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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Perils of Pauline, by Charles Goddard
+
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+Title: The Perils of Pauline
+
+Author: Charles Goddard
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6065]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 1, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PERILS OF PAULINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by Sean Pobuda
+
+
+THE PERILS OF PAULINE
+
+By Charles Goddard
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE BREATH OF DEAD CENTURIES
+
+In one of the stateliest mansions on the lower Hudson, near New York,
+old Stanford Marvin, president of the Marvin Motors Company, dozed over
+his papers, while Owen, his confidential secretary, eyed him across the
+mahogany flat-topped desk.  A soft purring sound floated in the open
+window and half-roused the aged manufacturer.  It came from one of his
+own cars -- six cylinders chanting in unison a litany of power to the
+great modem god of gasoline.
+
+These things had been in his mind since the motor industry started.  He
+had lived with them, wrestled with them during his meals and taken them
+to his dreams at night.  Now they formed a rhythm, and he heard them in
+his brain just before the fainting spells, which had come so frequently
+of late.  He glanced at the secretary and noted Owen's gaze with
+something of a start.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Raymond?" he queried, with his customary
+directness.
+
+"Your health, sir," replied Owen, who, like all intelligent rascals,
+never lied when the truth would do equally well.  As a matter of fact,
+Owen had wondered whether his employer would last a year or a month.
+He much preferred a month, for there was reason to believe that the
+Marvin will would contain a handsome bequest to "my faithful
+secretary."
+
+"Oh, bosh!" said the old man.  "You and Dr. Stevens would make a mummy
+of me before I'm dead."
+
+"That reminds me, sir," said Owen, smoothly,  "that the International
+Express Company has delivered a large crate addressed to you from
+Cairo, Egypt.  I presume it is the mummy you bought on your last trip.
+Where shall I place it?"
+
+Mr. Marvin's eye coursed around the walls of the handsome library,
+which had been his office since the doctor had forbidden him to visit
+his automobile works and steel-stamping mills.
+
+"Take out that bust of Pallas Athene," he ordered, "and stand the mummy
+up in its place."
+
+Owen nodded, poised his pencil and prompted:
+
+"You were just dictating about the new piston rings."
+
+Mr. Marvin drew his hand across his eyes and looked out the window.
+Within the range of his vision was one of the most charming sights in
+the world -- a handsome youth and a pretty girl, arrayed in white
+flannels, playing tennis.
+
+"Never mind the letters.  Tell Harry and Pauline I wish to see them."
+
+Alone, the old man opened a drawer and took a dose of medicine, then he
+unfolded Dr. Stevens's letter and read its final paragraph, which
+prescribed a change of climate, together with complete and permanent
+rest or "I will not answer for the consequences."
+
+There was little doubt that no primer mover in a great industry was
+better able to leave its helm than Standford Marvin.  His  lieutenants
+were able, efficient and contented.  The factories would go of their
+own momentum for a year or two at least, then his son, Harry, just out
+of college, should be able, perhaps, to help.  His lieutenants had
+proved Marvin's unerring instinct in judging character.  Not one single
+case came to the old employer's mind of a man who had failed to turn
+out exactly as he expected.  Yet the most trusted man of all, Raymond
+Owen, the secretary, was disloyal and dishonest.
+
+This one exception was easily enough explained.  When Owen came to
+Marvin's attention, fifteen years before, he was a fine, honest,
+faithful man.  It was born and bred in him to be straight.  During the
+first five' or six years in the Marvin household the older man took
+pains to keep watch on this quiet, tactful youth until he knew all his
+ways and even his habits of thought. There was no doubt that Owen was
+as upright and clean as the old man himself.
+
+At the age of forty the devil entered into Owen.  It came in the form
+of insomnia.  Loss of sleep will make any man irritable and
+unreasonable, but hardly dishonest.  With the sleeplessness, however,
+came the temptation to take drugs.  Owen shifted from one narcotic to
+another, finally, settling down upon morphine.  Five years of the
+opiate had made him its slave. Every physician knows that morphine
+fiends become dishonest.
+
+The secretary had speculated with his modest savings and lost them.  He
+had borrowed and lost again, and now, for some time, had been betting
+on horse races.  This last had made him acquainted with a certain
+Montgomery Hicks, who lived well without visible source of income.
+Through Hicks, Owen had betrayed one of his employer's guarded
+secrets.  Hicks, armed with this secret, promptly changed from a
+friendly creditor to a blackmailer.
+
+Owen, on his way to summon Pauline and Harry, descended to the
+basement, where the butler, gardener and, a colored man were uncrating
+the Egyptian mummy.  He told them to stand it in place of the bust of
+Pallas Athene in the library, and then went out, crossing the splendid
+lawns, and graveled roads to the tennis court.  There was no design in
+Owen's mind against the two players, but of late the instinct of both
+the hunter and the hunted were showing in him, and it prompted him to
+approach quietly and under cover.  So he passed along the edge of a
+hedge and stood a moment within earshot.
+
+Pauline was about to "serve," but paused to look down at the loosened
+laces of her small white shoe.  She heard Harry's racquet drop and saw
+him hurdle the net.  In another instant he was at her feet tying the
+tiny bow.
+
+"You needn't have done that, Harry," she said.
+
+"Oh, no,!" Harry affirmed, as he vainly tried to make his bow as  trim
+as its mate.  "I suppose not.  I don't suppose I need to, think, about
+you all the time either, or follow you around till that new cocker
+spaniel of yours thinks I'm part of  your shadow.  Perhaps I don't need
+to love you."
+
+"Harry, get up!  Someone  will see you and think you're proposing to
+me."
+
+"Think?  They ought to know I'm proposing.  But, Pauline, talking about
+'need,' there isn't any need of your being so pretty.  Your eyes are
+bigger and bluer than they really need to be.  You could see just as
+well if you didn't have such long, curly lashes, and there isn't any
+real necessity for the way they group together in that starry effect,
+like Nell Brinkley's    girls.  Is there any need of fifteen different
+beautiful shades of light where the sun strikes your hair just back of
+your ear?"
+
+"Harry, stop this!  The score is forty-fifteen."
+
+"Yes, all these things are entirely unnecessary.  I'm going to have old
+Mother Nature indicted by the Grand jury for willful, wasteful, wanton
+extravagance unless - unless" Harry paused.
+
+"Now, Harry, don't use up your whole vocabulary -- promise what?"
+
+"Promise to marry me at once."
+
+"No, Harry, I can't do that -- that is, right away.  I must have time."
+
+"Why time?  Pauline, don't you love me?"
+
+"Yes, I think I do love you, Harry, and you know' there is nobody else
+in the world."
+
+"Then what do you want time for?"
+
+"Why, to see life and to know what life really is."
+
+"All right.  Marry me, and I'll show you life.  I'll lead you any kind
+of a life you want."
+
+"No, that won't do.  As an old, settled-down, married woman I couldn't
+really do what I want.  I must see life in its great moments.  I must
+have thrills, adventures, see people, do daring things, watch battles.
+It might be best for me even to see someone killed, if that were
+possible.  As I was telling Harley St. John last night -"
+
+"Harley St. John?  Well, if I catch that fop taking you motoring again
+you'll get your wish and see a real nice aristocratic murder.  He ought
+to be put out of his misery, anyway; but where did you get all these
+sudden notions about wild and strenuous life?"
+
+Pauline did not answer.  They both heard a discreet cough, and Owen
+rounded the corner of the hedge.  He delivered his message, and the
+three walked slowly toward the house.
+
+Advancing to meet them came a dashy checked suit.  Above it was a large
+Panama hat with a gaudy ribbon.  A red necktie was also visible, even
+at a considerable distance.  Between the hat and the necktie a face
+several degrees darker in color than the tie came into view as the
+distance lessened.  It was Mr.  Montgomery Hicks, whose first name was
+usually pronounced "Mugumry" and thence degenerated into "Mug."  Mug's
+inflamed and scowling face and bulging eyes usually conveyed the
+general impression that he was about to burst into profanity -- a
+conjecture which frequently proved correct.  In this case he merely
+remarked in a sort of "newsboy" voice:
+
+"Mr. Raymond Owen, I believe?"
+
+The secretary's sallow face flushed a little as he stepped aside and
+let Harry and Pauline pass out of earshot.
+
+"See here, Mug," complained Owen,  "I haven't a cent for you.  You will
+get me discharged if you come around here like this."
+
+"Well, I'll get you fired right now," growled Mug, "if you don't come
+across with the money."  And he started toward the front steps.  Owen
+led him out of sight of the house and finally got rid of him.  For a
+blackmailer knows he can strike but once, and, having struck, he loses
+all power over his victim.  So Hicks withheld the blow, collected a
+paltry thirty dollars, and consented to wait a little while for Marvin
+to die.
+
+Harry and Pauline passed on into the house.  He had the straight
+backbone and well poised head of the West Pointer, but without the
+unnatural stiffness of the soldier's carriage; the shoulders of the
+"halfback," and the lean hips of a runner were his, and he had earned
+them in four years on his varsity football and track teams.  The girl
+beside him, half a head shorter, tripped along with the easy action of
+a thoroughbred.  Both bore the name of Marvin, yet there was no
+relationship.
+
+Harry's mother, long dead, had adopted this girl on Mr. Marvin's first
+trip to Egypt.  Pauline was the daughter of an English father and a
+native mother.
+
+Mrs. Marvin first saw her as a blue-eyed baby, too young to understand
+that its parents had just been drowned in the Nile.  As brother and
+sister they grew up together until college separated the two.  After
+four years Pauline's dainty prettiness struck Harry with a distinct
+shock, the delightful sort of shock known as love at first sight.  It
+was really Harry's first sight of her as a woman.  Every sense and
+instinct in him shouted,  "Get that girl," and nothing in him answered
+"No."
+
+Mr. Marvin looked unusually pale as those two very vital young persons
+stepped into the library.  He read their thoughts and said quietly.
+
+"Harry, I've been placed in the hands of a receiver."
