Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner (page 4)

improvement.

“But if you don’t like a person you ought to have a reason.”

“You don’t always. It’s just a feeling, an instinct like dogs have. I’ve an instinct against Mr. Mayer–he’s not the real thing.”

Chrystie sat forward in the chair.

“That’s exactly what I’d say he was, and everybody else says so, too.”

“On the outside–yes, I didn’t mean that. I meant deep down. I don’t think he’s real straight through–it’s all varnish and glitter. Of course I don’t mind his coming here the way he does; we don’t see him often and he’s amusing and pleasant. But I wouldn’t like him to be on a friendly footing. In fact he never could be–I wouldn’t let him.”

It was the voice of authority. Chrystie felt its finality, and guided by her own inner distress and the hopelessness of revolt, said sharply:

“And yet you wouldn’t mind Mark Burrage being on a friendly footing.”

“Mark Burrage!” There was something ludicrous in Lorry’s face, full of surprise under the overpowering hat. “What has Mark Burrage to do with it?”

Chrystie climbed somewhat lumberingly out of the chair. Her movements were dignified, her tone sarcastic.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Only if Mr. Mayer is so far below your standard I’m wondering where Mr. Burrage comes in.” She stretched a long arm and snatched the hat. “Excuse me,” she said with brusque politeness, setting it on her own head and turning to the glass, “but I really must be going. Only a salamander could live comfortably in this house.”

Lorry was startled. Her sister’s face, deeply flushed, showed an intense irritation.

“I don’t understand you. You can’t make a comparison between those two men. They’re as different as black and white.”

“They certainly are,” said Chrystie, driving a long pin through the hat. “Or chalk and cheese, or brass and gold, or whatever else stands for the real thing and the imitation.”

“What’s the matter with you, Chrystie? Are you angry?”

“Me?” She gave a glance from under her lifted arm. “Why should I be angry?”

“I don’t know but–” An alarming thought seized Lorry, and she moved nearer. It was preposterous, but after all girls took strange fancies, and Chrystie was no longer a child. “You don’t _care_ for Boyé Mayer, do you?”

It was the propitious moment, but Chrystie was now as far from telling as if she had taken an oath of silence. What Lorry had already said was enough, and the tone in which she asked the question was the finishing touch. If she thought her sister had fallen in love with Fong, she couldn’t have appeared more shocked and incredulous.

“Care for him?” said Chrystie, pulling out the bureau drawer and clawing about in it for her gloves. “Well, I care for him in some ways, and then I don’t care for him in other ways.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean _really_ care.”

“Do you mean, am I _in love_ with him?”

Her eye on Lorry was steady and questioning, also slightly scornful. Lorry was abashed by it; she felt that she ought not to have asked, and in confusion stammered, “Yes.”

Chrystie moved to the bed and threw on her furs. Her ill-humor was gone, though she was still a little scornful and rather grandly forbearing. Her manner suggested that she could condone this in Lorry owing to her relationship and the honesty of her intention.

“Dearest Lorry, you talk like an old maid in a musical comedy. In love with him? How I wish I could be! At my age every self-respecting girl ought to be in love–they always are in books. But try as I will, I can’t seem to manage it. I guess I’ve got a heart of stone or perhaps it’s been left out of me entirely. Good-by, the heartless wonder’s going for her walk.”

She ended on a laugh, a little strident, and crossed the room, perfume shaken from her brilliant clothes. Outside the door she broke into a song that rose above her scudding flight down the stairs.

Lorry’s momentary uneasiness died. Chrystie, as a woman of ruses and deceptions, was a thing she could not at this stage accept.

They met in the plaza and saw the Greek Church and then sat on a bench under a tree and talked. They were so secure in the little park’s isolation that they gave their surroundings no attention. That was why a woman crossing it was able to draw near, stand for a watching moment, skirt the back of their bench, and pass on unnoticed. She was the same woman who had seen them at that earlier meeting in Union Square.

During that month the new operetta at the Albion had been put on and had fallen flat. There was a good deal of speculation as to the cause of the failure, and it was rumored that the management set it down to Miss Lopez. She had slighted her work of late, been careless and indifferent. Nobody knew what was the matter with her. She scorned the idea of ill health, but she looked worn out and several times had given vent to savage and unreasonable bursts of temper. She was too valuable a woman to quarrel with, and when the head of the enterprise suggested a rest–a week or two in the country–she rejected the idea with an angry repudiation of illness or fatigue.

Crowder was there on the first night and went away disturbed. He had never seen her give so poor a performance; all her fire was gone, she was mechanical, almost listless. Her public was loyal though puzzled, and the papers stood by her, but “What’s happened to Pancha Lopez? How she _has_ gone off!” was a current phrase where men and women gathered. Behind the scenes her mates whispered, some jealously observant, others more kindly, concerned and wondering. Gossip of a love affair was bandied about, but died for lack of confirmation. She had been seen with no one, the methodical routine of her days remained unchanged.

For her the month had been the most wretched of her life. Never in the hard past had she passed through anything as devastating. Those trials she had known how to meet; this was all new, finding her without defense, naked to unexpected attack. Belief and dread had alternated in her, ravaged and laid her waste. After the manner of impassioned women she would not see, clung to hope, had days, after a letter or a message from Mayer, when she had almost ascended to the top of the golden moment again. Then there was silence, a note of hers unanswered, and she fell, sinking into darkling depths. Once or twice, waking in the night or waiting for his knock, she had sudden flashes of clear sight. These left her in a frozen stillness, staring with wide eyes, frightened of herself.

The process of enlightenment had been gradual. Mayer wanted no scenes, no annoying explanations; there was to be no violent moment of severance. To accomplish his withdrawal gracefully, he put himself to some trouble. After that first letter he waylaid her at the stage door one night, and walked part of the way home with her. He had been kind, friendly, brotherly–a completely changed Mayer. She felt it and refused to understand, walking at his side, trying to be the old, merry Pancha.

It was at this time that she received her father’s letter from Farleys. Weeks had passed since she had heard from him, and when she saw his writing on the envelope she realized that she had almost forgotten him. The thought left her cold, but when she read the homely phrases she was moved. In a moment of extended vision she saw the parents’ tragedy–the love that lives for the child’s happiness and is powerless to create it. He would have died for her and she would have thrust him aside, pushed him pleading from her path, to follow a man a few months before a stranger.

After that she endured a week without a word from Mayer, and then, unable to sleep or work, telephoned to his hotel. In answer to her question the switchboard girl said Mr. Mayer had not been out of town at all for the last two weeks. She asked to speak with him and heard his voice, sharp and cold. He couldn’t talk freely over the wire; he would rather she didn’t call him up; his out-of-town business had been postponed, that was all.

“Why are you mad with me?” she breathed, trying to make her voice steady.

“I am not,” came the answer. “Please don’t be fanciful. And _don’t_ call me up here, I don’t like it. I’ll be around as soon as I can, but I’ve a lot to do, as I’ve already told you several times. Good-by.”

She had sent the call from a telephone booth, and carefully, with a slow precision, she hung up the receiver. A feeling of despair, a stifling anguish, seized her and she began to cry. Shut into the hot, small place, she broke into rending sobs, her head bent, her hands gripped, rocking back and forth. Small, choked sounds, whines and cries came from her, and fearful of being heard, she pressed her hands against her mouth, looking up, looking down, an animal distracted in its unfamiliar pain.

The following day he wrote to her, excused himself, said he had been worried on business matters and sent her flowers. She buoyed herself up and once more tried to believe, but her will had been weakened. From lower layers of consciousness the truth was forcing its way to recognition, yet she still ignored it. Realization of her state if she admitted it made her afraid and her fight had the fierceness of a struggle for life. It was only in the night–awake in the dumb dark–that she could not escape it. Then, staring at the pale square of the window, she heard her voice whispering:

“What will I do? What will become of me?”

In all her miserable imaginings and self-queries the thought that she had been supplanted had no place. Mayer had often spoken to her of his social diversions and no woman had ever figured in them. The paragraphs which still appeared about him touched on no feminine influences. It was her fault; she had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Had she not always wondered that he should have cared for her? On close acquaintance he had found her to be what she was–common, uneducated, impossible. At first she had tried to hide it and then it had come out and he had been repelled. It was not till the afternoon, aimlessly walking to ease her pain, when she saw him again with the blonde-haired girl, that the thought of another woman entered her mind.

That night Crowder, after watching the last act from the back of the house, resolved to see her and find out what was wrong. He had been talking to the manager in the foyer and the man’s sulky discontent alarmed him. If Pancha didn’t buck up she’d lose her job.

She was at the dressing table in her red kimono when he came in. The grease was nearly all off and with her front hair drawn back from her forehead, her face had a curiously bare, haggard look. As he entered she glanced up, not smiling, and saw the knowledge of her failure in his eyes.

For a moment she looked at him, grave and sad, confessing it. The expression caught at his heart, and he had nothing to say, turning away from her to look for a chair.

She picked up the rag and went on wiping her face.

“Well,” she said in a brisk voice, “I wasn’t on the job tonight, was I?”

Reassured by her tone, he sat down and faced her.

“No, you weren’t. It wasn’t a good performance, Panchita. I’ve always told you the truth and I’ve got to go on doing it.”

“Go ahead, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I’ve got my finger on the pulse of this house. I know every rise and fall of its temperature. But I can’t always be up in G, can I?”

“No, but you can’t stay down at zero too long.”

“It was as bad as that, was it?”

“Yes, it was bad.”

She dropped her hand to the edge of the dressing table and looked at it. Her face, with the hair strained back, the rouge gone, looked withered and yellow. Crowder eyed it anxiously.

“Say, Panchita, you’re sick.”

“Sick? Forget it! I never was better in my life.”

“Then why are you off your work–why do you act as if you didn’t care?”

“Can’t I have a part I hate? Can’t I get weary of this old joint with its smoke and its beer? God!” She began to pull the pins out of her hair and fling them on the dresser. “I’m human–I’ve got my ups and downs–and you keep forgetting it.”

“That’s just what I’m not forgetting.”

