to be regarded as downright homely until he smiled, when one forgot his plainness of feature, for that smile in- vested him with a singular manly charm. One trusted him instinctively. His quiet, dr; closed on brief acquaintance, always made one desirous of meeting him again. He was 30 years old, a lawyer— and a good one, which is to say that Crooked Bill gladly paid him a large annual retainer. The old man’s high- est compliment for Glenn Hackett was that he had horse sense and was the only man he knew who appeared to be Yankee wit, never dis- | JIM : THE EVENING 'STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C THE CONQUEROR By PETER B. KYNE Copyright 1930, by North American Newsbaver Alliance. In¢. e as common and comfortable as an old shoe and yet wasn't. Crooked Bill wished he might have been privileged to hear what Glenn Hackett and Roberta were saying. However, he was fairly accurate reader of gesture, facial expression and nods, so he was assured that Hackett was proposing marriage to his niece. “It'll be like her to refuse him,” he decided, “and him the only real man I've ever seen on the premises. on small talk and society chatter, but a good listener and a speaker of words worth while when he has something to say. And for once in his life he's doing all the talking while Roberta does the listening. I know that meek, sad, resigned bend of her head, while she tugs at her handkerchief and tries to appear surprised. She must have admi- ration from men or life is a delusion and a snare! And now she’s picked on a victim that's bound to backfire on her, or I'm no judge of men. Hello! He's talking too much! He's getting op- pressive. She's finding the going not to her liking. Ah! I thought so!” Crooked Bill drew his hat brim down over his nose, then he rolled his head to one side, opened his mouth a little and commenced to breathe in long, even respirations. He heard the rapid patter of Roberta’s little feet coming up the flagged walk, almost felt the swish of her as she passed him and entered the house. In about five minutes he heard the firm, leisurely tread of Glenn Hack- ett following, and was aware presently that the young man had sat down in a chair beside him. So he pretended to sleep on for five minutes, then he stirred uneasily, gritted his teeth, sighed, opened his eyes, looked straight ahead of him at the passion vine and awned pleasurably. ‘Well, now that you haven't had your 40 winks,” Hackett observed quietly, “what’s your opinion as to what my next move should be?” “I never cared for riddles,” Crooked Bill protested_vigorously. “I've just jilted Roberta!” Crooked Bill sat up with the abrupt- ness of a Jack-in-the-box, which, in all fairness, he resembled mnot a little. “Shoot me for a horsethief!” he ejacu- lated. with that expression conveying to Hackett, had that young man not be 1 already aware of the former’s an- tecedents, the information that old William B.’s voting precinct had not al- ‘ways been Dobbs Fe County, N. Y. It aided and abetted the charge made by his hat that once upon a time Crooked Bill had been a son of vast horizons. Even to the unobservant few who, in these days of motion pic- tures, might fail to have been im- pressed by that hat, Crooked Bill's soft, pliable, leather boots, with his trouser legs drawn over them, spoke eloquently of a land far beyond the Palisades on the Jersey shore. “Played fast and loose with you, eh, boy?” “No. Just tried to.” “So you threw the dally over your pommel and gave her the bust, eh? Three cheers for our side.” “Cheer to your heart’s content. This poor devil isn’t dying,” Glenn Hackett retorted savagely. Crooked Bill looked cautiously around to make certain the door from the ve- randa to the living room was closed, for it was instinct with him never to make a move until all the conditions were propitious. “I hat any idea you two were engaged, son. “We weren't, although I think we could have been if I had been fool enough to insist. Bobby likes me tre- mendously. I'm sure of that.” “Like is right. I doubt if she'll ever love anybody, but if she should I'm certain he'll be & married man with a large family and unavailable from every point of view. You interested her, son, far more than any of your predecessors, and I've seen them all come and go. I reckon that's because you were a mite harder to land than the others. You However, I sort o' ’d be the way when you first druv up,” he added comically. “She’s been expecting me to propose for a month, and just a little