+
+"Receiver?" echoed Harry, with amazement, for he knew that Marvin
+enterprises were financed magnificently.
+
+"Yes, Dr. Stevens is the receiver.  He says I have exhausted my entire
+stock of nervous capital, that my account at the bank of physical
+endurance is overdrawn, nature has called her loans, and you might say
+that I am a nervous bankrupt."
+
+"So All you need is rest," cried Pauline, "and you will be as strong as
+ever."
+
+"Well, before I rest I want to assure myself about you children.
+Harry, you love Pauline, don't you?
+
+"You bet I do, father."
+
+"Pauline, you love Harry, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," answered Pauline slowly.
+
+"And you will marry right away?"
+
+"This very minute, if she would have me," said Harry.
+
+"And you, Pauline?" queried the old man.
+
+"Yes, father," for she loved him and felt toward him as if she were
+indeed his daughter.  "Perhaps some time I'll marry Harry, but not for
+a year or two.  I couldn't marry him now, it wouldn't be right."
+
+"Wouldn't be right??  Well, I'd like to know why not."
+
+Pauline was silent a moment.  She hated to oppose this fine old man,
+but her will was as firm as his, and well he knew it.  Harry spoke for
+her:
+
+"Oh, she wants to see life before she settles down -- wild life, sin
+and iniquity, battle, murder and sudden death and all that sort of
+stuff.  I don't know what has gotten into women these days, anyway."
+
+Then Polly, prettily, daintily, as she did all things, and with
+charming little blushes and hesitations, confessed her secret.  In
+short, it was her ambition to be a writer, a writer of something worth
+while -- a great writer.  To be a great writer one must know life, and
+to know life one must see it -- see the world.  She ended by asking the
+two men if this were not so.
+
+They looked at each other and coughed with evident relief it the
+comparative harmlessness of her whim.
+
+"Yes, Polly," said old man Marvin, "a great writer ought to see life in
+order to know what he is writing about.  But what makes you suspect
+that you have the ability to be even an ordinary writer?"
+
+Marvin sire winked at Marvin son and Marvin son winked back, for no man
+is too old or too young to enjoy teasing a pretty and serious girl.
+
+Pauline saw the wink, and her foot ceased tracing a pattern in the
+carpet and stamped on it instead.
+
+"I'll show you what reason I have to think I can write.  My first story
+has just been published in the biggest magazine in the country.  I have
+had a copy of it lying around here for days with my story in it, and
+nobody has even looked at it."
+
+Out she flashed, and Harry after her, almost upsetting the butler and
+gardener, who appeared in the library doorway.  These two worthies
+advanced upon the statue of Pallas without noticing the master of the
+house sitting behind his big desk.  The butler did notice that a large
+hound from the stable had followed the gardener into the room.
+
+"That's what one gets for letting outdoor servants into the house,"
+muttered the butler, as he hustled the big dog to the front door and
+ejected him.
+
+"Is he addressing himself to me or to the pup, I wonder?" asked the
+gardener, a fat, good-natured Irishman, as he placed himself in front
+of the statue.
+
+He read the name "Pallas," forced his rusty derby hat down over his
+ears in imitation of the statue's helmet, and mimicked the pose.
+
+Together they staggered out with their burden.  A moment later they
+returned, carrying, with the help of two other men, the mummy in its
+big case.  Owen also entered, and Marvin, with the joy of an
+Egyptologist, grasped a magnifying glass and examined the case.
+
+
+The old man's bobby had been Egypt, his liberal checks had assisted in
+many an excavation, and his knowledge of her relics was remarkable.
+Inserting a steel paper cutter in a crack he deftly pried open the
+upper half of the mummy's front.  Beneath lay the mass of wrappings in
+which thousands of years ago the priests of the Nile had swathed some
+lady of wealth and rank.  It was a woman, Marvin was sure, from the
+inscriptions on her tomb, and he believed her to be a princess.
+
+The secretary excused himself and went to his room, where his precious
+morphine pills were hidden.  The old man, left alone, deftly opened the
+many layers of cloth which bound the ancient form.  A faint scent that
+was almost like a presence came forth from the unwrapped folds.  Long
+lost balms they were, ancient spices, forgotten antiseptics of a great
+race that blossomed and Fell -- thousands of years before its time.
+
+"I smell the dead centuries," whispered Marvin to himself, "I can
+almost feel their weight.  The world was young when this woman
+breathed.  Perhaps she was pretty and foolish like my Polly -- yes, and
+maybe as stubborn, too.  Manetho says they had a good deal to say in
+those days.  Ah, now we shall see her face."
+
+He had uncovered a bit of the mummy's forehead when out of the bandages
+fell a tiny vial.  Marvin quickly picked it up.  The vial was carved
+from some sort of green crystal in the shape of a two-headed Egyptian
+bird god.  Without effort the stopper came out and Marvin held the
+small bottle to his nostrils, only to drop it at the mummy's feet.  It
+exhaled the odor of the mummy which the reek of the centuries
+intensified a thousand times.
+
+It was too much for the old man.  He had overtaxed his feeble vitality
+and felt his senses leaving him.  With the entire force of his will he
+was able to get to a chair, into which he sank.  The odor of the vial
+was still in his nostrils.  His eyes were fixed and stared straight
+ahead, but he could see, in a faint, unnatural yellow light that bathed
+the room.
+
+From the vial, lying at the mummy's feet a vapor appeared to rise.  It
+floated toward the swathed figure, enveloped it and seemed to be
+absorbed by it.
+
+"Perhaps this is death," thought Marvin, "for I cannot move or speak."
+
+But something else moved.  There was a flutter among the bandages of
+the mummy.  The commotion increased.  Something was moving inside.  The
+bandages were becoming loosened.  They fell away from the face, and
+then was Marvin amazed indeed.  Instead of the tight, brown
+parchment-like skin one always finds in these ancient relics appeared a
+smooth, olive-tinted complexion.  It was the face of a young and
+beautiful woman.  The features were serene as if in death, but there
+was no sunken nose or mummy's hollow eyes.
+
+A strand of black hair fell down, and the movement beneath the bandages
+increased.  Out of the folds came an arm, a woman's arm, slender, yet
+rounded, an arm with light bones and fine sinews, clearly an arm and
+hand that had never known work.  Marvin was well aware that a mummy's
+arm is invariably a black skeleton claw.
+
+At this point the old man made a mental note that he was not dead, for
+he could feel his own breathing.  The arm rapidly and gracefully
+loosened and removed wrappings from the neck and breast.  On the wrist
+gashed a bracelet made of linked scarabs.  The arm now cast away the
+last covering of the bosom, neck and shoulders.
+
+She freed her left hand, lifted out the bottom half of the case and
+slid the wrappings from her limbs.  Barefooted and bare-ankled, clothed
+only in a shimmering white gown that scarcely covered bare knees, and a
+white head-dress with a green serpent head in front, she stepped
+somewhat stiffly into the room.  Slowly she made several movements of
+limbs and body like the first steps of a dance.  She rose on her toes,
+looked down at herself and swayed her lithe hips.  It occurred to
+Marvin that all this was by way of a graceful little stretch after a
+few thousand years of sleep.
+
+Marvin now observed that she was Pauline's height, and age, as well as
+general size and form.  Slightly shorter she might have been, but then
+she lacked Pauline's high heels.  The general resemblance was striking
+except in the color of the eyes and hair.  Pauline's tresses were a
+light golden yellow, while this girl's hair was black as the hollow of
+the sphinx.  Pauline's eyes were blue, but she who stood before him
+gazed through eyes too dark to guess their color.
+
+The Egyptian had found a little mirror.  She patted her hair, adjusted
+the head- dress, but Marvin waited in vain for the powder puff.  From
+the mirror the girl's eyes wandered to a painting hanging above the
+desk.  It was an excellent likeness of Pauline.  The resemblance
+between the two was obvious, not only to Marvin but evidently to the
+black-haired girl.  She turned to the old man and addressed him in a
+strange language.  Not one word did he recognize, yet the syllables
+were so clearly and carefully pronounced that he felt he was listening
+to an educated woman.  Some of the tones were like Pauline's, some were
+not, but all were soft, sweet, modulated.
+
+The meaning was clear enough.  She wished Marvin to see the
+resemblance, and she frowned slightly because the rigid, staring figure
+did not respond.  Why should she be impatient, this woman of the
+Pharaohs who had lain stiff and unresponsive while Babylon and Greece
+and Rome and Spain had risen and fallen?
+
+Soon she resorted to pantomime, pointed to herself and the picture,
+touched her eyes and nose and mouth and then the corresponding painted
+features.  She felt of her own jet hair, shook her head and looked
+questioningly at the light coiffure of Pauline.  She turned to the old
+man, evidently asking if the painting were true in this respect.  Then
+she smiled a smile like Pauline's.  Perhaps she was asking if Pauline
+had changed the color of her hair.
+
+Now she became interested in a book on the corner of the desk.  With
+little musical exclamations of delight she turned the printed pages and
+appreciated that the shelves contained hundreds more of these
+treasures.  The typewritten letters lying about excited her admiration
+and then the pen and ink.  She quickly guessed the use of the pen and
+ran eagerly to the mummy case.  A moment's search brought forth a long
+roll of papyrus.  Before Marvin's eyes she unrolled a scroll covered
+with Egyptian hieroglyphics.
+
+There were footsteps in the hall and the Egyptian looked toward the
+door.  Owen entered, looked at Marvin searchingly, placed him in a more
+comfortable position in the chair, spoke his name and walked out.  What
+seemed most surprising to the sick, man was his secretary's oversight
+of the girl.  He passed in front of her, almost brushing her white robe
+and yet it was clear that he did not see her.
+
+But the Egyptian had seen him and the sight had excited her.  She
+seemed desperately anxious to say something to Marvin, something about
+Pauline.
+
+The mummy had a secret to reveal!
+
+She tore the bracelet from her right wrist and tried to force it into
+Marvin's nerveless grasp.  Try as she would, his muscles did not
+respond.  There were voices in the hallway.  Harry and Pauline were
+running downstairs.  The Princess gave one last imploring glance at the
+paralyzed figure, passed her hand gently over his forehead; then she
+stepped quickly back to the case.