“Stop talking about me–I’m sick of it,” she cried, and snatching up the comb began tearing it through her hair.

“It’s nerves,” said Crowder. “Everything shows it. The way you’re combing your hair does.”

“If you don’t let me alone I’ll put you out–all of you nagging and picking at me; a saint couldn’t stand it!” Crowder rose, but she whirled round on him, the comb held out in an arresting hand. “No, don’t go yet. I’ll give you another chance. I want to ask you something. I saw a woman the other day and I want to know who she is–at least I don’t really want to know, but she’ll do as well as anything else to change the subject. Tall with yellow sort of dolly hair and a dolly face. Dark purple dress with black velvet edges, lynx furs and a curly brimmed hat with a green paradise plume falling over one side.”

Crowder’s face wrinkled with a grin.

“Well, that’s funny! You might have asked me forty others and I’d not have known. But thanks to your vivid description I _can_ tell you–I saw her yesterday afternoon in those very togs. It’s the youngest Alston girl.”

“Who’s she?”

“One of the two daughters of George Alston. They’re orphans, live in a big house on Pine Street. The one you saw was Chrystie. What do you want to know about her?”

Pancha, gathering her hair in one hand, began to whisk it round into a knot. Her head was down bent.

“I don’t know–just curiosity. She’s sort of stunning looking. Did you ever meet her?”

Crowder smiled.

“I know them well–have for over a year. Awfully nice girls–the best kind.”

Pancha lifted her head, her face sharp with interest.

“What’s she like?”

He considered, the smile softened to an amused indulgence.

“Oh, just a great big baby, good-natured and jolly. Everybody likes her–you couldn’t help it if you tried. She’s so simple and sweet, accepts the whole world as if it was her friend. Her money hasn’t spoiled her a bit.”

“Money–she has money?”

“To burn, my dear. She’s rich.”

Pancha took up a hand glass and turning her back to him studied her profile in the mirror. It did not occur to Crowder that he never before had seen her do such a thing.

“Rich, is she?” she murmured. “How rich?”

“Something like four hundred thousand dollars; her father was one of the Virginia City crowd. Chrystie’s just come into her part of the roll. Eighteen years old and an heiress–that’s a good beginning.”

“Um–must be a queer feeling. I guess the men are around the honey thick as flies.”

Crowder screwed up his eyes considering.

“No, they’re not–not yet anyhow. Until this winter the girls lived so retired–didn’t know many people, kept to themselves. Now they’ve broken out and I suppose it’s only a matter of time before the flies gather, and if you asked me I’d say they’d gather thickest round Chrystie. She hasn’t as much character or brains as Lorry, but she’s prettier and jollier, and after all that’s what most men like.”

“It certainly is, especially with four hundred thousand thrown in for good measure.”

The hand holding the glass dropped to her lap. She sat still for a moment, then without turning told him to go; she was tired and wanted to get home. It did not even strike him as odd that she never looked at him, just flapped a hand over her shoulder and dismissed him with a short “Good-night.”

When he had gone she sat as he had left her, the mirror still in her lap. The gas jet flamed in its wire cage, and so silent was the room that a mouse crept out from behind the baseboard, spied about, then made a scurrying dart across the floor. Her eye caught it, slid after it, and she moved, putting the glass carefully on the dresser. The palms of her hands were wet with perspiration and she rubbed them on the skirt of her kimono and rose stiffly, resting for a moment against the back of her chair. She had a sick feeling, a sensation as if her heart were dissolving, as if the room looked unfamiliar and much larger than usual. When she put on her clothes she did it slowly, her fingers fumbling stupidly at buttons and hooks, her mouth a little open as if breathing was difficult.

CHAPTER XX

MARK PAYS A CALL

Mark Burrage saw the winter pass and only went once to the Alstons and then they were not at home. He had refused three invitations to the house and after the ignominous event at the Albion received no more. When he allowed himself to think of that humiliating evening he did not wonder.

But, outside of his work, he allowed himself very little thinking. All winter he had concentrated on his job with ferocious energy. The older men in the office had a noticing eye on him. “That fellow Burrage has got the right stuff in him, he’ll make good,” they said among themselves. The younger ones, sons of rich fathers who had squeezed them into places in the big firm, regarded his efforts with indulgent surprise. They liked him, called him “Old Mark,” and were a little patronizing in their friendliness: “He was just the sort who’d be a grind. Those ranch chaps who had to get up at four in the morning and feed the ‘horgs’ were the devil to work when they came down to the city. Even law was a cinch after the ‘horgs.'”

Sometimes at night–his endeavor relaxed for a pondering moment–he studied the future. The outlook might have daunted a less resolute spirit. A great gap yawned between the present and the time when he could go to Lorry Alston and say, “Let me take care of you; I can do it now.” But he figured it out, bridged the gap, knew what one man had done another man could do. He reckoned on leaving the office next year and setting up for himself, and grim-visaged, mouth set to a straight line, he calculated on the chances of the fight. Its difficulties braced him to new zeal and in the strain and stress of the struggle his youthful awkwardness wore away, giving place to a youthful sternness.

No one guessed his hopes and high aspiration, not even his friend Crowder. When Crowder rallied him about this treatment of the Alstons he had been short and offhand–didn’t care for society, hadn’t time to waste going round being polite. He left upon Crowder the impression that the Alston girls did not interest him any more than any other girls. “Old Mark isn’t a lady’s man,” was the way Crowder excused him to Chrystie. Of course Chrystie laughed and said she had no illusions about that, but whatever kind of a man he was he ought to take some notice of them, no matter how dull and deadly they were. Crowder, realizing his own responsibility–it was he who had taken Mark to the Alston house–was kind but firm.

“It’s up to you to go and see those girls. It’s not the decent thing to drop out without a reason. They’ve gone out of their way to be civil to you, and you know, old chap, they’re _ladies_”

Mark grunted, and frowning as at a disagreeable duty said he’d go.

It took him some weeks to get there. Twice he started, circled the house, and tramped off over the hills. The third time he got as far as the front gate, weakened and turned away. After long abstinence the thought of meeting Lorry’s eyes, touching her hand, created a condition of turmoil that made him a coward; that, while he longed to enter, drew him back like a sinner from the scene of his temptation. Then an evening came when, his jaw set, his heart thumping like a steam piston, he put on his best blue serge suit, his new gray overcoat, even a pair of mocha gloves, and went forth with a face as hard as a stone.

Fong opened the door, saw who it was and broke into a joyful grin.

“Mist Bullage! Come in, Mist Bullage. No see you for heap long time, Mist Bullage.”

“I’ve been busy,” said the visitor. “Hadn’t much time to come around.”

Fong helped him off with the gray overcoat.

“You work awful hard, Mist Bullage. Too hard, not good. You come here and have good time. Lots of fun here now. You come.”

He moved to hang the coat on the hatrack, and, as he adjusted it, turned and shot a sharp look over his shoulder at the young man.

“All men who come now not like you, Mist Bullage.”

There was something of mystery, an odd suggestion of withheld meaning, in the old servant’s manner that made Mark smile.

“How are they different–better or worse?”

Fong passed him, going to the drawing-room door. His hand on the knob, he turned, his voice low, his slit eyes craftily knowing.

“Ally samey not so good. I take care Miss Lolly and Miss Clist–_I_ look out. _You_ all ‘ight, _you_ come.” He threw open the door with a flourish and called in loud, glad tones, “Miss Lolly, Miss Clist, one velly good fliend come–Mist Bullage.”

At the end of the long room Mark was aware of a small group whence issued a murmur of talk. At his name the sound ceased, there was a rising of graceful feminine forms which floated toward him, leaving a masculine figure in silhouette against the lighted background of the dining room. He was confused as he made his greetings, touched and dropped Lorry’s hand, tried to find an answer for Chrystie’s challenging welcome. Then he switched off to Aunt Ellen in her rocker, groping at knitting that was sliding off her lap, and finally was introduced to the man who stood waiting, his hands on the back of his chair.

At the first glance, while Lorry’s voice murmured their names, Mark disliked him. He would have done so even if he had not been a guest at the Alstons, complacently at home there, even if he had not been in evening dress, correct in every detail, even if the hands resting on the chair back had not shown manicured nails that made his own look coarse and stubby. The face and each feature, the high-bridged, haughty nose, the eyes cold and indolent under their long lids, the thin, close line of the mouth–separately and in combination–struck him as objectionable and repellent. He bowed stiffly, not extending his hand, substituting for the Westerner’s “Pleased to meet you,” a gruff “How d’ye do, Mr. Mayer.”

Before the introduction, Mayer, watching Mark greeting the girls, knew he had seen him before but could not remember where. The young man in his neat, well fitting clothes, his country tan given place to the pallor of study and late hours, was a very different person from the boy in shirt sleeves and overalls of the ranch yard. But his voice increased Mayer’s vague sense of former encounter and with it came a faint feeling of disquiet. Memory connected this fellow with something unpleasant. As Mark turned to him it grew into uneasiness. Where before had he met those eyes, dark blue, looking with an inquiring directness straight into his?

They sank into chairs, everyone except Aunt Ellen, seized by an inner discomfort which showed itself in a chilled constraint. Mayer, combing over his recollections, the teasing disquiet increasing with every moment, was too disturbed for speech. The sight of Lorry had paralyzed what little capacity for small talk Mark had. She looked changed, more unapproachable than ever in a new exquisiteness. It was only a more fashionable way of doing her hair and a becoming dress, but the young man saw it as a growing splendor, removing her to still remoter distances. She herself was so nervous that she kept looking helplessly at Chrystie, hoping that that irrepressible being would burst into her old-time sprightliness. But Chrystie had her own reasons for being oppressed. The presence of Mayer, paying no more attention to her than he did to Aunt Ellen, and the memory of him making love to her on park benches, gave her a feeling of dishonesty that weighed like lead.

It looked as if it was going to be a repetition of one of those evenings in the past before they had “known how to do things,” when Fong caused a diversion by appearing from the dining room bearing a tray.