while ago I was fool enough to do it. She looked 50 infernally proposable today! And while I was doing it I looked at her steadily and noted the triumphant glint in her eyes, and a little self-satisfied smile on her lovely lips. Something told me she,. was preparing the skids for o “She was, undoubtedly. the entire performance know the signs, Hackett. “So, no sooner had I popped the ques- tion and no sooner had she commenced | to assure me that she had'nt remotely suspected this attachment, than I in- terrupted her and withdrew my propo- sition. I begged her not to think any more about it.” Crooked Bill was steeped in reveren- tial awe. “That got her blazing mad,” Hackett continued. “It would anger a sheep,” Crooked Bill agreed. “Roberta’s mighty high and handsome in her ideas.” “I told her it had suddenly occurred to me that she could never possibly consider marrying a lawyer who grubbed | for a living in the heart of New York's financial quarter. I told her I was quite certain that what she was seeking was a knight-errant and I wasn't it. I told her I'd be the last man in the world to skewer himself on a spear, like kid- neys en brochette, for the sake of a lady’s smile. I told her I had suddenly made up my mind that it was all a Shy* rry, Westchester | pof I watched | rom here. I| hideous mistake and—but that's as far as I got.” “She up and left you then, son? She was crying as she passed me. I didn't see her, but my hearing's right good for my years. Continue to play your cards like that and she’s yours without a flicker. That girl requires a whole lot o’ lickin’, but she's only got to be licked | once!" “I'm wondering if I overplayed my hand?" “What if you did? She didn't have “T suppose I startled her.” “You fatred her conceit, that's what you did.” The dearest of women have a fot o' that commodity, son, only they call it womanly pride. However, they'll all humiliate themselves to win the' right man. You just keep on rollin your hoop the way you've started and youll win in a walk.” “I'm a little bit afraid to carry on, Mr. Lathem. She plays fast and loose with a man. Doesn't appear to have a very well formulated idea that a man is anything except an object of amuse- ment—and I'm no jester to a Queen. She’s a confirmed flirt.” g “They make awful good wives, once you halter-break them,” Crooked Bill suggested. “How do you know?" “I married one—and she was that girl's aunt. Roberta comes by her mis- fortunes honestly. Al the Barrows women were romantic. In fact, Rob- erta’s mother ran away with an end man in a minstrel show. She adored the jokes that boy used to crack until he cracked one on her by marrying her. She didn't get back at him for two years, but when she did the laugh was on him. She bore him Roberta, and from that day until he died Roberta ran_him ragged and made the poor devil like it. He was & good end man, but a poor judge of investments, and when he and his wife were killed i train wreck, my wife and I fell heir to Roberta. She was 11 then. My wife died 10 years ago and I've been Tiding herd on Roberta ever since.” “I fear e made a bad job of it,” Mr. Latham “Well, you can't bar me for tryin’” Crooked Bill responded calmly. “The rI's sound at heart, but cursed with a ace and figure that'd make Helen of Troy look like a Navajo squaw in com- parison. She has brains, she has rhepirdf ) “Not any more,” Glenn Hackett in- terrupted gloomily. “I've just upset that poise!” Crooked Bill indulged himself in a very mirthful little chuckle. “Well, at any rate she’s a very good, dear, sweet girl.” he defended finally. “She can't flirt with me. to be pursued. I'm a busy I've pursued her for a year, and you know, Mr. Latham, as well as I do, that whenever she has another swain on hand she. always devotes herself to him and ignores me.” “Wants to see if you'll get jealous. ‘You ought to have done that much for her and it would have tickled her most to death to think she had the power to hurt you, and she'd have been so grate- ful to you for obligin' her most likely she'd have treated you human for a month thereafter. But you made the mistake of resistin’ her, son. No woman dodges any sort of contest and I never knew one that didn’t dig into a fight with a winning sperrit. Trouble is, you don't know any other way of fightin’ except to go in to win with any weapon handy. A feller in love with Roberta had ought to take a leaf out of the lifetime experience of a coyote with foxhounds. Senor Coyote, meeting up with = little Jone foxhound