+
+Harry and Pauline rushed in, followed less hastily by Owen.  They
+grasped the old man's hands, and Harry, seizing the telephone, called
+Dr. Stevens.  But to the surprise of everybody Marvin suddenly shook
+off the paralysis, spoke, moved and seemed none the worse for his
+seizure.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WILL
+
+Old Mr. Marvin's faculties returned with a snap.  There was the library
+just as it had been before his peculiar seizure.  His son Harry was
+summoning on the telephone Dr. Stevens, the heart specialist, and
+Pauline, his adopted daughter, was on her knees chafing his hands and
+anxiously watching his face, while Owen, the secretary, was pouring out
+a dose of his medicine.  But the peculiar yellow light had gone.  And
+what about the mummy?  It stood just as he had left it, the lower half
+of the case was in place, the upper half was out, revealing the
+loosened bandages and just a glimpse of the forehead.
+
+One strand of jet black hair hung down.  All was just as it was when
+the little vial had fallen out.
+
+"I'm all right, I'm all right," protested Mr. Marvin, somewhat testily,
+as he twisted about in his chair to get a good view of the mummy.
+"Look out, Harry, don't step on that little bottle."
+
+Harry looked down and picked up the tiny vial which had fallen from the
+bandages wrapped about the ancient form.
+
+"Smell of it," his father ordered.  Harry sniffed it and remarked that
+it smelled musty and passed it to Pauline.  The girl carried it to her
+nostrils spin and again.  She looked perplexed.
+
+"Well, what do you think it is?" asked the old man.
+
+"Why -- I can't remember, but I ought to know.  I'm sure I do know."
+
+"The devil you do," muttered her faster father.
+
+"What makes you think you ought to know?"
+
+"Why, it is so familiar.  I'm certain I've smelled it often before.
+Haven't I?"
+
+"Well, if you have, Polly, you are a lot older than I am, older than
+anything in this country, as old as the pyramids.  That bottle fell out
+of the mummy, and I can assure you it has been there some three or four
+thousand years.  When I smelled of that bottle it had a queer effect on
+me.  I felt as if I were going to have one of my fainting spells and
+was glad to get back to the chair.  It's funny about that mummy.  I
+thought she came out and talked to me."
+
+"Why, father, what a horrible thing!" sympathized Pauline.
+
+"Not horrible at all.  She was a beauty and a princess.  She was
+interested in your picture, Polly, and she looked like you, too,
+except, let's see -- yes, her hair was black, jet black, like that one
+lock you see hanging down."
+
+"Oh," interrupted Pauline, "I wish my hair were black, and I often
+dream that it is, and that I am walking around in a pretty, white
+pleated dress and my feet are bare."
+
+"And a bracelet on your wrist -- your right wrist?" questioned Marvin
+eagerly.
+
+"I don't remember," Pauline replied thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, we'll see if you had one and also whether I was dreaming or
+not," announced the old man with a half ashamed look as he rose
+somewhat unsteadily to his feet.  Harry and Pauline tried to keep him
+quiet.  He brushed their warnings aside and walked unsteadily to the
+mummy.
+
+"Let's see its face," suggested Harry carelessly.
+
+"No," said his father.  "I have an idea that this old but young lady
+would not care to have us look at her.  But there is one thing I must
+find out.  I want to know if she wears a bracelet of linked scarabs on
+her right wrist or not."
+
+All of this was rather a bore to Harry, who lived intensely in the
+present, had no interest in Egypt, except that Pauline was born and
+adopted as an orphan baby there, and asked nothing of the future except
+that it allow him to marry this obstinate but fascinating little
+creature at the earliest possible moment.  The question had been
+brought up half an hour before, and he wanted it settled at once.
+Harry wished they would decide about the marriage instead of fussing
+around with an old mummy.
+
+"My son, I venture to say that you would have been interested in this
+young woman had you met her."
+
+"Possibly," the youth admitted with a slight yawn.
+
+"Yes," continued his father, busily searching for the mummy's right
+wrist, "she was probably what you would call a peach."
+
+"She may have been a peach in her day," thought Harry, "but today she's
+a dried apricot."
+
+The elder Marvin's searching fingers encountered a hard object.  It
+proved to be a scarab, or sacred Egyptian beetle, carved in black
+stone.
+
+"Did you ever dream about that?" asked Harry, chaffing.
+
+"Yes, I have," replied Pauline.  Both men looked at her to see if she
+were serious
+
+"I dreamed that I was very sick and going to die, and an old man with a
+long, thin beard came in.  He gave me a stone beetle like that.  Then
+it seems to me they put it right on my chest and they said -- let's
+see, what did they do that for?  I think it was to cure me of something
+the matter with my heart."
+
+"Polly," said Mr. Marvin, "I never knew you had dreams like this.  But
+are you sure they said it would cure your heart?  Wasn't it for some
+other reason?"
+
+Pauline thought a moment, while Harry lit a cigarette and his father
+worked his fingers down toward the mummy's right wrist.
+
+"No," said Pauline, "I remember now.  It wasn't to cure it at all.  It
+was to make it keep quiet."
+
+"Ho, ho!" laughed Harry.  "I never knew of any one making it flutter
+much.  I guess that was no dream."
+
+Harry's father silenced him with an impatient gesture and turned to
+Pauline, who was watching the wind make cat's paws on the polished
+surface of the Hudson River.
+
+"Go on, girl, go on.  This is remarkable.  I have read of this custom
+in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead'!  Why did they want to keep your
+heart quiet?"
+
+"They said," continued Pauline, dreamily, "that after I died my spirit
+was to be called before somebody  -- a God, I guess -- who would judge
+whether I was good enough for Heaven or not.  That stone beetle was
+placed on my heart to make it keep silent and not tell anything wicked
+I might have done in life.  Aren't dreams crazy things?  Say, Harry,
+there goes a hydroplane."
+
+The two young people hung out the open window.  The old man was
+absorbed, too.  He had at last worked his fingers along the entire
+length of the mummy's right wrist.  It was dry and hard as any mummy he
+had ever seen, but it bore neither bracelet nor any ornament whatever.
+
+"Well," he said, reluctantly, "it was all a dream, interesting but not
+important.  Like Polly's dream, it was just the echo of something I
+have read or seen."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!  What are dreams, anyway?" muttered Harry, with
+impatience.
+
+"Dreams," said Pauline, authoritatively, "dreams are the bubbles which
+rise to the surface of the mind when it cools down in sleep."
+
+"Now," observed Harry, quietly, "when you and father are through
+talking about mummies and dreams I wish you would consider something
+that I am interested in.  I'd like to know how soon you are going to
+marry me?"
+
+"Where did you get that definition of dreams, Polly?" asked the old
+man.
+
+"From my story," said Pauline, proudly.
+
+Both men at once remembered that she had gone to find the magazine and
+show them her first story.  They eagerly demanded to see it.
+
+Pauline picked up the Cosmopolitan from the floor.  She had dropped it
+in her agitation at finding her foster father had fainted. Sure enough,
+there it was:
+
+FIRE ON AN OCEAN LINER
+
+By Pauline Marvin.
+
+It was not the biggest feature by any means, but it was quite a little
+story, and there were several large stirring illustrations.  Both men
+begged her to read it to them, but she modestly declined.
+
+Mr. Marvin adjusted his spectacles and read it through from start to
+finish, frequently looking up to compliment the authoress on some point
+that pleased him.  Harry looked over his father's shoulder, and there
+could be no doubt they were both held and even thrilled by the story.
+
+Mr. Marvin clapped his hands and stated in a loud voice that he was
+proud of her.  Harry expressed his appreciation by a bear-like hug and
+a kiss, all of which she accepted with blushes and protests.
+
+"And -- er -- did they actually pay you something for this?" asked the
+old gentleman.
+
+"Oh, yes," Pauline assured him.  "They sent me a check at once.  It
+paid for that frock you told me was too extravagant."
+
+"A hundred dollars?" ventured Harry from the depths of his ignorance of
+things feminine.
+
+Both Pauline and his father cast pitying glances at him.
+
+"Look here, young man," said the elder Marvin, "whoever led you to
+believe that you could buy dresses for a girl like Polly at a hundred
+dollars?  If you contemplate matrimony on any such deluded basis as
+that you had better back out now before it's too late.  Isn't that so,
+Polly?"
+
+"Why, father," protested the youth, "what do I care what her dresses
+cost?  Polly knows everything I have or ever make is hers, and I can't
+think of a more satisfactory way of spending it than on her."
+
+"That's fine, Harry," laughed the father, "you have just the ideal
+frame of mind and the proper sentiments for a modern husband.  You will
+find, too, that women are very reasonable.  If a man gives his wife all
+he makes, plus the vote, and lets her do just as she pleases -- she'll
+usually let him live in the same house with her, and even get up early
+enough to see him at breakfast once in a while."
+
+"I agree to everything," declared Harry, with the reckless abandon of
+youth in love.  "But I want to know how soon Polly is going to marry
+me."
+
+Pauline, who had said nothing in answer to the preliminary skirmishes,
+now recognized the main attack and opened up in reply.
+
+"I told you I would marry Harry some time, but not for a year or two.
+You admitted that a writer ought to see life in order to write well .
+So there you are.  I must have a year or two of adventure.  There are a
+thousand things I want to do and see before I settle down as Mrs. Harry
+Marvin.  Suppose we say two years."
+
+Harry staggered back as if from a blow.  Two years!  How preposterous!
+He couldn't live that long without Pauline.  In vain he hurled his
+protests and objections.  She stood, sweet, unruffled, sympathetic, but
+as firm as the Rocky Mountains.  The old man listened to the debate for
+some time without comment.  Then he pressed a button on his desk.
+
+In answer came Raymond Owen, the secretary.  He had shown the good
+taste to retire from the library as soon as the conversation became
+personal.  From the vantage point of a room across the hall he had been
+quietly listening, and decided it a rather unfruitful piece of
+eavesdropping.  He appeared the faithful, deferent employee in every
+line as he entered.