To regale evening visitors with refreshments had been the fashion in Fong’s youth, so in his old age the habit still persisted. He entered with his friendly grin and set the tray on a table beside Lorry. On it stood decanters of red and white wine, glasses, a pyramid of fruit and a cake covered with varicolored frosting.

Nobody wanted anything to eat, but they turned to the tray with the eagerness of shipwrecked mariners to an oyster bed. Even Aunt Ellen became animated, and looking at Mark over her glasses said:

“Have you been away, Mr. Burrage?”

No, Mr. Burrage had been in town, very busy, and, the hungriest of all the mariners, he turned to the tray and helped Lorry pour out the wine. The ladies would take none, so the filled glass was held out to Mayer.

“Claret!” he said, leaning forward to offer the glass.

As he did so he was aware of a slight, curious expression in the face he had disliked. The eyelids twitched, the upper lip drew down tight over the teeth, the nostrils widened. It was a sudden contraction and then flexing of the muscles, an involuntary grimace, gone almost as soon as it had come. With murmured thanks, Mayer stretched his hand and took the wine.

It had all come back with the offered glass. A glance shot round the little group showed him that no one had noticed; they were cutting and handing about the cake. He refused a piece and found his stiffened lips could smile, but he was afraid of his voice, and sipped slowly, forcing the wine down the contracted passage of his throat. Then he stole a look at Mark, clumsily steering a way between the chairs to Aunt Ellen who wanted some grapes. The fellow hadn’t guessed–hadn’t the faintest suspicion–it was incredible that he should have. It was all right but–he raised his hand to his cravat, felt of it, then slipped a finger inside his collar and drew it away from his neck.

Through a blurred whirl of thought he could hear Aunt Ellen’s voice.

“I’ve wanted to see you for a long time, Mr. Burrage. You come from that part of the country and I thought you’d know.”

Then Mark’s voice:

“Know what, Mrs. Tisdale?”

“About that Knapp man’s story. Didn’t you tell us your ranch was up near the tules where those bandits buried the gold?”

Lorry explained.

“Aunt Ellen’s been so excited about that story, she couldn’t talk of anything else.”

“And why not?” said Aunt Ellen. “It’s a very unusual performance. Two sets of thieves, one stealing the money and burying it and another coming along and finding it.”

Chrystie, diverted from her private worries by this exciting subject, bounced round toward Mark with something of her old explosiveness.

“Why, you were up there at the time–the first time I mean. Don’t you remember you told us that evening when you were here. And you said people thought the bandits had a cache in the chaparral. Why didn’t any of you think of the tules?”

“Stupid, I guess,” said Mark. “Not a soul thought of them. And it was an A1 hiding-place. Besides the duck shooters, nobody ever goes there.”

“But somebody _did_ go there,” came from Aunt Ellen with a knowing nod.

They laughed at that, even Mr. Mayer, who appeared only languidly interested, his eyes on the film of wine in the bottom of his glass.

“Who do you suppose it could have been?” asked Chrystie.

“A duck shooter, probably.” This was Mr. Mayer’s first contribution to the subject.

Mark was exceedingly pleased to be able to correct this silent and supercilious person.

“No, it couldn’t have been. The duck season doesn’t open till September fifteen, and Knapp said when they went back in six days the cache was empty.” He turned to Chrystie. “I’ve often wondered if it could have been a man I saw that afternoon.”

As on that earlier visit his knowledge of the holdup had made him an attractive center, so once again he saw the girls turn expectant eyes on him, Aunt Ellen forget her grapes, and even the strange man’s glance shift from the wineglass and rest, attentive, on his face.

“It was a tramp. He stopped late that afternoon at my father’s ranch which gives on the road and asked for a drink of water. I gave it to him and watched him go off in the direction of the trail that leads to the tules. Of course it would have been an unusual thing for him to have tried to get across them, but he might have done it and stumbled on the cache.”

“Could he have–isn’t it all water?” Lorry asked.

“There’s a good deal of solid land and here and there planks laid across the deeper streams. There _is_ a sort of trail if you happen to know it and a tramp might. It’s part of his business to be familiar with the short cuts and easiest ways round.”

“What was he like?” said Chrystie.

“A miserable looking fellow–most of them are–all brown and dusty with a straggly beard. There was one thing about him that I noticed, his voice. It was like an educated man’s–a sort of echo of better days.”

Aunt Ellen found this very absorbing and she and Chrystie had questions to ask. Fong’s entrance for the tray prevented Lorry from joining in. As the Chinaman leaned down to take it, she whispered to him to open a window, the room was hot. Her eye, touching Mr. Mayer, had noticed that he had drawn out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead which shone with a thin beading of perspiration. No one heard the order, and Fong, after opening the window, carried the tray into the dining room and left it on the table. When Lorry turned to the others, Mark had proved to Aunt Ellen that the gentleman tramp was a recognized variety of the species, and Chrystie had taken up the thread.

“Did your people up there know anything about him? Did they think he was the man?”

“None of them saw him. After Knapp’s story came out I wrote up and asked them but no one round there remembered him.”

“Would you know him again if you saw him?”

“If I saw him in the same clothes I would, but”–he smiled into Chrystie’s eager face–“I’m not likely to do that. If it’s he, he’s got twelve thousand dollars and I guess he’s spent some of it on a shave and a new suit.”

Here Mr. Mayer, moving softly, turned to where the tray had stood. It was gone, and, gracefully apologetic, he rose–he wanted to put down his glass and get a drink of water. His exit from the group put a temporary stop to the conversation, chairs were in the way, and Aunt Ellen let her grapes fall on the floor. Mark, scrabbling for them, saw Lorry rise and press an electric bell on the wall; she had remembered there was no water on the tray. Mayer, moving to the dining room, did not see her, and called back over his shoulder:

“Your American rooms are a little too warm for a person used to the cold storage atmosphere of houses abroad.”

He said it well, better than he thought he could, for he was stifled by a sudden loud pounding of his heart. To hide his face and steady himself with a draught of wine was what he wanted. A moment alone, a moment to get a grip on his nerves, would be enough. With his back toward them he leaned against the table and lifted a decanter in his shaking hand. As he did so, Fong entered through a door just opposite.

“Water for Mr. Mayer, Fong,” came Lorry’s voice from the room beyond.

The voice and Fong’s appearance, coming simultaneously, abrupt and unexpected, made Mayer give a violent start. His hand jerked upward, sending the wine in a scattering spray over the cloth. Fong made no move for the water, but stood looking from the crimson stain to the man’s face.

“You sick, Mist Mayer?” he said.

The strained tension snapped. With an eye if steel-cold fury on the servant the man broke into a low, almost whispered, cursing. The words ran out of his mouth, fluent, rapid, in an unpremeditated rush. They were as picturesque and malignantly savage as those with which he had cursed the tules; and suddenly they stopped, checked by the Chinaman’s expression. It was neither angry or alarmed, but intently observant, the eyes unblinking–an imperturbable, sphinx-like face against which the flood of rage broke, leaving no mark.

Mayer took up the half-filled glass and drained it, the servant watching him with the same quiet scrutiny. He longed to plant his fist in the middle of that unrevealing mask, but instead tried to laugh, muttered an explanation about feeling ill, and slid a five-dollar gold piece across the table.

To his intense relief Fong picked it up, dropped it into the pocket of his blouse, and without a word turned and left the room.

No one had noticed the little scene. When Mayer came back the group was on its feet, Mark having made a move to go.

There were handshakes and good-nights, and Burrage and Lorry moved forward up the long room. Aunt Ellen took the opportunity of slipping through a side door that led to the hall, and Chrystie and her lover faced each other among the empty chairs.

With his eye on the receding backs of the other couple, Mayer said, hardly moving his lips:

“When can I see you again? Tomorrow at the Greek Church at four?”

She demurred as she constantly did. At each station in the clandestine courtship he had the same struggle with the same faltering uncertainty. But, after tonight, the time for humoring her moods was past. What he had endured during the last hour showed in a haggard intensity of expression, a subdued, fierce urgence of manner. Chrystie looked at him and looked away, almost afraid of him. He was staring at her with an avid waiting as if ready to drag the answer out of her lips. She fluttered like a bird under the snake’s hypnotic eye.

“I can’t,” she whispered; “I’m going out with Lorry.”

“Then when?’

“Oh, Boyé, I don’t know–I have so many things to do.”

He had difficulty in pinning her down to a date, but finally succeeded five days off. In his low-toned insistence he used a lover’s language, terms of endearment, tender phrases, but her timorous reluctance roused a passion of rage in him. He would have liked to shake her; he would have liked to swear at her as he had at Fong.

CHAPTER XXI

A WOMAN SCORNED

After the conversation with Crowder, Pancha was very quiet for several days. She spoke only the necessary word, came and went with feline softness, performed her duties with the precision of a mechanism. Her stillness had a curious quality of detachment; she seemed held in a spell, her eye, suddenly encountered, blank and vacant; even her voice was toneless. She reacted to nothing that went on around her.

All her vitality had withdrawn to feed the inner flame. Under that dead exterior fires blazed so high and hot that the shell containing them was empty of all else. They had burned away pride and reason and conscience; they were burning to explosive outbreak. The girl had no consciousness of it; she only felt their torment and with the last remnant of her will tried to hide her anguish. Then came a day when the shell cracked and the fires burst through.

Unable to bear her own thoughts, weakened by two sleepless nights, she telephoned to the Argonaut Hotel and said she wanted to speak to Mr. Mayer. The switchboard girl answered that he was in and asked for her name. On Pancha’s refusal to give it, the girl had crisply replied that Mr. Mayer had left orders no one was to speak with him unless he knew the name. Pancha gave it and waited. Presently the answer came–“Very sorry, Mr. Mayer doesn’t seem to be there–thought he was in, but I guess I was wrong.”

This falsehood, contemptuously transparent, act of final dismissal, was the blow that broke the shell and let the fire loose. Such shreds of pride and self-respect as remained to the wretched girl were shriveled. She put on her hat and coat, and tying a thick veil over her face, went across town to the Argonaut Hotel.