he maybe can lick without extendin’ himself, never fusses his fur in a precipitate en- gagement. He just lopes away, and not too fast, either. He lures the hound off into the desert, where he knows some of his friends will be nosing around and then they gang-jump that pup and destroy him with ease. When you jilted Roberta a little while ago, was that just your strategy or your temper?” “My temper, I think. I know T lost it completely and yielded to a sudden impulse to give her a dose of her own medicine.” Crooked Bill stroked his chin. “Tell you what to do, son,” he announced presently, and Glenn Hackett leaned forward to listen to the words of wis- dom from the oracle. “You stay for dinner, just as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Roberta'll dine in her Toom, if she has any appetite at all, which I doubt, because the maid'll tell her you're still here and she’ll think that’s indecent of you. Let her think it. Continue to come out unin- vited and unexpected whenever the no- tion grips you, and when she gives you the dead face, you grin at her like a Chinese idol and tell her how winsome she looks in that new dress. As the poet says: ‘The constant drip of water Wears away the hardest stone; ‘The constant gnaw of Towser Masticates the toughest bone; ‘The constant gnaw of Towser Carries off the blushing mald, And the constant advertiser Is the one that gets the trade.’ “Continue to advertise yourself She wants eon. . . . Pausing not an instant in her pre- cipitate flight from the most amazing and impossible male biped she had ever encountered, Roberta Antrim fled to her room, locked the door, lay down on her e PALAIS ROYAL G STREET AT ELEVENTH TELEPHONE DISTRICT 4400 Sale! 5,000 Yards ain and Printed Silks In a group comprising some of the season’s most desirable weaves, all of which are in a complete assortment of desirable shades and the newest designs and color combinations. 39-Inch All-Silk Flat Crepe A splendid, supple quality—washable—shown in both day- light and evening shades. 39-Inch Printed Flat Crepe Shown In a variety of patterns in both light and dark shades. 35-Inch All-Silk Shantung Shown in the newest sports shades, including white. 35-Inch Chiffon Taffeta Plain colors, glace and black. PALAIS ROYAL—Second Floor 4 Yard man and | bed and indulged herself for 10 minutes in that delight of her sex, customarily known-as a good cry. “The wretch!” she soliloquized. “The odious boor! He had the effrontery to talk to me exactly as if I were a re- fractory client instead of the girl he had but_a moment before assured he loved to distraction. Oh, dear, what humilia- tion! I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. T'll never speak to him again as long as I live.” ‘When a woman has come to that con- clusion, quite usually she finds it time to cease vain repining and weeping, lave her inflamc 1 eyes with some sooth- ing lotion_and powder her nose. So presently Roberta did all of these things and while doing them appraised herself very critically in her mirror. At bot- make a quick selection! 2 and RN S Tub- Colors—M 'y Extra Sizes. PALAIS ROYAL—Main Floor A Happy Version of the “Pajama Vogue” tom she was much too wholesame to entertain & cheap vanity, so she did not waste time in an extended in ventory. She knew she had a medium- sized, well shaped head, covered with the sort of golden-tinted auburn hair which so many women attempt, but which few achieve. Catty girls often said of Roberta’s hair that a chemical analysis would develop a trace of henna in it, but this was not true, and even her detractors knew it. She had the sort of rich, creamy skin that goes with such hair; her eyebrows and eyelashes were darker than her hair, their lux- uriance conveying a hint of Celtic blood. Her eyes, large, brown and a trifle sleepy, owing to her acquired trick of gazing up at men from under the lids, Were ideal for setting the reason of an impressionable male tottering on its throne. Her nose had just escaped be- ing snubby and was tiited at so gentle an angle as to confer upon her a faintly haughty expression when her face was in repose. She had a short, beautifuly curved upper lip, which adorable mal- formation permitted much to easy a display of even, hard white teeth. Her lower lip was full, tender and just a shade willful. Roberta’s was no sad, gentle, resigned, wise Mona Lisa smile; it reminded one of the flash of a helio- graph. Her chin was full and aggres- sive, her body beautifully formed, lithe as a