+
+"Come here, Raymond," directed the old man, as sharply as a commanding
+officer, "and you, Harry, and you, Pauline."
+
+They obeyed and quickly lined up before his chair with rather surprised
+faces, for Mr. Marvin only called them Pauline and Harry when he was
+very serious.
+
+"Raymond, this is the situation: My son loves Pauline and wants to
+marry her at once.  I have no objection; in fact, I would like to see
+them united at once, but Pauline demurs.  She loves Harry, but feels
+she ought to have two years to see life before settling down.  Two
+years is too much."
+
+"I should say so," growled Harry.
+
+"But, as my old grandfather, who has been gone these forty years now,
+used to say: 'When a woman will, she will, and when she won't, she
+won't -- and there's an end on't.'  I don't blame her for wanting to
+have her own way.  It's the only plan I've found to get along in this
+world, but you can't have all your own way.  You have to compromise.
+So Polly is going to have one year -- that's enough.
+
+"During that year, Raymond, I'm going to put her in your care.  You are
+older and more prudent than either Polly or Harry and will see that she
+comes to no harm.  Take her anywhere she wants to go -- around the
+world if she likes, to do anything within reason.  Do you agree?"
+
+Mr. Marvin looked at Owen, who accepted the duty as calmly as if it
+were an order to post a letter.  Polly also consented after a moment's
+hesitation.  Harry alone protested and argued.  It was a hopeless case
+and he yielded to overwhelming odds.
+
+This matter settled, Mr. Marvin's mind returned to the mummy and his
+curious delusion that it had come to life.  While Owen perused
+Pauline's story and that willful young woman herself tried to cheer up
+her disconsolate lover, the old man returned to the mummy.  He had
+searched for the bracelet on the right wrist, but, after all, perhaps
+the Egyptian might have slipped it onto her left wrist in her hurry to
+get back.
+
+"There it is," he shouted suddenly; "there it is - the bracelet.  She
+wore it on her wrist and he told her to give it to Polly."
+
+Mr. Marvin held in his hand a bracelet of scarabs linked together.  It
+looked to him to the very one the reincarnated mummy had worn.  Harry
+and Pauline in wonder came to him, and it was well they did.  The
+excitement and exertion had again overstrained his failing energies.
+He tottered, and they were just in time to save him from a fall.
+
+It was another of his fainting spells, and they lowered him gently into
+his chair.  But the old man was not unconscious yet.  Feebly he
+repeated to Pauline, "Wear this bracelet -- wear it always -- promise."
+
+Pauline promised, and slipped it on her wrist without more than
+glancing at it.  The old man's eyes closed, and it was clear that this
+faint was more serious than his others.  Harry, about to telephone for
+Dr. Stevens again, was greatly relieved to see the physician stride
+into the room.  There was hardly need of the stethoscope to tell him
+the end was near.
+
+Even before the old man was undressed and in bed, Dr. Stevens had
+prepared and administered a hypodermic.  The patient's eyelids
+fluttered and Dr. Stevens listened to the faintly moving lips.
+
+"The will," called the doctor, "what about the will?"
+
+He glanced at every one, but nobody knew.
+
+A shadow of anxiety passed over the features of the dying millionaire.
+Dr.  Stevens could see that something of serious importance was on the
+old man's mind -- something of importance about his vast property.
+
+Once more he listened and then hastily drawing out his prescription pad
+and fountain pen he wrote a few sentences at the dying man's dictation,
+while the patient rallied and opened his eyes.  The physician held the
+blank before his patient, who read it through and nodded.  Dr. Stevens
+then placed the pen in the trembling fingers and guided his signature.
+A moment more and the physician had signed it as a witness and the
+butler had done the same.
+
+The old manufacturer died as he had lived.
+
+The will written on Dr. Stevens's prescription pad was given to Owen.
+He went to his room and examined it.  It read:
+
+"Bodley Stevens, M.D.  Rx:  I bequeath half my estate to my son, Harry,
+the remainder to my adopted daughter, Pauline, to be held in trust,
+until her marriage, by my secretary, Raymond Owen."
+
+Then followed the signature of the deceased and that of the two
+witnesses.  In vain Owen looked for the handsome bequest to "the
+faithful secretary."  This was a bitter disappointment, and he
+considered for a moment the advisability of destroying the will.  This
+would make valid one of the earlier wills in which he knew he had not
+been forgotten.
+
+The folly of such a course became evident after a few moments thought.
+Dr.  Stevens, the butler, and several others knew the contents of the
+document.  It was so simple that its meaning could hardly be confused
+or forgotten, and every one knew it was in his keeping.  It occurred to
+Owen that quite likely such a hasty death-bed will written by a doctor
+unskilled in law might not be accepted by the courts.
+
+Early the next morning Owen suspended his work of answering telegrams
+of condolence long enough to make a hurried trip to lower Manhattan,
+where the late Stanford Marvin's lawyers had offices.
+
+In vain the great lawyer cudgeled his brains for some flaw.  The will
+ought to be wrong, but it wasn't.  The meaning was so clear that even a
+court couldn't misunderstand it, and the fortune was left to his
+natural beneficiaries.  The lawyer heaved a sigh and said plaintively:
+
+"Too bad, too bad.  Why didn't they call me?"
+
+"Then this will is not valid?" asked Owen.
+
+"Oh, no, it will hold; but what a pity that such a great man's last
+will and testament should be such an -- well, so -- well, this
+instrument is not worthy of conveying such a great estate."
+
+He contemptuously slipped the simple document into an envelope and
+placed it in his safe.  Owen picked up his hat, but hesitated at the
+door.  A question was forming in his mind and with it a hope.
+
+"Mr. Wilmerding," he asked finally, "in case Miss Marvin does not marry
+who would have charge of the estate?"
+
+"I should say," replied the lawyer, "in reply to your question that the
+estate would be held in trust by you."
+
+Returning to the house and entering the library Owen was confronted by
+the unwelcome spectacle of Montgomery Hicks, generally known as Mug.
+Hicks, with his gaudy attire, and ugly face, was always an affront to
+the eye, but to Owen he was a terror, for he held the power of
+blackmail over the secretary.  Owen shrank at the sight of his enemy,
+but immediately took courage.  Though Marvin's death had left the
+secretary no legacy it had also robbed the blackmailer of his power.
+
+Hicks advanced with what he intended to be a winning smile and extended
+a hot, fat hand.
+
+"I see the old man has croaked and I was just dropping in to talk
+business," Hicks's newsboy voice growled out.
+
+"Hicks," said Owen, keeping his hand in his pocket, "if you came here
+to get your money out of the legacy old man Marvin was to leave me.
+Well, you won't get it and you never will get it.  Marvin didn't leave
+me a cent, so there is nothing for you to get.  He did leave me a job
+in his will, a job that will last for a year, and neither you nor any
+one else can force me out of that job.  You can't blackmail me any
+more."
+
+"At the end of the year what becomes of you?" asked Hicks.
+
+"Then I get a position somewhere else; but that is none of your
+business."
+
+"You don't want a position, Owen.  A position calls for work.  You
+don't like hard work any more then I do.  You can't stand work much
+longer, either.  Look at your eyes and your skin, how many grains do
+you take a day, anyway?"
+
+"I haven't touched a grain of morphine in six months," lied Owen.  "But
+get out of my way -- you can't get anything out of me and you can't
+blackmail me.  If you come to this house again I'll have you thrown
+out."
+
+"Just a minute," said Hicks, as pleasantly as he could, straining his
+coarse features into the unaccustomed position of a smile.  "I didn't
+come to get money out of you.  I know all about the will.  What I came
+for was to help you and give you a tip.  You and I can make a lot of
+easy money together.  You've got the opportunity and I've got the
+brains.  Now, to show you I'm your friend, look at this!"
+
+Hicks handed him a paper which Owen read with surprise.  It was a
+receipt in full for all Owen owed.  Owen put it in his pocket.
+
+"That's right, keep it.  You and I are going to be so rich before long
+that a matter of a thousand or two wouldn't be worth talking about
+between friends."
+
+Owen had been under the thumb of this man, had feared and hated him and
+hoped for the day when he might sneer in his face and defy him.  This
+was the time, and yet he felt Hicks had something to offer.  He was in
+temporary charge of millions.  There should be, there must be, some way
+to make this control permanent or else to delve into these millions
+while they were in his care.  As Hicks hinted, this was an opportunity
+and he needed not brains, but rather experience and advice.  Owen had
+been a rascal on a short time, why not take a partner like this man
+Hicks?  He would prevent mistakes, and mistakes are all a criminal need
+fear.
+
+Owen fingered uneasily the paper Hicks had put in his hand.  He drew it
+out of his pocket -- yes, it was a receipt in full for all that Owen
+owed the scoundrel.  What could be Hicks's scheme?  Owen turned a
+puzzled and worried gaze upon his companion.
+
+Hicks observed him closely, read the misgivings in Owen's mind and,
+drawing close, whispered something in the latter's ear.
+
+But Owen's drug-saturated nerves trembled at the thought.  He pushed
+Hicks aside and walked rapidly out of the room, calling over his
+shoulder:
+
+"I won't have anything to do with you.  I don't want you to come near
+me or speak to me again.  I'm done with you."
+
+"When you want me you know where to find me," was Hicks's parting
+answer.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+PAULINE TAXES THE FIRST TRICK
+
+"All right, I'll do it," growled Harry Marvin, with the air of a martyr
+going to the stake.  "I'll do it for your sake, Polly."
+
+"Well, you'd better begin to get ready," said Pauline blithely.
+
+"I'll climb into a frock coat and endure an hour or two of this
+afternoon tea chatter," promised Harry, "but first you must talk sense
+with me for a few minutes."