It was the day after Mayer had met Mark at the Alstons’. He too had not slept, had had a horrible, harassing night. All day he had sat in his rooms going over the scene, recalling the young man’s face, assuring himself of its unconsciousness. But he was upset, jarred, his security gone. Luxury had corroded his already wasted and overdrawn forces; the habits of idleness weakened his power to resist. One fact stood out in his mind–he must carry the courtship with Chrystie to its conclusion, and arrange for their elopement. Sprawled in the armchair or pacing off the space from the bedroom door to the window he planned it. One or two more interviews with her would bring her to the point of consent, then they would slip away to Nevada; he would marry her there and they would go on to New York. It ought not to take more than a week, at the longest ten days. If he had had any other woman to deal with–not this spiritless fool of a girl–he could manage it in a much shorter time. All he had to do was to make a last trip to Sacramento and get what was left of the money and that could be done in a day.

A knock at the door made him start. Any sound would have made him start in the state he was in, and a knock called up nightmare visions of Burrage, police officers, Lorry Alston–there was no end to his alarms. Then he reassured himself–a package or the room boy with towels–and called out “Come in.”

At the first glance he did not know who it was. Like a woman in a novel a female, closely veiled, entered without greeting and closed the door. When she raised the veil and he saw it was Pancha Lopez he was at once relieved and exasperated. Her manner did not tend to remove his irritation. Leaning against the table, her face very white, she looked at him without speaking. Had not the sight of her just then been extremely unwelcome, the melodrama of the whole thing–the veil, the pallid face, the dramatic silence–would have amused him. As it was he looked anything but amused, rising from the armchair, his brows drawn together in an ugly frown.

“What on earth brings you here?” was his greeting.

“You,” she answered.

Her voice, husky and breathless, matched the rest of the crazy performance. He saw an impending scene, and under his anger had a feeling of grievance. This was more than he deserved. He gave her an ironical bow.

“That’s very flattering, I’m sure, and I’m highly honored. But, my dear Pancha, pardon me if I say I don’t like it. It’s not my custom to see ladies up here.”

“Don’t talk like that to me, Boyé,” she said, the huskiness of her tone deepening. “Don’t put on style and act like you didn’t know me. We’re past that.”

He shrugged.

“Answer for yourself, Pancha. Believe me, I’m not at all past conforming to the usages of civilized people.” He had moved back to the fireplace, and leaning against the mantel waited for her to reply. As she did not do so, he said, “Let me repeat, I don’t like your coming here.”

Her eyes, level and fixed, were disconcerting. To avoid them he turned to the mantel and took up a cigarette and matches lying there.

“Then why don’t you come to see me?” she said.

“Teh–Teh!” He put the cigarette between his teeth and struck the match on the shelf. “Haven’t I told you I’m busy?”

“Yes, you’ve _told_ me that.”

“Well?”

“You’ve told me lies.”

“Thank you.” He was occupied lighting the cigarette.

“Why, when I telephoned an hour ago and gave my name, did you say you were out?”

He affected an air of forbearance.

“Because I happened to be out.”

“Boyé, that’s another lie.”

He threw the match into the fireplace and turned his eyes on her full of a steely dislike.

“Look here, Pancha. You’ve bothered me a lot lately, calling me up, nagging at me about things I couldn’t help. I’m not the kind of man that likes that; I’m not the kind that stands it. I’ve been a friend of yours and hope to stay so, but–“

She cut him off, her voice trembling with passion.

“_Friend_–you a friend! _You_ who do nothing but put me off with lies–who are trying to shake me, throw me away like an old shoe!”

Her restraint was gone. With her shoulders raised and her chin thrust forward, the thing she had been, and still was–child of the lower depths, bred in its ways–was revealed to him. It made him afraid of her, seeing possibilities he had not grasped before. What he had thought to be harmless and powerless might become one more menacing element in the dangers that surrounded him. His natural caution put a check upon his anger. He tried to speak with a soothing good humor.

“Now, my dear girl, don’t talk like that. It’s not true in the first place, it’s stupid in the second, and in the third it only tends to make bad feeling between us that there’s no cause for.”

“Oh, yes, there’s cause, lots of cause.”

He found her steady eyes more discomfiting than ever, and looking at his cigarette said:

“Panchita, you’re not yourself. You’re overworked and overwrought, imagining things that don’t exist. Instead of standing there slanging me you ought to go home and take a rest.”

She paid no attention to this suggestion, but suddenly, moving nearer, said:

“What did you do it for, Boyé?”

“Do what?”

“Make love to me–make me think you loved me. Why did you come? Why did you say what you did? Why did you kiss me? Why, when you saw the way I felt, did you keep on? What good was it to you?”

To gain a moment’s time, and to hide his face from her haggard gaze, he turned and put the cigarette carefully on the stand of the matchsafe. He found it difficult to keep the soothing note in his voice.

“Why–why–why? I don’t see any need for these questions? What _did_ I do? A kiss! What’s that? And you talk as if I’d ceased to care for you. Of course I haven’t. I always will. I don’t know anyone I think more of than I do of you. That’s why I want you to go. You don’t look well, and as I told you before, it’s not the right thing for you to be here.”

She was beside him and he laid his hand on her arm, gentle and persuasive. She snatched the arm away, and with a small, feeble fist struck him in the chest and gasped out an epithet of the people.

For a still moment they stood looking at one another. Both faces showed that bitterest of antagonisms–the hate of one-time lovers. She saw it in his and it increased her desperation, he in her’s, and in the uprush of his anger he forgot his fear. She spoke first, her voice low, her breathing loud on the room’s stillness.

“You could fool me once, but it’s too late now. There’s no coming over me any more with soft talk.”

“Then I’ll not try it. Take it from me straight. I’ve come to the end of my patience. I’ve had enough of you and your exactions.”

“Oh, you needn’t tell me _that_,” she cried. “I know it, and I know why. I know the secret of _your_ change of heart, Mr. Boyé Mayer.”

She saw the alarm in his face, the sudden arrested attention.

“What are you talking about?” he said, too startled to feign indifference.

“Oh, you thought no one was on,” she cried, backing away from him, “but _I_ was. I’ve been for the past month. Four hundred thousand dollars! Think of it, Boyé! You’re getting on in the world. Some difference between that and an actress at the Albion.”

If Pancha had still cherished a hope that she might have been mistaken, the sight of Mayer’s rage would have extinguished it. He made a step toward her, hard-eyed, pale as she was.

“You’re mad. That’s what’s the matter with you. I might have known it when you came. Now go–I don’t want any lunatics here.”

She stood her ground and tried to laugh, a horrible sound.

“You don’t even like me to know that. Won’t even share a secret with me–me, the friend that you care for so much.”

“Go!” he thundered and pointed to the door.

“Not till I hear more, I’m curious. Is it just the money, or would you like the lady even if she hadn’t any?”

Exasperated beyond reason he made a pounce at her and caught her by the arm. This time his grasp was too strong for her to shake off. His fingers closed on the slender stem and closing shook it.

“Since you won’t go, I’ll have to help you,” he breathed in his fury.

She squirmed in his grip, trying to pull his fingers away with her free hand, and in this humiliating fashion felt herself drawn toward the door. It was the last consummate insult, his superior strength triumphing. If he had loosed her she would have gone, but anything he did she was bound to resist, most of all his hand upon her. That, once the completest comfort, was now the crowning ignominy.

As he pushed her, short sentences of savage hostility flashed between them, sparks struck from a mutual hate. Hers betrayed the rude beginnings she had tried to hide, his the falseness of his surface finish. It was as if for the first time they had established a real understanding. At grips, filled with fury, they attained a sudden intimacy, the hidden self of each at last plain to the other.

The scene was interrupted in an unexpected and ridiculous manner–the telephone rang. As the bell whirred he stopped irresolute, his fingers tight on her arm. Then, as it rang again, he looked at her with a sort of enraged helplessness, and made a movement to draw her to the phone. An outsider would have laughed, but the two protagonists were beyond comedy, and glared at one another in dumb defiance. Finally, the bell filling the room with its clamor, there was nothing for it but to answer. With grim lips and a murderous eye on his opponent, Mayer dropped her arm, and going to the phone, took down the receiver. From the other end, plaintive and apologetic, came Chrystie’s voice.

Pancha retreated to the door, opened it and came to a halt on the sill. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of her watching him, a baleful figure. He feared to employ the tenderness of tone necessary in his conversations with Chrystie, and as he listened and made out that she wanted to break her next engagement, he turned and fastened a gorgon’s glance on the woman in the doorway, jerking his head in a gesture of dismissal.

She answered it with ominous quiet, “When I’ve finished. I’ve just one more thing to say.”

In desperation he turned to the mouthpiece and said as softly as he dared:

“Wait a minute. The window’s open and I can’t hear. I must shut it,” then put the receiver against his chest and muttered:

“Do you want me to kill you?”

“Not yet–after I get square you can. I won’t care then what you do. But I’ve got to get square and I’m going to. There’s Indian in me and that’s the blood that doesn’t forget. And there’s something else you don’t know–yes, there _was_ something I never told you. I’ve someone to fight my fights and hit my enemies, and if I can’t get you, they can. Watch out and see.”

She retreated, closing the door. Mayer had to resume his conversation with the blood drumming in his ears, uplift Chrystie’s flagging spirit, and shift their engagement to another day. When it was over he fell on the sofa, limp and exhausted. He lay there till dinner time, thinking over what Pancha had said, and what she could do, assuring himself it was only bluff, the impotent threatenings of a discarded woman. He felt certain that the champion she had alluded to was her one-time admirer, the bandit. This being the case, there was nothing to be feared from him, in hiding in the wilderness. It would be many a day before he’d venture forth. But the girl herself, full of venom, burning with the sense of her wrongs, was a new factor in the perils of his position. Stronger now than ever was this conviction that he must hurry his schemes to their climax.

CHAPTER XXII

THEREBY HANGS A TALE

That same evening the audience at the Albion had a disappointment. At half past eight the manager appeared before the curtain and said that Miss Lopez was ill and could not appear. As they all knew, she had been an unremitting worker, had given them of her best, and in her love of her art and her public had worn herself out and suffered a nervous breakdown. A week or two of rest would restore her, and meantime her place would be taken by Miss Lottie Vere.

