FullReads

On a certain summer morning a paragraph appeared in at least three daily papers to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Justus Propbridge had gone down to Gulf Stream City, on the Maryland coast; they would be at the Churchill-Fontenay there for a week or ten days. It was at his breakfast that Marr read this information. At noon, having in the meantime done a considerable amount of telephoning, he was on his way to the seaside too. Mentally he was shaking hands with himself in a warmly congratulatory way. Gulf Stream City was a place seemingly designed, both by Nature and by man, for the serving of his purposes.

Residing there were persons of his own kidney and persuasion, on whom he might count for at least one detail of invaluable cooperation. For a certain act of his piece, a short but highly important one, he also must have a borrowed stage setting and a supernumerary actor or so.

Immediately upon his arrival he sought out certain dependable individuals and put them through a rough rehearsal. This he did before he claimed the room he had engaged by wire at the Hotel Crofter. The Hotel Crofter snuggled its lesser bulk under an imposing flank of the supposedly exclusive and admittedly expensive Churchill-Fontenay. From its verandas one might command a view of the main entrance of the greater hotel.

It was on a Tuesday that the Propbridges reached Gulf Stream City. It was on Wednesday afternoon that the husband received a telegram, signed with the name of a business associate, calling him to Toledo for a conference–so the wire stated–upon an urgent complication newly arisen. Mr. Propbridge, as all the world knew, was one of the heaviest stockholders and a member of the board of the Sonnesbein-Propbridge Tire Company, which, as the world likewise knew, had had tremendous dealings in contracts with the Government and now was having trouble closing up the loose ends of its wartime activities.

He packed a bag and caught a night train West. On the following morning, which would be Thursday, Mrs. Propbridge took a stroll on Gulf Stream City’s famous boardwalk. It was rather a lonely stroll. She had no particular objective. It was too early in the day for a full display of vivid costumes among the bathers on the beach. She encountered no one she knew.

Really, for a resort so extensively advertised, Gulf Stream City was not a particularly exciting place. For lack of anything better to do she had halted to view the contents of a shop window when an exclamation of happy surprise from someone immediately behind her caused Mrs. Propbridge to turn around.

Immediately it was her turn to register astonishment. A tall, well-dressed, gray-haired man, a stranger to her, was taking possession of her right hand and shaking it warmly.

“Why, my dear Mrs. Watrous,” he was saying, “how do you do? Well, this is an unexpected pleasure! When did you come down from Wilmington? And who is with you? And how long are you going to stay? General Dunlap and his daughter Claire–you know, the second daughter–and Mrs. Gordon-Tracy and Freddy Urb will be here in a little while. They’ll be delighted to see you! Why, we’ll have a reunion! Well, well, well!”

He had said all this with scarcely a pause for breath and without giving her an opportunity to speak, as though surprise made him disregardful of labial punctuation of his sentences. Indeed, Mrs. Propbridge did not succeed in getting her hand free from his grasp until he had uttered the final “well.”

“You have the advantage of me,” she said. “I do not know you. I am sure I never saw you before.”

At this his sudden shift from cordiality to a look half incredulous, half embarrassed was almost comic.

“What?” he demanded, falling back a pace. “Surely this is Mrs. Beeman Watrous of Wilmington? I can’t be mistaken!”

“But you are mistaken,” she insisted; “very much mistaken. My name is not Watrous; my name is Propbridge.”