+
+"Oh, Harry," spoke Pauline, softly, "I know what 'talking sense'
+means.  You want to argue about my year of adventure.  Now, lets not
+argue.  Let's just be happy.  You know I love you and I know you love
+me, and that ought to be enough.  This year will be gone before you
+know it.  I'm going to begin it right away just to please you.  The
+sooner it starts the sooner it will be over."
+
+"Begin it?" said Harry.  "Why, a month of it is gone now.  But it's all
+nonsense.  Polly, if you love me you are going to give up this crazy
+idea."
+
+A maid, bringing the card of Miss Lucille Hamlin, interrupted Harry.
+She was the first of the afternoon tea party.  Polly hurried Harry off
+to dress, and, of course, he had no further chance to "talk sense
+"until the door had closed on the last guest.  Then he pounced upon
+her.  But Pauline, sweetly stubborn, cheerfully unyielding, insisted on
+carrying out her father's promise to the letter.
+
+Raymond Owen, the secretary of the late Mr. Marvin, had thought it
+important to overhear this argument, and finally to walk into the
+library where the debate was going on.  If the adventures were to start
+he had an idea for a beginning.  The words of Hicks, the blackmailer,
+had been in his mind for some thirty days and were beginning to bear
+fruit.  He had soon reached the point of hoping, almost praying,
+something would happen to Pauline that he might be left in control of
+her, estate.  During the last few days Owen had progressed, from merely
+hoping to readiness to help his wish to come true.
+
+Harry instantly appealed to the secretary to dissuade Pauline.  There
+was no doubt that Owen had some influence over the girl.  In years gone
+by, before Owen had taken to the drug, Pauline had sought him out in
+many a time of perplexity and learned to rely on his tactful,
+well-considered advice.
+
+To the surprise of the young master of the house, Owen made no attempt
+to dissuade.  Very unobtrusively he pointed out that for many years he
+had been accustomed to carry out the wishes of Harry's father, and that
+he was bound to fulfill his last wish in the same way.
+
+"Raymond, you're a dear," laughed Pauline; "let's think of something
+thrilling to do right off.  Have you any idea?
+
+"No," lied Owen, "I hadn't given the matter any thought . We might look
+at a newspaper and see what's happening."
+
+Owen had a paper with him and the three examined it together.
+
+Owen pretended to discover that an aviation meet was about to be held.
+His idea, for which Harry promptly hated him, was to induce some
+aviator to take Pauline as a passenger.  Many of the races called for
+carrying a passenger.  Harry made a few objections, but the speed with
+which they were overruled showed that he had no standing in this
+court.  So Harry subsided, but he thought very hard.
+
+Several things were becoming evident to Harry.
+
+One was that this year to see life and have adventures was actually
+going to take place and no opposition on his part would stop it.  It
+was also clear that if he hoped to control Pauline's adventures in any
+way it would be by the use of his wits, matching them against Pauline
+and the secretary.
+
+When Pauline and Owen decided upon the aeroplane ride, Harry contented
+himself with remarking that he would have to see about it.  Both
+chuckled when he said it, Pauline outwardly and Owen inwardly.
+
+Then they had dinner under the round glassy eye of Aunt Cornelia.  Aunt
+Cornelia was an elderly maiden relative of Harry, who had arrived with
+others for the funeral and made the brilliant discovery that since Mr.
+Marvin's death the "social situation," as she termed it, at the Marvin
+house had become impossible.
+
+It seemed, according to Aunt Cornelia, that a young man and a young
+woman of impressionable age living in the same house unchaperoned
+constituted an "impossible social situation,"  Either Pauline or Harry
+must move out or someone must be installed as chaperon. Of course, the
+chaperon was the least of the three evils and Aunt Cornelia, being the
+discoverer of the job, was elected to fill it.
+
+Harry ordered a bottle of wine with his dinner.  Though he actually
+drank very little, this unusual event created no little consternation.
+
+"Harry, I didn't know you drank?" said Pauline.
+
+"I am just beginning.  You see, now that I must take over father's
+affairs and mix with men of the world I ought to get a little
+experience in things.  See life and know what's what."
+
+After dinner Harry casually asked if Pauline thought her adventures
+would lead her to Paris.  Pauline thought it likely, whereat Harry
+remarked that he might see her over there.
+
+"I haven't been to Paris since I was a kid, and I really ought to see
+it, don't you think?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Pauline, without enthusiasm, "but wait until we are
+married and we'll do Paris together."
+
+"No, Polly, that won't do.  I'm sorry, but as you say, you can't see
+life after you're married and settled down, so I'll have to do Paris
+alone."
+
+"Harry, are you sure you love me?" Pauline whispered.
+
+"Polly, I know it, and everybody else knows it except you.  Get Owen,
+he's a notary public, and I'll take an oath before him that you have
+been the only girl in all the world, are now and ever will be, world
+without end, amen."
+
+"And I love you, Harry," said Pauline, lowering her eyes until he saw
+only the silky lashes.
+
+"Why, Polly, that's the first time you ever volunteered that
+information."
+
+"Yes, Harry, I love you too much to let you go to Paris."
+
+"Paris can't hurt me unless I let it hurt me."
+
+"Harry, you won't be quite the same sort of boy when you come back from
+Paris.  Will you promise not to go until we are married?"
+
+"Will you promise not to go on this trip of adventure?"
+
+"Why should I?" demanded Pauline.
+
+"Because you won't ever be quite the same sort of girl when you come
+back."
+
+After breakfast the next morning when the big touring car rolled up to
+the front door to got Pauline and Owen, Harry was hurt that he had not
+been consulted.  Pauline's belated invitation to go with them to the
+aviation field in the automobile was declined.  Away went the big car
+to the fine stretch of roads, where it made short work of the distance
+to the aviation grounds.
+
+Owen made a complete canvass of the "hangars" and soon accounted for
+every machine entered in the race for the next day.  From all but one
+of the aviators he obtained a flat refusal.  Not for money or any other
+consideration would they take a strange woman as a passenger.  The only
+exception was a Frenchman, whose hesitation in declining led Owen to
+further argument.  At the last moment Pauline, impatient at the
+suspense, entered the Frenchman's "hangar" and added her blandishments
+to Owen's financial inducements.  The gallant foreigner succumbed and a
+bargain was struck.  He exhibited his tame bird of steel and wood and
+cloth with the utter pride of a mother showing off her only child.
+
+The aviator's fingers touched one of the wires and the easy smile left
+his face.  He turned to his mechanics and sharp words followed.  A
+moment later one of his assistants was at work tightening the wire.
+Owen's eyes scarcely left the wire, and when the opportunity arose he
+questioned the mechanic as, to what would happen if that particular
+steel strand should fail during flight.  The foreigner explained
+frankly that the aeroplane would capsize and plunge to the earth.  But
+he assured Owen that no such thing would happen, as he had just
+tightened the wire in question and would make another inspection after
+the practice flight that afternoon.
+
+All the way home Owen's thoughts were of that wire and what it would
+mean to him.  In the meanwhile Harry, after watching the car depart
+toward Hempstead, concluded to follow.  He went to the picturesque
+private garage behind the Marvin mansion and soon was, following in the
+tracks of the bigger car.
+
+Arrived on the field, he recognized Pauline's car and awaited patiently
+until he saw it drive away.  Then he interviewed the aviator and
+learned of the proposed trip on the morrow.  Harry's French was nothing
+to boast of, nor was the Frenchman's English.  But they managed to have
+a long and in the end a heated argument.  The birdman said given his
+word to a beautiful lady, and that settled it.  Besides, there was no
+danger in his wonderful machine.  Had he not flown upside down and done
+all the things the great Pegoud himself had done?"
+
+"As you Americans say -- let's see, what is your idiom?"
+
+One of his mechanics prompted him:
+
+"Ah, yes," he said, with a smile.  "I believe the proper expression is,
+'I should worry.'"
+
+Harry threw up his hands and went home.  As he buzzed his horn outside
+the garage the door was opened by the Marvin chauffeur with a telegram
+in his hand.  The chauffeur's wife was sick and he wanted a couple of
+days' leave of absence.  Harry granted it instantly.  That evening he
+made no mention of either the chauffeur's absence or his trip to the
+field.  Pauline thought she was teasing Harry by saying nothing of her
+plans.  She was sure he was eaten up with curiosity to know the result
+of her visit and admired his ability, as she thought, to conceal it.
+
+Owen spent a nervous evening.  He walked out soon after dinner and from
+a drug- store telephone booth called up a friend in the insurance
+business.  To the secretary's surprise and disappointment he learned
+that the percentage of accidents to aviators had become comparatively
+small.  Passengers were particularly fortunate.  The friend even agreed
+to obtain accident insurance for any one at a reasonable premium.
+
+If aeroplanes had become reasonably safe the chance of Pauline's being
+killed during the flight on the following day was insignificant.  He
+must give up all hope of wealth from the permanent control of her
+estate.  As the evening wore on Owen began to feel how he had
+unconsciously relied on this hope.  He doubled his evening dose of
+morphine, but it neither soothed his disappointment nor brought him
+sleep.
+
+Hour after hour, during the night, his sleepless eyes seemed to see
+that loose wire which the mechanic had explained to be so vitally
+important.  He could see in imagination the machine flying off into the
+clouds with Pauline in it.  He could see it suddenly waver, dip and
+plunge to the earth.  In his mind's eye he saw himself rushing to, the
+wreck, lifting out the girl's crushed form, wildly calling for a
+doctor, and exulting all the time that she was beyond human aid.
+
+About two o'clock Owen fell into a doze, and in that doze came one of
+his vivid opium dreams.  He beheld Hicks enter his bedroom.  It was not
+Hicks, the blackmailer, but Hicks, the counselor, who had told Owen how
+he might become rich.  Hicks was speaking to him in a sort of noiseless
+voice, very different from his usual tones.  He spoke in a sort of
+shells or husks of words.  The consonants were there, but the vowels
+were lacking.  Yet he heard as plainly as if the red-faced man had
+shouted.  Hicks advised him to be a man, to show courage for once, to
+risk something, and then reap the reward forever afterward.  "Take your
+motorcycle, ride to the aviation field before daylight, file that wire
+half through, and fate will take care of the rest."