The audience, not knowing what was expected of them, applauded and then looked at one another in aggrieved surprise. They felt rather peevish, for they had come to regard Pancha Lopez as a permanent institution devised for their amusement. They no more expected her to fail them than the clock in the Ferry Tower to be wrong. Charlie Crowder heard it at the _Despatch_ office next morning–Mrs. Wesson, who picked up local news like a wireless, met him on the stairs and told him.

“I’m glad she’s given in at last,” said the good-natured society reporter. “She’s been running down hill for the past month, and if she’d kept on much longer she’d have run to the place where you jump off.”

That afternoon Crowder went round to see her. There was no use phoning, the Vallejo was still in that archaic stage where the only telephone was in the lower hall and guests were called to it by the clerk. Besides, you never could tell about a girl like Pancha; she was half a savage, liable to lie curled up in a corner and never think of a doctor.

He found her on the sofa in her sitting-room, a box of crackers and a bottle of milk on the table, a ragged Navajo blanket over her feet. When she saw who it was she sat up with a cry of welcome, her wrapper falling loose from her brown neck. She looked very ill, her eyes dark-circled and sunken in her wasted face.

He sat beside her on the sofa’s edge–she was so thin there was plenty of room–and taking her hand held it while he tried to hide the concern that seized him. After the first sentence of greeting she fell back on the crumpled pillow, and lay still, the little flicker of animation dying out.

“Well, well, Panchita,” he said, patting her hand, a kindly awkward figure hunched up in his big overcoat; “this is something new for you.”

She made an agreeing movement with her head, her glance resting where it fell, too languid to move.

“I seem to be all in,” she murmured.

“Just played out?”

“Looks that way.”

“I didn’t know till this morning–Mrs. Wesson told me. How did it happen?”

“I don’t know, I got all weak. It was last night.”

“At the theater?”

“No, here, in my room. I kept feeling worse and worse, but I thought I could pull through. And then I knew I couldn’t and I got down to the phone some way and told them. And then I came back here and–I don’t know–I sort of broke to pieces.”

As she completed the sentence tears suddenly welled into her eyes and began to run, unchecked, in shining drops down her cheeks. She drew her hand from Crowder’s and turning on her side placed it and its fellow over her face and wept, a river of tears that came softly without sobs. Crowder was overwhelmed. He had never thought his friend could be so broken, never had imagined her weak as other women, bereft of her gallant pride.

“Oh, Pancha,” he said, unutterably distressed, “you poor girl! I’m so sorry, I’m so awfully sorry.” He crooned over her in his rough man’s tenderness, stroking her hair. “You’ve worked yourself to the bone. You ought to have given in sooner, you’ve kept it up too long.”

Her voice came smothered through the shielding hands:

“It’s not that, Charlie, it’s not that.”

This surprised him exceedingly. That any other cause than overwork could so reduce her had never occurred to him. Had she some ailment–some hidden suffering–preying on her? He thought of the Indian’s stoicism and was filled with apprehension.

“Well, then, what is it?” he asked. “Are you ill?”

She moved her head in silent negation.

“But if it isn’t work, it must be something. A girl as strong as you doesn’t collapse without a reason.”

She dropped her hands and sat up. Her face was brought on a level with his, the swollen eyes blinking through tears, the mouth twisted and pitiful.

“It’s pain, it’s pain, Charlie,” she quavered.

“Then you _are_ sick,” he said, now thoroughly alarmed.

“No–it’s not my body, it’s my heart. It’s here.” She clasped her hands over her heart, and suddenly closing her eyes rocked back and forth. “A little while ago I was so happy. I never was like that before–every minute of the day lovely. And then it was all changed, it all ended. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. I kept saying ‘it’ll come all right, nothing so awful could happen to anyone.’ But it could–it did. And it’s that that’s made me this way–to be so full of joy and then to have it snatched away. It’s too much, Charlie. Even I couldn’t stand it–I who once thought nothing could beat me.”

Crowder had had a wide experience in exhibitions of human suffering, but he had never seen anything quite like this. Tenderness was not what was needed, and, his eyes stern on her working face, he said with quiet authority:

“Pancha, I don’t get what this means. Now, like a good girl, tell me. I’ve got to know.”

Then and there, without more urging, she told him.

She told her story truthfully as far as she went, but she did not go to the end. All the preceding night, the interview with Mayer, had repeated itself in her memory, bitten itself in in every brutal detail. Hate trailed after it a longing to repay in kind and she saw herself impotent. The threat of her father’s championship, snatched at in blind rage, she knew meant nothing, the boast of “getting square” was empty. Subtlety was her only weapon and now in her confession to Crowder she employed it. What she told of Mayer’s conduct was true, but she did not tell what to her was a mitigating circumstance–the counter-attraction of Chrystie. The lure of money was to this child of poverty an excuse for her lover’s desertion. Even Crowder, her friend, might condone a transfer of affection from Pancha Lopez to the daughter of George Alston. So the young man, hearing the story ended, saw Mayer as Pancha intended him to–a blackguard, breaking a girl’s heart for pastime.

“The dog!” he muttered. “The cur! Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have sized him up for you.”

“I believed him, I thought it was true. And I was afraid you’d interfere–tell me it was all wrong.”

The young man shifted his eyes from her face and stifled a comment. It was no time now to reproach her. There was a moment’s silence and then she broke out into the query, put so often to herself, put to Mayer, tormenting and inexplicable.

“Why did he do it–why did he begin it? It was he who came, sought me out, gave me flowers. He’d come whenever I’d let him–and he was so interested, couldn’t hear enough about me. There wasn’t any little thing in my life he didn’t want to know. Every man who’d ever come near me he’d want me to tell him about, he’d just _hound_ me to tell him. What made him do it? Was it all a fake from the beginning, and if it was did he do it just for sport?”

Crowder had no answer for these plaints. He was deeply moved, shocked and indignant, more than he let her see. “An ugly business, a d—-d ugly business,” he growled, his honest face overcast with sympathy, his hand, big and not over clean, lying on hers.

“Never mind, old girl,” he said; “we’ll pull you out, we’ll get you on your feet again. We’ve got to do that before we turn our attention to him. I guess he’s got a weak spot and I’ll find it before I’m done. Who is he, anyway–where does he come from–what’s he doing here? He’s too d—-d reserved to come out well in the wash. You keep still and leave the rest to me. I’m not your old pal for nothing.”

But his encouragement met with no response. Her heart unburdened, she lapsed into apathy and dropped back on the pillow, her spurt of energy over.

He lighted the light and tried to make her eat, but she pushed away the glass of milk he offered and begged him to let her be. So there was nothing for it but to make her as comfortable as he could, draw the table to her side, straighten the Navajo blanket and get another pillow from the bedroom. Tomorrow morning he would send in a doctor and on his way out stop at the office and leave a message for the chambermaid to look in on her during the evening. She answered his good-by with a nod and a slight, twisted smile, the first he had seen on her face.

“Lord!” he thought as he closed the door, “she looks half dead. How I’d like to get my hooks into that man!”

Downstairs he gave the clerk instructions and left a tip for the chambermaid–a doctor would come in the morning and he would look in himself in the course of the day. She was to want for nothing; if there was any expense he’d be responsible. On the way up the street he bought fruit, magazines and the evening papers and ordered them sent to her.

The next morning he found time to drop into the Argonaut Hotel for a chat with Ned Murphy. The chat, touching lightly on the business of the place, drifted without effort to Mr. Mayer, always to Ned Murphy, an engaging topic. Crowder went away not much the wiser. Mayer, if a little offish, was as satisfactory a guest as any hotel could ask for–paid his bill weekly, always in gold, gave no trouble, and lived pretty quiet and retired, only now and then going to the country on business. What the business was Ned Murphy didn’t know–he’d been off five times now, leaving in the morning and coming back the next day. But he wasn’t the kind to talk–you couldn’t get next him. It was evident that Ned Murphy took a sort of proprietary pride in the stately unapproachableness of the star lodger.

In the shank of the afternoon, Crowder, at work in the city room, was called to the phone. The person speaking was Mark Burrage and his communication was mysterious and urgent. The night before, in a curious and unexpected manner, he had received some information of a deeply interesting nature upon which he wanted to consult Crowder. Would Crowder meet him at Philip’s Rotisserie that evening at seven and arrange to come to his room afterward for an hour? The matter was important, and Crowder must hustle and fix it if it could be done. Crowder said it could, and, shut off from further parley by an abrupt “So long,” was left wondering.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE CHINESE CHAIN

What Mark had heard was, as he had said, interesting. It had been imparted in an interview as startling as it was unexpected, which had taken place in his room the evening before.

He was sitting by the table reading, the radiance of a green droplight falling over the litter of papers and across his shoulder to the page of his book. The room, at the back of the house, had been chosen as much for its quiet as its low rent. A few of his own possessions relieved the ugliness of its mean furnishings, and it had acquired from his occupancy a lived-in, comfortable look. Two windows at the back framing the night sky were open, and the soft April air flowed in upon an atmosphere, smoke-thickened and heated with the lamplight.

Interruptions were unusual–a call to the telephone in the lower hall, a rare visitor, Crowder or a college friend. This was why, when a knock fell on the door, he looked up, surprised. It was an unusual knock, soft and low, not like the landlady’s irritated summons, or Crowder’s brusque rat-tat. In answer to his “Come in,” the door swung slowly back and in the aperture appeared Fong.

He wore the Chinaman’s outdoor costume, the dark, loose upper garment fastening tight round the base of the throat, the short, wide trousers, and on his head a black felt hat. Under the brim of this his face wore an expression of hesitating inquiry as if he were not sure of his reception.

“Why, hello!” said Mark, dropping his book in surprise; “it’s Fong!”

The old man, his hand on the doorknob, spoke with apologetic gentleness.

“I want see you, Mist Bullage–you no mind if I come in? I want see you and talk storlies with you.”

“First-rate, come ahead in and take a seat.”