cat's and suggestive of abounding health and much outdoor exercise, Despite her almost startling beauty, one realized instinctively that Roberta was not (sentimentally speaking) & clinging vine, One felt, too, that she Special Purchase! Another Shipment of Those Smart Little Straw Hats 1.88 Unusual values! Large and small headsizes; surprisingly smart styles and pretty colors, with a generous sprinkling of black and navy. On the Main Floor, where you can MONDAY, APRIL 21, 1930, had a healthy temper, despite her per- ennial good nature and her tolerance for her own sex. As a matter of fact, Roberta did possess & temper readily aroused, but she had the saving grace of refusing to admit it except under ex- traordinary circumstances. A certain coolness, & quiet flash of the brown eyes, a more meticulous graciousness, an infinitesimal lift of the firm chin were the signs Crooked Bill had learned to associate with squalls from that quarter, and for her repression he loved her dearly. He, knowing the blood that was in her, was the only human being who knew also how difficult it was for Roberta, under stress, to refrain from hurling books and traveling clocks. Also, because he had access to these private founts of information and understand- g, the old rascal knew how short-lived exasperation was in that jaunty, saucy, lovable soul. Appraising herself in her mirror now, Roberta twisted her lovely head and cocked it at various angles. No, de- cidedly her neck was not scrawny, nor was her skin pallid or dull. She was looking and_feeling her best, mentally and physically, and she knew that the light green romaine crepe dress, the “nude” stockings and green ede pumps with the plain cut-steel buckles set her off to additional advantage. If the stilted language of the American fashion writer, they constituted the dernier cri of perfect taste, for Roberta was one of those women to whom a clash of colors was impossible. She re- flected with a sort of sweet bitterness that she had dressed that afternoon with an eye single to impinging herself upon the cool, quietly impersonal glance of Glenn Hackett. “If I were & girl who wore diamonds to the breakfast ta- ble,” she told her reflection, ‘“there might have been some excuse for his gauche conduct. One moment he had proposed and the next he was with- drawing the proposal. I wouldn’t have accepted him on a bet, nice as he is and comfortable as he is to have around, but he might have given me an _opportunity to say so! He was ter- rible! He.gave me the impression that, in one revealing moment, he had seen something in me that revolted him— and I'm not revolting, I'm not, I'm not—-" Once more she gave way to tears, but not for long. With Roberta tears were a sign of weakness, the weapons of the tyrannous, the first refuge of an ungal lant and unsportsmanlike woman, al though when her emotions were deeply stirred, as by grief or pity, she enjoyed weeping. She patronized human-interest or heart-throb th. and avoided pro- found books written with an obviously | Para ufil. She made a little grimace at her- sel “Well, Bobby Antrim, you took a man’s size beating, didn't you? You're of a plece with the fellow who went hunting, promising to bring a bear back into camp. And he did—with the bear just six feet behind him! Well, that Hackett imbecile isn't dull, at any rate. And I did start to something banal—all about never having suspected his attach- ment! T see it all very clearly now. Right there little Bobby went blah! Yes, that was a sour note—and he has an ear for music. That man-animal has some pride—and I had thought they all had ego!” She sat down in a low rocker to think it over very carefully. As usual, her re- sentment and rage were disappearing at the double; she was only sensible now of a feeling of humiliation, not so much because of what Glenn Hackett had said and done as because she had failed so miserably in feminine adroitness to meet an extraoordinary situation. In a way - of srenking he had demolished her, lyzed her powers of initiative and greater concern for style than substance. | inventiveness and left her helpless to Instinctively she wanted to get her teeth | into life; at least, that is how Crooked Bill expressed it, and he had a peculiar gift for apt and illuminating expres- sion. She dried her tears and applied the powder rag again. And then the real reason for her charm—the reason men | adored her and made love to her—pre- | sented itself. 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