+
+But Owen lacked the nerve.  He feared that he would be seen sneaking
+onto the field at night or at daybreak.  Hicks replied that the field
+was deserted at this hour.  Owen then insisted that the aeroplane would
+be guarded, and even if it were not locked in its hangar the first rasp
+of a file on the wire would call the attention of some one on guard.
+No, it was too much, Owen could not do it.  Instead, he made a counter
+suggestion that Hicks should undertake the task, since he was so
+certain of its success.  For his part the secretary agreed to divide
+all that the estate might be made to yield him.
+
+Owen, like everybody else, had seen many strange things in dreams, but
+never had he known of any character in a dream admitting or even
+suggesting that he was a dream.  Yet this was just what Hicks did.
+
+"I would, Owen.  I would do it in a minute if I were talking to you.
+But this isn't me at all.  I'm only a dream, in, reality I'm sound
+asleep in a hotel on upper Broadway, where I am dreaming that I am
+talking to you.  Tomorrow morning I'll remember enough of this dream to
+make me go down to the aviation field with a sort of premonition that
+Pauline is going to be killed in an aeroplane."
+
+"How did you know about that wire and that she is going to fly
+tomorrow," asked Owen.
+
+"I don't know that," said the phantom Hicks frankly in his empty
+voice.  "There is a third party in this and I don't know who he is or
+much about him, except that he is not a living being.  He seems to be
+somebody from the past, a priest of some old religion I ought to have
+studied about when I was at school.  I don't know what his motive is,
+but he is with us.  He wants her killed for some reason.  He brought
+this dream of me to you so I could explain.
+
+"You needn't worry about the man on guard over the aeroplanes.  That
+man won't wake up, no matter how much noise you make."
+
+"How do you know?" Owen asked.
+
+"He knows," replied Hicks, "because he has transferred the effects of
+your morphine from your astral body to his.  That's how he knows.  You
+ought to know, too, because you have taken almost enough of the drug to
+kill you tonight, and yet this is the first  time you have even closed
+your eyes.  You'd better let him help us and file that wire as he
+advises.  I'm going now, you will wake up in a moment.  This priest man
+told me after I had given you the message to drop this out of my hand
+and the dream would end.  So here goes.  Goodbye."
+
+Owen saw Hicks hold his hand over a table and drop a small black shiny
+object upon it.  As it dropped Hicks vanished and Owen awoke.  He heard
+a sharp snap and saw something black and shiny on the table.  For a
+moment the secretary sat quietly in his chair staring at the table and
+making sure that he was no longer dreaming.  Then he examined the black
+object.  It was the scarab which old Mr.  Marvin had removed from the
+folds of the mummy.  An image of the beetle which Egypt held sacred,
+carved in black stone.  Owen had not noticed the scarab before his
+short nap and he could not account for its presence in his room
+anyway.
+
+A little later he donned his motor-cycling suit, tip-toed downstairs,
+noiselessly went out by a back door and was soon trundling his big
+two-cylinder motorcycle from the garage.  He was careful to push it out
+of the Marvin premises onto the highway before lighting his lamp and
+starting.
+
+Arriving at the field just at dawn Owen found it as deserted as the
+spectral Hicks had promised.  From the tool kit of his motor-cycle he
+took two files of different shapes and a pair of pliers and walked
+briskly and fearlessly over the uneven ground to the hangars.  All were
+closed except one, and that one contained the French machine in which
+Pauline was to ascend.  The secretary knew that this hangar would be
+open.  He knew in advance that he would find a mechanic on guard and
+sound asleep.
+
+Whether real or unreal, awake or asleep, the business of the moment was
+the filing of that wire.  Owen recognized it readily and found it not
+to be a single wire, as he supposed, but a slender cable composed of
+many strands.  These strands resisted his file and even the clipper
+attached to his pliers.  After what seemed an hour's work he had
+weakened or broken enough of the metal threads so that the cable
+stretched perceptibly at that point to do more might cause the cable to
+break at once and betray what had been done.
+
+Owen hurriedly, returned to his machine had dashed back through the
+beautiful morning air to the Marvin home.  Servants were stirring in
+their rooms and the gardener was engaged in shaking some sort of powder
+from a can onto a bare spot on the front lawn.  He glanced up at Owen
+without surprise, for these early rides were known to be an old habit
+of the secretary.
+
+Owen took the machine to the garage, satisfied that there was nothing
+guilty in his appearance or the gardener would have noted it.  Stepping
+out of the garage he met Harry and could not help starting
+perceptibly.  Harry looked him in the eye, and there was nothing for
+Owen to do but stare steadily back.
+
+"You are up very early, Owen, said Harry, looking at the dust on the
+motor.
+
+"Yes, I've been for a long ride.  I think the morning air does me
+good."
+
+"You don't look well, Owen.  Why don't you go to bed today.  I'll take
+Polly to the meet."
+
+"No, thanks.  I wouldn't miss seeing Miss Pauline fly," said Owen
+firmly.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OWEN WINS THE FIRST GAME
+
+Harry Marvin entered the little private garage back of the Marvin
+mansion, locked the door and drew the shades of the small windows.
+There were only two automobiles in the garage.  One was the big six
+cylinder touring car in which Pauline and Owen had made their trip the
+day before to the aviation field.  The other was the two-seated
+runabout that Harry had driven over the same ground just behind them.
+
+Having made sure that nobody was about, Harry lifted up the hood of the
+touring car and without the slightest provocation attacked it with a
+wrench.  He removed the carburetor, took it to pieces, lifted out the
+hollow metal float and deliberately made two punctures in it.  Then he
+tossed the dismembered parts upon a work bench and was about to operate
+on the runabout when he heard voices outside.
+
+He was barely in time to unlock the door and be found busily working on
+the car when Pauline entered.  She had just learned of the chauffeur's
+absence.  Harry volunteered the additional bad news that the big car
+was out of order.  Like every disappointed woman, she insisted on
+knowing exactly what was wrong.  Harry told her, with many long
+technical details, and, not knowing at all what he was talking about,
+she had to be satisfied.
+
+Could he fix it in time to get her to the aviation field before the
+race?
+
+Well, that depended partly on whether she would go away and not bother
+him until breakfast.
+
+Pauline could, and she certainly would refrain from bothering him.
+Never before had Harry found her a bother, nor, for that matter, had
+any other man in her recollection.  Out she went, with more color than
+usual in her pink cheeks and the light of battle in her eyes.
+
+"By George, I've got to play my cards carefully," thought Harry, as he
+contemplated the runabout.  It was evident that he had designs on the
+health of the two-seater also.  But he felt the necessity of subtlety
+in this case.  He could not assassinate it boldly by tearing out a
+vital organ as he had done to the bigger car.  This runabout must die a
+slow, lingering death.  How was he to do it?  His first idea was to
+weaken the tires and invite "blowouts" on the road.  But this could not
+be done with certainty, and some kind friend might supply him with new
+tires.
+
+A more promising idea was to drain the engine of its oil, knowing that
+sooner or later the pistons would run dry and stick.  Such a proceeding
+would ruin the engine, and Harry was too good a mechanic to spoil a
+first rate engine, especially one built by his father.  He would as
+soon think of hamstringing a faithful horse.  A better plan soon came
+to him and put him into action.  It soon had him flat on his back under
+the car, boring a hole in the bottom of the gasoline tank.  When the
+life-blood of the car began to trickle out in a stream he stopped the
+hole with a small wooden peg.
+
+The young man now frowned at the only remaining vehicle which had, not
+received his attention, Owen's motorcycle.
+
+Harry went to the hose used for washing down the cards and collected a
+little water in the palm of his hand.  With the other hand he removed
+the cap from the motorcycle's tank and allowed two or three drops of
+water to mingle with the gasoline.
+
+This done, Harry let down his sleeves, washed his hands, and sauntered
+in to breakfast, with the unwelcome announcement that the big car was,
+for the day at least, beyond human aid.
+
+There was a flicker of suspicion in Owen's sallow face at the news.  He
+wondered if Harry had disabled the touring car that he might ride alone
+with Pauline.
+
+"I am afraid," said Harry, quietly, "that you will have to ride in the
+runabout alone with me, Polly.  It's rather hard on Raymond, but I
+guess he must go on his motorcycle or by train."
+
+"Oh, I think you wrecked it on purpose," said Pauline, without the
+slightest suspicion that she was stating the truth.
+
+Owen, worried by vague misgivings about Harry, looked into the tank of
+the runabout to make sure that it was full, and then scurried away on
+his two wheeled mount.  He considered waiting until the runabout was
+ready to start and keeping the machine in sight, but it seemed wiser to
+be on the field where he could make sure the Frenchman would not forget
+his bargain nor start before Pauline arrived.
+
+Pauline was ready with such record-breaking suddenness that it gave her
+the novel experience of waiting for Harry.
+
+She bad not forgotten that her lover had asked her not to bother him
+while he worked on the car.  After that slight to her pride the young
+lady would rather die than go near the garage while he was in it.
+During the next five minutes unpleasant doubts entered her mind.  What
+could this indifference and neglect mean?  She had looked upon Harry
+ever since his return from college as a personal possession.  Of
+course, technically he wasn't hers until she married him.  But if he
+were not her property, at least she had an option on the handsome youth
+until such time as she saw fit to either take his name or relinquish
+him to some one else.  In that case she wondered to whom she would like
+to turn him over.  There was her schoolmate and chum, Miss Hamlin.  How
+lucky any man would be to get her, and Harry -- how would he feel about
+it?  Then, like a cold draught in her brain came the recollection that
+Lucille and Harry had corresponded all the four years he was at
+college.
+
+Could it be that she, Pauline, had been too willful and headstrong with
+Harry?  If so, was it possible that the keen edge of his adoration was
+wearing dull?  Pauline had just succeeded in stamping these unpleasant
+questions deep down into the subconscious parts of her mind when the
+young man whisked up in the runabout.