Closing the door noiselessly Fong moved soft-footed to a chair beside the table. Here, taking off his hat and putting it in his lap, he fixed a look on Burrage that might have been the deep gaze of a sage or the vacant one of a child. The green-shaded lamp sent a bright, downward gush of light over his legs, its mellowed upper glow shining on his forehead, high and bare to his crown. He had the curious, sexless appearance of elderly Chinamen; might have been, with his tapering hands, flowing coat, and hairless face, an old, monkey-like woman.

“Well,” said Mark, stretching a hand for his pipe, thinking his visitor had come to pay a friendly call, “I’m glad to see you, Fong, and I’m ready to talk all the storlies you want. So fire away.”

Fong considered, studying his hat, then said slowly:

“You velly good man, Mist Bullage, and you lawyer. You know what to do–I dunno no one same likey you. Miss Lolly and Miss Clist two young ladies–not their business. And Missy Ellen”–he paused for a second and gave a faint sigh–“Missy Ellen velly fine old lady, but no sense. My old boss’s fliends most all dead, new lawyers take care of his money. They say to me, ‘Get out, old Chinaman!’ But you don’t say that. So I come to you.”

Mark’s hand, extended to the tobacco jar at his elbow, fell to the chair arm; the easy good humor of his expression changed to attention.

“Oh, you’ve come for advice. I’ll be glad to help you any way I can. Let’s hear the trouble.”

Again the Chinaman considered, fingering delicately at his hatbrim.

“My old boss awful good to me. He die and no more men in the house. I take care my boss’s children–I care all ways I can. Old Chinaman can’t do much but I watch out. And one man come that I no likey. I know you good boy, I know all the lest good boys, but Mist Mayer bad man.”

“Mayer!” exclaimed Mark. “The man I met there the other night?”

“Ally samey him.”

“What do you mean by ‘bad’?”

“I come tell you tonight.”

“You know something definite against him?”

“Yes. I find out. I try long time–one, two months–and bimeby I get him. Then he not come for a while and I say maybe he not come any more and I keep my mouth shut. But when you there last time he come again and I go tell what I know.”

“You’ve found out something that makes you think he isn’t a fit person to have in the house ?”

“Yes–I go velly careful, no one know but Chinamen. Two Chinamen help me–one Chinaman get another Chinaman and we catch on. I no tell Miss Lolly, she too young; I come tell you.”

Mark leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

“Say, Fong, I’m a little mixed up about this. Suppose you go to the beginning and give me the whole thing. If you and this chain of China boys have got something on Mayer I want to hear it. I’m not surprised that you think him a ‘bad man,’ but I want to know why you do.”

What Fong told cannot be given in his own words, recited in his pidgin English, broken by cautions of secrecy and digressions as to the impracticability of enlightening his young ladies. It was a story only to be comprehended by one familiar with his peculiar phraseology, and understanding the complex mental processes and intricate methods of his race. Condensed and translated, it amounted to this:

From the first he had doubted and distrusted Mayer. In his dog-like loyalty to his “old boss,” his love for the children that he regarded as his charge, he had personally studied and, through the subterranean lines of information in Chinatown, inquired into the character and standing of every man that entered the house. Sometimes when Mayer was there, he had stood behind the dining-room door and listened to the conversation in the parlor. The more he saw of the man the more his distrust grew. Asked why, he could give no reason; he either had no power to put his intuition into words, or–what is more probable–did not care to do so.

Two months before the present date a friend of his, member of the same tong, was made cook in the Argonaut Hotel. This gave him the opportunity to set in action one of those secret systems of espionage at which the Oriental is proficient. The cook, confined to his kitchen, became a communicating link between Fong and Jim, the room boy who attended to Mayer’s apartment. Jim, evidently paid for his services and described as “an awful smart boy,” was instructed to watch Mayer and note anything which might throw light on his character and manner of life.

To an unsuspecting eye the result of Jim’s investigations would have seemed insignificant. That Mayer gambled and had lost heavily the three men already knew from the gossip of Chinatown. The room boy’s information was confined to small points of personal habit and behavior. Among Mayer’s effects, concealed in the back of his closet, was a worn and decrepit suitcase which he always carried when he went on his business trips. These trips occurred at intervals of about six weeks, and in his casual allusions to them to Ned Murphy and Jim himself he had never mentioned their objective point.

It was his habit to breakfast in his room, the meal being brought up on a tray by Jim and being paid for in cash each morning. For two and sometimes three days before the trips, Mayer always signed a receipt for the breakfast, but on his return he again paid in cash. Through a bellboy, who had admitted Jim to a patronizing intimacy, the astute Oriental had extended his field of observation. One of this boy’s duties was to carry the mail to the rooms of the guests. For some weeks after his arrival Mayer had received almost no mail. After that letters had come for him, but all had borne the local postmark. The boy never remembered to have seen a letter for Mayer from New York, the city entered on the register as his home. Through this boy Jim had also gleaned the information that Mayer invariably paid his room rent in coin. He had heard Ned Murphy comment on the fact.

From this scanty data Fong and his associates drew certain conclusions. Mayer had no bank account, but he had plenty of money. Besides his way of living, his losses at gambling proved it. His funds ran low before his journeys out of town, suggesting that these journeys were visits to some source of supply. Arrived thus far they decided to extend their spying. The next time Mayer left the city Jim was paid to follow him. The room boy waited for the familiar signs, and when one morning Mayer told him to bring a check slip for his breakfast, went to the housekeeper and asked for a leave of absence to visit a sick “cousin.” The following day Jim sat in the common coach, Mayer in the Pullman, of the Overland train.

Alighting at Sacramento the Chinaman followed his quarry into the depot and saw him enter the washroom, presently to emerge dressed in clothes he had never seen, though his study of Mayer’s wardrobe had been meticulously thorough. He noted every detail–unshined, brown, low shoes, an overcoat faded across the shoulders, a Stetson hat with a sweat-stained band, no collar and a flashy tie. He did not think that anyone, unless on the watch as he was, would have recognized Mayer thus garbed.

From there he had trailed the man to the Whatcheer House. Dodging about outside the window he watched him register at the desk, then disappear in the back of the office. A few minutes later Jim went in and asked the clerk for a job. This functionary, sweeping him with a careless cast of his eye, said they had no work for a Chinaman and went back to his papers. During the moment of colloquy Jim had looked at the last entry in the register open before him. Later he had written it down and Fong handed the slip of paper to Mark. On it, in the clear round hand of the Chinaman who goes to night school, was written “Harry Romaine, Vancouver.”

This brought Fong to the end of his discoveries. Having come upon a matter so much more momentous than he had expected, he was baffled and had brought his perplexities to a higher court. His Oriental subtlety had done its part and he was now prepared to let the Occidental go on from where he had left off. Mark inwardly thanked heaven that the old man had come to him. It insured secrecy, meant a carrying of the investigation to a climax and put him in a position where he could feel himself of use to Lorry. If to the Chinaman George Alston’s house was a place set apart and sacred, it was to her undeclared lover a shrine to be kept free at any cost from such an intruder as Mayer. It did not occur to him as strange that Fong should have chosen him to carry on the good work. In the astonished indignation that the story had aroused he saw nothing but the fact that a soiled and sinister presence had entered the home of a girl, young, ignorant and peculiarly unprotected. Neither he nor Fong felt the almost comic unusualness of the situation–an infrequent guest called upon by an old retainer to help run to earth another guest. As they sat side by side at the table each saw only the fundamental thing–from separate angles the interests of both converged to the same central point.

At this stage Mark was unwilling to offer advice. They must know more first, and to that end he told Fong to bring Jim to his room the following night at eight. Meantime he would think it over and work out some plan. The next day he sent the phone message to Crowder and that night told him the story over dinner at Philip’s Rôtisserie.

It threw Crowder into tense excitement; he became the journalist on the scent of a sensation. He was so carried away by its possibilities that he forgot Pancha’s part in the unfolding drama. It was not till they were walking to Mark’s lodging that he remembered and stopped short, exclaiming:

“By Ginger, I’d forgotten! Another county heard from; it’s coming in from all sides.”

So Pancha’s experience was added to the case against Mayer, and breasting the hills, the young men talked it over, Crowder leaping to quick conclusions, impulsive, imagination running riot, Mark more judicial, confining himself to what facts they had, warning against hasty judgments. The talk finally veered to the Alston’s and Mark had a question to ask that he had not liked to put to Fong. He moved to it warily–did Mayer go to the Alston house often, was he a constant visitor?

“Well, I don’t know how constant, but I do know he goes. I’ve met him there a few times.”

“He hasn’t been after either of them–his name hasn’t been connected with theirs?”

“Oh, no–nothing like that. He’s just one of the bunch that drops in. I was jollying Chrystie about him the other night and she seemed to dismiss him in an offhand sort of fashion.”

“He oughtn’t to go at all. He oughtn’t to be allowed inside their doors.”

“Right, old son. But there’s no good scaring them till we know more. He can’t do them any harm.”

“Harm, no. But a blackguard like that calling on those girls–it’s sickening.”

“Right again, and if we get anything on him it’s up to us to keep them out of the limelight. It won’t be hard. He only went to their house now and again as he went to lots of others. If this Chinese story pans out as promising as it looks, then we can put Lorry wise and tell her to hang out the ‘not at home’ sign when Mr. Mayer comes around. But we don’t want to do that till we’ve good and ample reason. Lorry’s the kind that always wants a reason–especially when it comes to turning down someone she knows. No good upsetting the girl till we’ve got something positive to tell her.”

Mark agreed grudgingly and then they left the Alston sisters, to work out the best method of discovering what took Boyé Mayer to Sacramento and what he did there.

Jim proved to be a young, and as Fong had said, “awful smart boy.” Smuggled into the country in his childhood, he spoke excellent English, interspersed with slang. He repeated his story with a Chinaman’s unimaginative exactness, not a detail changed, omitted or overemphasized. The young men were impressed by him, intelligent, imperturbable and self-reliant, a man admirably fitted to put in execution the move they had decided on. This turned on his ability to insinuate himself into the Whatcheer House and by direct observation find out the nature of the business that required an alias and a disguise.

Jim said it could easily be done. By the payment of a small sum–five dollars–he could induce the present room boy in the Whatcheer House to feign illness, and be installed as a substitute. The custom among Chinese servants when sick to fill the vacancy they leave with a friend or “cousin” is familiar to all Californians. The housewife, finding a strange boy in her kitchen and asking where he comes from, receives the calm reply that the old boy is sick, and the present incumbent has been called upon to take his place. Mayer’s last visit to Sacramento had been made three weeks previously. Arguing from past data this would place the next one at two or three weeks from the present time. But, during the last few days, Jim had noticed a change in the man. He had kept to his room, been irritable and preoccupied, had asked for a railway guide and been seen by Jim in close study of it. To wait till he made his next trip meant running the risk of missing him. It would be wiser to go to Sacramento and be on the spot, even if the time so spent ran to weeks. The room boy could easily be fixed–another five dollars would do that.

So it was settled. The young men, pooling their resources, would pay Jim’s expenses, ten dollars for the room boy, and a bonus of fifty. If he brought back important information this would be raised to a hundred. When he came back he was to communicate with Fong, who in turn would communicate with Mark, and a date for meeting be set. It was now Monday; arrangements for his temporary absence from the Argonaut Hotel could be made the next morning, and he would leave for Sacramento in the afternoon.

CHAPTER XXIV

LOVERS AND LADIES

Mayer was putting his affairs in order, preparatory to flight. A final interview with Chrystie would place him where he wanted to be, and that would be followed by a visit to Sacramento and a withdrawal of what remained of his money. He had a little over two thousand dollars left, enough to get them to New York and keep them there for a month or so in a good hotel. Before this would be expended he would have gained so complete an ascendancy over her that the control of her fortune would be in his hands. Payment of a gambling debt of three hundred and fifty dollars–owed him now for some weeks–had been promised on the following Monday. He would go to Sacramento on Saturday or Sunday, get this money on his return and then all would be ready for his exit.

He went over it point by point, scanning it closely, viewing it in its full extent, weighing, studying, determined that no detail should be overlooked. Outwardly his serenity was unruffled; his veiled eye showed its customary cool indifference, his manner its ironical suavity. Inwardly he was taut as a racer, his toe to the line, waiting for the starting signal. There were moments, pacing up and down his room, when he felt chilled by freezing air currents, as if icebergs might have suddenly floated down Montgomery Street and come to anchor opposite the hotel.

There were so many unexpected menaces–the man Burrage that he might run against anywhere, Pancha, a jealous virago–nobody knew what a woman in that state mightn’t do–and Chrystie herself. In the high tension of his nerves she was indescribably irritating, full of moods, preyed upon by gnawings of conscience. He had already given her an outline of his plan, tentatively suggested it–you had to suggest things tentatively to Chrystie–drawn lightly a romantic picture of their flight on the Overland to Reno.

They were to leave on Tuesday night, reaching Reno the next morning and there alighting for the marriage. He had chosen the night train as the least conspicuous. Chrystie could be shut up in a stateroom and he on guard outside where he could keep his eye on the door–it was more like a kidnaping than an elopement. At other times he might have laughed, but he was far from laughing now. It wasn’t someone else’s distressing predicament, it was his own.

When he had explained it he had met with one of those maddening stupidities of hers that strained his forbearance to the breaking point. How could she get away without Lorry knowing–Lorry always knew where she went? She was miserable over it, sitting close against his shoulder on a bench opposite the Greek Church.

“How about going for a few days to your friends, the Barlows, at San Mateo?” he had said, his hand folded tight on hers.

“The Barlows!” she exclaimed. “The Barlows haven’t asked me.”

That was the sort of thing she was always saying and he had to answer with patient softness.

“I know that, dear one, but why can’t you tell Lorry that they have. They’re going to have a dance and a house party and they want you to come on Tuesday and stay over till, say Thursday or Friday.”

She cogitated, looking very troubled. He was becoming used to the expression, it invariably followed his promptings to falsehood.

“I suppose I could,” she murmured.

He pressed the hand tenderly.

“I don’t want to urge you to do anything you don’t like, but I don’t see what else there is for it. It’s not really our fault that we have to run away–it’s Lorry’s. You’ve said yourself that she’d make objections, not to our way of doing things, but to me.”

Chrystie nodded.

“She would. I’d have a fight to marry you anyway.”

No one was in sight and he raised the gloved hand and pressed it to his lips. Dropping it he purred:

“We don’t want any fights. We don’t want our joy marred by bickerings and interference.”

Chrystie agreed to that and then muttered in gloomy repudiation of Lorry’s prejudices:

“I don’t see why she feels that way about you. Nobody else does.”

“We won’t bother about that. She doesn’t have to love me. Perhaps later I’ll be able to prove to her that her brother-in-law isn’t such a bad chap after all.” He shifted a little closer, flicking up with a possessive finger a strand of golden hair that had fallen across her cheek, and murmuring his instructions into the shell pink ear his hand brushed. “You tell her you’ve had an invitation from the Barlows to come down on Tuesday and stay till Friday. Say they’re going to have a party. That being the case you’ll take a good-sized trunk. Give the order yourself to the expressman and tell him to send it to the ferry and when you get there check it to Reno. Then you leave the house in time to catch the late afternoon train to San Mateo and as soon as you get out of sight order your driver to take you to the ferry. You’d better cross at once and do what waiting you’ll have on the Oakland side.”

“You’ll be there?” she said, stirring uneasily.

“Yes, but I won’t speak to you.”

“Oh, dear”–it was almost a wail–“how I wish we could be married at home like Christians!”

“My darling, my darling, don’t make it any harder for me. You never wanted anything in your life as much as I want to take your hand and call you mine before the eyes of the whole world. But it’s impossible–you yourself were the first to say so. We don’t want a family row, a scandal, all in the papers. Love mustn’t be dragged through that sort of ignominy.”

She thought so, too; she always agreed with him when he talked of love. But he had to come down to earth and the Barlows, finding it necessary to instruct her even in such small matters as how she was to get the letter from them. She was simply to tell Lorry such a letter had come and she had answered it, accepting the invitation. It was perfectly simple–didn’t she see?

She saw, her head drooped, telling Lorry about that letter which was never to arrive and that answer which was never to be written, bringing back the old, sick qualms. There had to be more inspiring talk of love before she was brought up to the point where he dared to leave her, felt his influence strong enough to last till the next meeting. He wondered irascibly if all home-bred, nice young girls were such fools and realized why he’d never liked them.

That same afternoon Lorry had a visitor. While Chrystie was walking home, poised on the edge of the great exploit, at one moment seeing the tumult left by her flight, at the next that flight, wing and wing, through the golden future with her eagle mate, Lorry was sitting in the drawing-room talking to Mark Burrage.

He had not told Crowder that he was going, had not decided to go till the morning after he had seen Crowder and the two Chinamen. When they had gone he had sat pondering, and that question which he had not liked to ask Fong and which he had only tentatively put to his friend, rose, insistent, demanding a more informed answer. Was this man–more than objectionable, probably criminal–paying court to Lorry? It was a horrible idea, that haunted him throughout the night. He recalled Mayer’s manner to her the evening of his visit, and hers to him. Not that he thought she could have been attracted to the man; she was too fine, her instincts too true. But on the other hand she was young, so unlearned in the world’s ways, so liable to be duped through her own innocence. His thoughts swung like a pendulum from point of torment to point of torment and in the morning he rose, determined on the visit. It was to satisfy himself and if possible drop a hint of warning. He never thought of Chrystie. She was a child and on that evening Mayer had treated her as such, paying her only the scanty meed of attention that politeness demanded.

When he started for the house he had entered on a new phase in his relation to her. He was no longer the humble visitor, overawed by her riches, but someone whose business it was to watch over and take care of her. It bridged the gulf between them, swept away artificial distinctions. He forgot himself, his awkwardness, how he impressed her. These once important considerations ceased to exist and a man, concerned about a woman, feeling his obligations to look after her, emerged from the hobbledehoy that had once been Marquis de Lafayette Barrage.

She saw the change at the first glance. It was in his face, in his manner, no longer diffident, assured, almost commanding. Their positions were transformed, she less a fine lady, queening it amid the evidences of her wealth, than a girl, lonely and uncared for, he the dominating, masculine presence that her life had lacked. The woman in her, slowly unfolding in secret potency, felt his ascendancy and bloomed into fuller being. They were conscious of the constraint and shyness that had been between them giving place to a gracious ease, of having suddenly experienced a harmonious adjustment that had come about without effort or intention.

Over the smooth, sweet sense of it they talked on indifferent matter, items of local importance, small social doings, the Metropolitan Opera Company which was to open its season on the following Monday night. It was wonderful how interesting everything was, how they passed from subject to subject. They had so much to say that the shadows were rising in the distant end of the room before Mark came to the real matter of moment. It was proof of the change in him that he did not grope and blunder to it but brought it forward with one abrupt question.

“Who is Mr. Mayer that I met here the other night?”

“Well–he’s just Mr. Mayer–a man from the East who’s in California for his health. That’s all I know about him, except that he lived a long time in Europe when he was a boy and a young man.”

“How did you come to meet him?”

“Through Mrs. Kirkham, an old friend of Mother’s. She brought him here and then we asked him to dinner.” She paused, but the young man, his eyes on the ground, making no comment, she concluded with, “Did you think he was interesting?”

He raised his glance to hers and said:

“No–I didn’t like him.”

Lorry leaned from her chair, her eyebrows lifted, her expression mischievously confidential.

“Then we have one taste in common–neither do I.”

She was surprised to see Mark flush, and his gaze widen to a piercing fixity. She thought her plain speaking had offended him and hastened to excuse it:

“I know that isn’t a nice thing to say about a guest in your house, and I don’t say it to everybody–only to you. Are you shocked?”

“No, I’m relieved. But I couldn’t think you would like him.”

“Why? All the other girls do.”

“You’re not like the other girls. You’re–” He stopped abruptly, again dropped his eyes and said, “He’s no good–he’s a fake.”