+
+Pauline's wrath melted rapidly.  Harry drove, as he did everything out
+in the open air, magnificently.  His judgment of distances and openings
+was precise, and his skill in weaving his way through heavy traffic was
+startling.  A good looking young man is seldom seen to better
+advantage, especially by a girl, than when driving a powerful car.
+Pauline loved to drive with Harry.  Besides his spectacular tricks he
+had a guileless manner of getting the better of arguments with crossing
+policemen.
+
+Harry was not driving as fast as usual.  This fact was impressed on her
+by shouts and waving of hands from a car which passed them from
+behind.
+
+"That's Lucille," cried Pauline, waving.
+
+"Yes, and, confound it, that's Billy Madison taking her to the races."
+
+"Well, why shouldn't he?" asked Pauline.  "Isn't it all right?"
+
+"Yes but it seems to me he is paying deal of attention to Lucille and
+-- say, Polly, you don't suppose she'd be silly enough to care for him,
+do, you?"
+
+That sensation of a cold wave in the back of her brain came again.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, a little coldly.  "Why -- does it
+matter very much to you?"
+
+Harry hesitated, even stammered a little, in denying that it did.  He
+stammered, as Pauline well understood, because he was not telling her
+his true thoughts.  It did matter, and she knew it.  In reality it
+mattered because Harry knew too much about young Madison to want him to
+win the affection of any friend of his, but Harry did not wish to
+explain.
+
+"So Harry does care for Lucille and always has cared," thought
+Pauline.  The sense of possession of the youth beside her faded and he
+seemed far away.  If a man fears he is losing his grip on a girl he
+redoubles his attentions and racks his brains to be more interesting
+and attractive to her.  A girl in the same situation reverses the
+tactics.
+
+Just as Harry felt the absolute zero which scientists talk about
+settling upon him, he remembered a very important duty.
+
+"Seems to me we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing
+on his clutch pedal and trying to took concerned.
+
+"I think we have been a long time getting to the aviation field," was
+Pauline's chilly answer.
+
+Harry stopped the car, went back and pulled out the little wooden plug
+in the gasoline tank. Then away they went again, leaving a little wet
+line in the dust of the road.  Pauline stared straight ahead.  Harry's
+attempts at conversation fell on the stony ground of silence, or at
+best brought forth only the briefest and most colorless answers.  Soon
+Harry's practiced ear caught the preliminary warning of waning
+gasoline, and a moment later, half way up a gentle hill, with a sob
+from all its six cylinders the car gave up the ghost.
+
+A few miles ahead Owen also was in difficulties.  He had been sailing
+along merrily until he stopped at : little roadhouse for a drink.  The
+machine had been all right when he got off and he knew nobody had
+touched it, yet now it acted as if possessed by the evil one.  With
+great difficulty he was able to start it, and once started it coughed,
+bucked and showed all the symptoms of bronchitis and pneumonia.  By
+dint of strenuous pedaling Owen helped the asthmatic motor to the top
+of the next hill.  It ran as smoothly as a watch all the way down the
+other side and then imitated a bunch of cannon crackers on the
+following rise.
+
+Owen was a good motorcycle rider, but a very poor mechanic.  His
+machine had been adjusted, cleaned and kept in repair by the Marvin
+chauffeur, and the secretary had seldom, cause to investigate it on the
+road.  He had always used the carefully filtered gasoline from the
+garage, so that he neither understood the present alarming symptoms nor
+knew their simple cure.  His motor was protesting at a drop of water
+which had entered the needle valve of his carburetor and, being heavier
+than gasoline, had lodged there and stopped its flow. It would have
+been an easy, matter to drain the carburetor, but instead Owen with
+nervous fingers adjusted everything he could get his hands on, and
+after two hours' work trundled it into a farmhouse and hired the farmer
+to drive him the short remaining distance to the aviation field.
+
+Several machines were in the air, but not the Frenchman's, when the
+farmer drove up.  The roads and the edges of the field were alive with
+cars and spectators as the secretary hastened to the "hangars."  The
+French aviator welcomed Owen and inquired for the mademoiselle.  This
+confirmed Owen's fears that something had happened to her on the way.
+It had troubled him a little that the runabout had not passed him on
+the road, but Harry might have made a detour to avoid some section of
+bad road.
+
+Owen lost another hour in watching and worrying before he made up his
+mind to go to the rescue.  There were plenty of idle cars, but it was
+not easy to hire one, as they were mostly guarded by chauffeurs with no
+right to rent or lend them.  At last a man was found who was willing to
+pick up $10 and take a chance that his master would not know about it.
+
+The rescue car found them just where they had stopped, half way up the
+hill.  Pauline had run the scale of feminine annoyance, from silence to
+sarcasm, to tears.  The tears produced almost the same effect on
+Harry's determination to keep Pauline from flying that the drops of
+water had in Owen's carburetor.  The spectacle of the girl he loved
+weeping had almost broken up his resolve when Owen dashed by, shouted,
+turned around and drew up alongside.
+
+Harry asked for help, and the chauffeur who had never had the pleasure
+of tinkering with a "Marvin Six," was inclined to dismount and aid at
+least in diagnosing the car's ailment.  While he was thinking about it
+and surveying the parts which Harry had taken out and strewn about the
+running board in his pretended trouble hunt Pauline had dashed away her
+tears and transferred her pretty self to the new car.  Pauline and Owen
+both knew there was barely time to reach the field before the
+Frenchman's ascent.  So with scanty farewells Harry was left to
+reassemble his car.  When he had set up the last nut he replaced the
+little plug in the tank, produced a can of gasoline from the locker
+behind the seats, emptied it into his tank and drove at reckless speed
+for the aviation grounds.
+
+He was just in time to see a tiny speck on the edge of the horizon.
+This, he learned, was the Frenchman's machine.  He was told that it
+carried a passenger.  The speck grew rapidly in size, developed the
+insect shape of a biplane and soon seemed to be over the other end of
+the aviation field.  The young man's joy at seeing the aeroplane
+returning in safety was dampened by a little feeling of shame that by
+such devious means he had almost spoiled Pauline's pleasure.
+
+"I act like an old woman worrying Polly this way," he decided.  "No
+wonder she is cross to me lately.  She must think I would be a tyrant
+of a --
+
+Harry's last words were choked by a spasm of the throat.
+
+There were shouts and gestures from the spectators.
+
+A light gust of wind had struck the aeroplane on the right wing.  It
+wavered an instant, like a dragon fly about to alight, and then instead
+of responding to the aviator's levers turned on its left side and
+plunged to the ground.  A cloud of dust arose, half hiding the wreck,
+and then the crash of impact came to his ears.
+
+There was a second of silence, broken by a groan.  Harry heard the
+groan and didn't even know it came from his own throat.  He was in
+motion now, forcing people to the right and left and running down the
+field.  It seemed miles to the other end, and he was gratefully
+conscious that others nearer were hurrying to the rescue, if rescue it
+might be called.
+
+The aeroplane had dropped like a stone from a height that forbade hope
+of escape.  Would she be conscious and would he be in time to give and
+receive a last message of love before her splendid young life was
+quenched in the black blot of death?  Besides grief there was fury in
+the runner's heart, wrath against Owen for encouraging this foolish and
+dangerous caprice, against the unfortunate driver who had failed to
+preserve his precious freight, and against nature who condemns every
+living thing by one means or another to that same final failure and
+wreck death.
+
+Gasping for breath from his exertions, he was at last within a hundred
+feet of the ruin, and saw people lifting up the engine and removing a
+limp figure.  Just then two people stepped in his way.  He did not turn
+out but rushed straight at them, rather glad to have something to burl
+aside in his blind anger, nor did he notice that one was a woman.
+Harry's plunge carried him between them and knocked both down, just as
+he had often bowled over the "interference "in his football games.  On
+he lurched, wondering vaguely at hearing his name called.  He heard it
+again and it sounded like Pauline's voice.
+
+He turned, and it was Pauline.
+
+After all Pauline had arrived too late -- had missed that fatal
+adventure.
+
+Owen watched Harry lift Pauline up and wrap her in his arms with a
+squeeze that hurt.  But it was a hurt she loved and though she sobbed
+as if her heart would break they were sobs of relief and happiness.
+
+Owen watched a moment and then slunk away; his schemes had been for
+nothing.  Pauline was alive and happy in her lover's arms, and the
+secretary was no nearer his goal of permanent control of her estate
+than before.  He walked to the entrance of' the tent and tried to learn
+from the nurses and doctors who were hurrying in and out whether the
+French aviator would live or die.  Nobody would stop to give him a
+satisfactory answer.  There was a flap in the back of the tent, and
+through this Owen cautiously peered.  He saw a nurse with something
+that looked like wet absorbent cotton dabbing at a round black object
+
+Presently he saw that the round object was the head of a man blackened
+by fire.  Just then the nurse looked up, saw Owen's guilty face and
+gave a little exclamation of dismay.  At the same instant Owen felt a
+hand grasp his elbow.  Withdrawing his head from the tent, he turned
+quickly and was confronted by the red face of Hicks, the blackmailer,
+counselor and dream messenger.
+
+The secretary backed away from Hicks with a face of terror.
+
+"Don't be scared," said Hicks in a hoarse whisper.
+
+I feel as if I were in this thing as deep as you are."
+
+"In what thing? "asked Owen.
+
+"Don't bluff, old man," said Hicks.  "Didn't you dream about me last
+night?"
+
+"Well, what have my dreams to do with you?"
+
+"Stop bluffing," replied Hicks.  "Didn't you see me in a dream last
+night?  And didn't I leave a black, shining stone on the table when I
+left?"
+
+Owen did not deny these questions, and the red-visaged man went on:
+
+"I see you took my advice -- that is, his advice, whoever he is, and
+you fixed the wire."
+
+"Look here, Hicks, in heaven's name, tell me what this means.  I did
+dream about you; you told me to do the thing, and it's your fault.  You
+admit you are in it.  Now, what is it?"