“There!” She was quite eager in her agreement. “That’s just the impression he gives me. I felt it the first time I saw him.”

“Then why do you have him here?”

The note of reprimand was unconscious, but to the young girl it was plain and her heart thrilled in response to its authority.

“We needed an extra man for our dinner–the dinner that you refused to come to.”

She laughed at him in roguish triumph, and it was indescribably charming. He joined in, shame-faced, mumbling something about his work.

“So you see, Mr. Burrage,” she said, “in a sort of way it was your fault.”

“It’s not my fault that he keeps on coming.”

“No, I guess that’s mine. I ask him and he has to pay a call. He’s _very_ polite about that.”

She laughed again, delighted at this second chance, but now he did not join in. Instead he became gravely urgent, much more so than so slight a matter demanded.

“But look here, Miss Alston, what’s the sense of doing that? What’s the sense of having a person round you don’t like?”

She gave a deprecating shrug.

“Oh, well, it’s not as bad as all that. I have really nothing against him; he’s always entertaining and pleasant and makes things go off well. It’s just my own feeling; I have no reason. I can’t discriminate against him because of that.”

Mark was silent. It was hateful to him to hear her blaming herself, offering excuses for the truth of her instinct. But he had agreed with Crowder not to tell her, and anyway he had satisfied himself as to her sentiments–she was proof against Mayer’s poisonous charm. At this stage he could enlighten her no further; all that now remained for him to do was to give her a hint of that guardianship to which he was pledged.

“It’s a big responsibility for you, running a place like this, letting the right people in and keeping the wrong ones out.”

“It is, and I don’t suppose I do it very well. It was all so new and I was so green.”

“Well, it’s not a girl’s job. You ought to have a watch dog. How would I answer?”

She smiled.

“What would you do–bay on the front steps every time Mr. Mayer came?”

“That’s right–show my teeth so he couldn’t get at the bell. But, joking apart, I’d like you to look upon me that way–I mean if you ever wanted anyone to consult with. You’re just two girls–you might need a man’s help–things come up.”

The smile died from her lips. She was surprised, gratefully, sweetly surprised.

“Oh, Mr. Burrage, that’s very kind of you.”

“No, it’s not. The kindness would be on your side, the way it has been right along. I’d think a lot of it if you’d let me feel that if you wanted help or advice, or anything of that kind, you’d ask it of me.”

Had she looked at him the impassioned earnestness of his face would have increased her surprise. But she was looking at the tassel on the chair arm, drawing its strands slowly through her fingers.

“Perhaps I will some day,” she murmured.

“Honest–not hesitate to send for me if you ever think I could be of any service to you? Will you promise?”

A woman more experienced, more quick in a perception of surface indications, might have guessed a weightier matter than the young man’s words implied. Lorry took them as they were, feeling only the heart behind them.

“Yes, I’ll promise,” she said.

“Then it’s a pact between us. I’ll know if you ever want me you’ll call on me. And I’ll come; I’ll come, no matter where I am.”

The room was growing dim, dusk stealing out from its corners into the space near the long windows where they sat. Their figures, solid and dark in the larger solidity of the two armchairs, were motionless, and in the pause following his words, neither stirred or spoke. It was a silence without embarrassment or constraint, a moment of arrested external cognizances. Each felt the other as close, suddenly glimpsed intimate and real, a flash of finer vision that for an instant held them in subtle communion. Then it passed and they were saying good-by, moving together into the hall. Fong had not yet lighted the gas and it was very dim there; Mark had to grope for his hat on the stand. He touched her hand in farewell, hardly conscious of the physical contact, heard his own mechanical words and her reply. Then the door opened, shut and he was gone.

Lorry went upstairs to her own room. Her being was permeated with an inner content, radiating like light from a center of peace. She closed her eyes to better feel the comfort of it, to rest upon its infinite assurance. She had no desire to know whence it rose, did not even ask herself if he loved her. From a state of dull distress she had suddenly come into a consciousness of perfect well-being, leaving behind her a past where she had been troubled and lonely. Their paths, wandering and uncertain, had met, converging on some higher level, where they stood together in a deep, enfolding security.

She was still motionless in the gathering dusk when Chrystie entered the room beyond, filling it with silken rustlings and the tapping of high heels. Lorry did not know she was there till she came to the open door and looked in.

“Oh, Lorry, is that you? What are you doing sitting like Patience in a rocking chair?”

“I don’t know–thinking, dreaming.”

Chrystie withdrew with mutterings; could be heard moving about. Suddenly she exclaimed, “It’s a glorious afternoon,” and then shut a drawer with a bang. Presently two short, sharp rings sounded from the hall below and following them her voice rose high and animated:

“That’s the mail. I’ll go and see if there’s anything exciting.”

Lorry heard her turbulent descent of the stairs and came back to a realization of her environment. In a few minutes Chrystie was in her room again, a little breathless from her race up the long flight.

“There’re only two letters,” she called. “One for you and one for me.”

Lorry was not interested in letters and made no response, and after a pause heard her sister’s voice, raised in the same vivacious note:

“Mine’s from Lilly Barlow. She wants me to come down on Tuesday and stay over till Friday. They’re having a dance.”

“A dance–oh, that’ll be lovely. When is it to be?”

“Tuesday night. I’m to go down on the evening train and they’ll meet me with the motor.”

“I’m so glad–you always have a good time there.”

Lorry appeared in the doorway. The room was nearly dark, the last blue light slanting in through the uncurtained window. By its faint illumination she saw Chrystie’s face in the mirror, glum and unsmiling. It was not the expression with which the youngest Miss Alston generally greeted calls to festivals.

“What’s the matter, Chrystie?” she said. “Don’t you want to go?”

The girl wheeled round sharply.

“Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I? Did you ever know me not want to go to a dance?”

“Then you’d better write and accept at once. They’re probably putting up other people and they’ll want to know if you’re coming.”

“I’ll do it tonight. There’s no such desperate hurry; I can phone down. There’s your letter on the bureau.”

She threw herself on the bed, a long, formless shape in the shadowy corner. She lay there without speaking as Lorry took her letter to the window and read it. It was from Mrs. Kirkham; a friend had sent her a box for the opera on Tuesday night and she invited both girls. It would be a great occasion, everybody was going, Caruso was to sing. Lorry looked up from it, quite dismayed; it was too bad that Chrystie would miss it. But Chrystie from the darkness of the bed said she didn’t care; she’d rather dance than hear Caruso, or any other singing man–music bored her anyhow. Lorry left her and went into her own room to write an acceptance for herself and regrets for her sister.

At nine that night Mark was sitting by his table, his book on his knee, his eyes on the smoke wreaths that lay across the air in light layers, when his dreams were broken by a knock on his door. It was his landlady with a telegram:

“Mother very sick. Pneumonia. Come at once. SADIE.”

There was a train for Stockton in half an hour, and he could make the distance between the town and the ranch by horse or stage. He made a race for it and at the station, finding himself a few minutes ahead, took a call for Crowder at the _Despatch_ office and caught him. In a few words he told him what had happened, that he didn’t know how long he might be away and that if news came from Jim before his return to let him know. Crowder promised.

CHAPTER XXV

WHAT JIM SAW

The next morning Crowder sent a letter to Fong advising him of Mark’s departure. Should Jim get back from Sacramento within the next few days he was to communicate with Crowder at the _Despatch_ office. The young man had no expectation of early news, but he was going to run no risks with what promised to be a sensation. His journalist’s instincts were aroused, and he was resolved to keep for his own paper and his own _kudos_ the most picturesque story that had ever come his way. He went about his work, restless and impatient, seeing the story on the _Despatch’s_ front page and himself made the star reporter of the staff.

He had not long to wait. On Monday morning he was called from the city room to the telephone. Through the transmitter came the soft and even voice of Jim; he had returned from Sacramento the night before, and if it was convenient for Mr. Crowder could see him that afternoon at two in Portsmouth Square. Mr. Crowder would make it convenient, and Jim’s good-by hummed gently along the wire.

The small plaza–a bit of the multicolored East embedded in the new, drab West–was a place where Orient and Occident touched hands. There Chinese mothers sat on the benches watching their children playing at their feet, and Chinese fathers carried babies, little bunched-up, fat things with round faces and glistening onyx eyes. Sons of the Orient, bent on business, passed along the paths, exchanging greetings in a sing-song of nasal voices, cues braided with rose-colored silk swinging to their knees. Above the vivid green of the grass and the dark flat branches of cypress trees, the back of Chinatown rose, alien and exotic: railings touched with gold and red, lanterns, round and crimson or oblong with pale, skin-like coverings, on the window ledges blue and white bowls upholding sheaves of lilies, the rich emblazonry of signs, the thick gilded arabesques of a restaurant’s screened balconies.

Crowder found his man standing by the pedestal on which the good ship _Bonaventure_ spreads its shining sails before the winds of romance. A quiet hail and they were strolling side by side to a bench sheltered by a growth of laurel.

Mayer had appeared at the Whatcheer House the day before at noon. Jim, crossing the back of the office, had seen him enter, and loitering heard him tell the clerk that he would give up his room that afternoon as his base had shifted to Oregon. Then he had gone upstairs, and Jim had followed him and seen him go into No. 19, the last door at the end of the hall on the left-hand side.

The hall was empty and very quiet. It was the lunch hour, a time at which the place was deserted. Arming himself with a duster Jim had stolen down the passage to No. 19. Standing by the door he could hear Mayer walking about inside, and then a sound as if he was moving the furniture. With the duster held ready for use Jim had looked through the keyhole and seen Mayer with a chisel in his hand, the bed behind him drawn out from the wall to the middle of the room.

Emboldened by the hall’s silence, Jim had continued to watch. He saw Mayer go to the corner where the bed had stood, lift the carpet and the boards below it and take from beneath them two canvas sacks. From these he shook a stream of gold coins–more than a thousand dollars, maybe two. He let them lie there while he put back the sacks, replaced the boards and carpet and pushed the bed into its corner. Then he gathered up the money, rolling some of it in a piece of linen, which he packed in his