+
+"Owen," said Hicks, "you and I are a couple of pikers in a big game --
+bigger than we understand.  We hold the cards, but somebody else is
+playing the hand for us.  He is an old guy and a wise one, four
+thousand years old, he tells me, and, though it scares me out of my
+boots to think who I am trailing along with, I'm going to stick and
+you'd better stick, too, and let him play our hand to the end."
+
+"Who is it?" asked Owen, wondering if the morphine had gotten the
+better of him again or if Hicks were playing some uncanny deceit on
+him.
+
+"I don't know," replied Hicks.  "He's somebody who has been dead 4,000
+years, and he wants to have this girl Pauline killed so he can get her
+back.  I suppose he's some kind of ghostly white slaver.  It isn't our
+business what he is as long as he takes care of us.  If we'll help him
+he'll help us."
+
+"Well, he didn't manage very well today," objected Owen.
+
+"He planned all right," rejoined Hicks.  "The machine fell, and if
+she'd been in it she'd have been killed.  But the other side played a
+card.  I don't know what the card was, but it took the trick and she
+didn't go up in the machine.  That's all.  But don't worry, we'll have
+better luck some other time."
+
+Owen shook his head.  He could make nothing of this battle of unseen
+forces.  It was clear to him that he had grasped at the one big chance
+to get Pauline's estate and had missed it.  He told Hicks so frankly.
+
+"That's where you're wrong again," insisted Hicks.  "If that girl had
+been killed today it would have been a big blunder."
+
+"A blunder?" queried Owen.  "Didn't you say that Pauline must be put
+out of the way before we can get hold of her fortune?"
+
+"Listen," said Hicks glancing cautiously about, "come over here away
+from these people."
+
+"What do you mean by saying that it would have been a big blunder if
+Pauline had been killed in that flying machine?" demanded Owen.
+
+"Yes, an almighty big blunder -- that's what I said, and I can tell you
+why.  We were pretty stupid not to think of it before.  Now here's
+what's got to happen to Miss Pauline --"
+
+Hicks placed his mouth close to Owen's car and whispered.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PIRATE AND PAULINE
+
+A sort of  false quiet, like the calm that broods between storms, kept
+all serene at the Marvin mansion for a week after the aeroplane
+catastrophe.  Little had been seen of Harry, who was busy with
+directors' meetings and visits to the factories.  Owen had read with
+alarm of rumors that some one had tampered with a wire of the wrecked
+biplane.  But if the authorities were investigating he saw no signs of
+it, and suspicion pointed no finger at him.
+
+What puzzled and worried Owen more than anything else was his own mind
+and behavior.  Having no belief in the supernatural, he could not
+account for the dream which had thrown him into a criminal partnership
+with Hicks.  Hicks had blackmailed him in the past, and there was
+nobody he had feared and hated more than this vulgar and disreputable
+race track man.  Yet Hicks had appeared to him in a dream, and Owen had
+promptly done his bidding, involving himself in what would probably
+turn out to be murder.  The newspapers reported the French aviator as
+barely living from day to day.
+
+Owen suffered the torment of a lost soul, but, at least he had no more
+dreams, or spectral visitations.  Hicks called him on the telephone
+once or twice, but the secretary refused to talk.
+
+Pauline, too, had a busy week.  Besides her usual social activities,
+she rewrote and finished her new story.  It seemed to her even better
+than the one in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.
+
+"This will surely be taken," Pauline thought with a little sigh of
+regret, "and that means the end of my year of adventures --"
+
+She had determined on this course the night after the accident.  It was
+after midnight, and Pauline was trying to marshal the exciting
+recollections of the day into the orderly mental procession that leads
+to sleep.  Very faintly she heard what sounded like the music of a
+distant mandolin.  Pauline knew it was Harry, went to the open window
+and looked down on the dark lawn.  There he was playing with a bit of
+straw instead of a pick that his music might not disturb the sleepers
+in the house.
+
+Pauline wanted to throw her arms around him and promise not to cause
+any more worry.  But she didn't, because she couldn't reach him from
+the window.  After Harry had gone Pauline decided to finish her story,
+send it to a publisher and let his decision be hers.
+
+"If they accept it, you stay home and marry Harry," she told the pretty
+face under the filmy night cap which smiled at her from the mirror.
+"But if they dare reject it, Harry will have to worry, dear boy though
+he is."
+
+So Pauline lost no time in finishing and submitting her manuscript,
+inclosing a special delivery stamp and a request please to let her know
+at once.
+
+On Saturday Pauline received a bulky letter in the morning's mail.  It
+was her neatly typed manuscript and a short letter declining her
+story.  The editor thought it charming, showed wonderful imagination,
+gave great promise of future success, but there was a lack of
+experience evident throughout -- a little unreal, he added.  He
+ventured to suggest that the author would do well to travel around and
+see the world from different angles.  During the afternoon Harvey
+Schieffelin dropped in for a call.  He had found her story in the
+Cosmopolitan and complimented her then he began to laugh.
+
+"Polly, that's a bully story of yours, but you ought to have gone down
+and watched some stokers do work before you described that scene."
+
+"What was wrong in my description?" demanded the young authoress.
+
+"Well, you told of a stoker laying his grimy hand on the fire door and
+pulling it open to rake the fire."
+
+"Well, couldn't he do that?"
+
+"Oh, yes," laughed Harvey, "he could, but he wouldn't do it more than
+once.  Those doors are almost red hot and would bum the flesh off the
+stoker's hand, whether it were grimy or not.  I'll show you on my yacht
+some time.  What you need is --?"
+
+"Harvey, don't you dare tell me I need experience," interrupted Pauline
+with unexpected heat.  Young Schieffelin saw that tears were almost in
+her eyes.
+
+"Well," thought Schieffelin, "this vein leads too close to water," and
+he hurried to shift the course of the conversation.
+
+But the damage was done.  Pauline took her story to the little open
+fireplace in her room and destroyed it.  At the same time she
+destroyed, her resolution to give up the year of adventure.  There
+could be no question, she needed experience.  Her adopted father had
+admitted it, the editor had said it, and even an empty-headed young man
+like Schieffelin could see it.  She was sorry for Harry, but it
+couldn't be helped.  She picked up a copy of "Treasure Island" and soon
+wished fervently that the days of pirates were back again.
+
+Owen gave up his fight against morphine late Friday night.  Saturday he
+was at peace with the world.  Gone were all the nerve clamorings and
+with them went his scruples.  All day he kept a furtive watch upon
+Pauline, and even heard her envious remarks about pirates to Harry when
+he returned for a weekend at home.  Owen sympathized with Pauline in
+her regret that pirates were extinct.  A pirate would have been very
+useful to the secretary just then.
+
+However, there were other cut-throats, plenty of them, and perhaps some
+other kind would do.  There were gunmen, for instance, but, an honest
+District Attorney had lately made these murderous gentlemen of the
+underworld almost as quiet as pirates.  He was still pondering when
+Hicks called again on the telephone.  This time the secretary responded
+and made an immediate appointment in a cafe near Forty-second street.
+
+Owen related the events of the week, ending with Pauline's hankering
+for pirates.  The two men got their heads together and rapidly evolved
+a plan.
+
+From the cafe they took a taxi and rode along the water front, first on
+one side of the island of Manhattan and then on the other.  The cab
+stopped near the worst-looking saloons, while the two schemers entered
+and looked over the sailors and longshoremen refreshing themselves at
+the bars.  After covering several miles of water front they had
+collected as many as a dozen abominable barroom cigars and a few
+equally dubious drinks, but had not yet found what they were looking
+for.
+
+On Front Street they saw a man, and both cried out:
+
+"Look, there he is."
+
+The man was a wild-looking specimen.  He had the rolling gait of the
+deep sea .  A squinting eye gave him a villainous leer, while a bristly
+beard and long gray hair made him a ferocious spectacle.  His age was
+doubtful, as the lines in his ruddy skin might have been cut by
+dissipation as much as age.  The most prominent feature of his unlovely
+countenance was a nose, fiery red from prolonged exposure to sunburn,
+or rum-bum.
+
+"If he isn't a pirate he ought to be one," said Owen.
+
+The man carried the top of a ship's binnacle, as the round brass case
+which holds a ship's compass is called.  He entered the dismal portal
+of a marine junk shop.  The taxi was stopped discreetly a block away.
+As Owen and Hicks approached the shop they heard a loud argument going
+on inside.
+
+"How much do you want for it?"
+
+"Ten dollars.  It's a brand-new Negus."
+
+"Ten nothing.  You stole it, you son of a sea cook.  I'll give you a
+dime for it."
+
+"I did not steal it, so help me ---- ------!"  The captain of that
+'lime juicer' over in the North River gave it to me for saving his
+little gal's life. He begged me to take anything I wanted, but I
+fancied this.  I'll tell you about it."
+
+Then Owen and Hicks, listening just outside, heard a fearful and
+wonderful tale.  To relate it in the sailor's own words, stripped of
+the long deep-sea oaths, would be as impossible as to pick the green
+specks out of a sage cheese.
+
+In brief, the gentleman with the binnacle, sauntering innocently along
+the docks Friday night, had heard a commotion on the British tramp
+which he referred to as a "lime juicer."  Some fifteen or more
+long-shoremen had invaded the ship, overcome the captain, tied him down
+and were about to kidnap his daughter.  The teller of the story had
+walked in and thrashed them all single-handed, driven them off into the
+darkness, rescued the little girl and released the captain.  In
+gratitude the commander had made him a present of the binnacle head.
+
+At the conclusion of the story there was a pause, then the other voice
+answered:
+
+"You're a wonder.  As I said before, I'll give you ten cents for the
+binnacle and ninety cents for the story.  Now you can take it or I'll
+have you pinched for swiping it."
+
+"Gimme the dollar," said the hero of the tale, and a moment later he
+passed down the street with the two eavesdroppers at his heels.
+
+The sailor man, proceeding at a rapid pace, suddenly turned a comer
+like a yacht jibing around a buoy and plunged into a dingy saloon.
+Owen and Hicks went in after him.
+
+Owen ordered and invited the sailor to join them.  They learned that
+his name was Nelson Cromwell Boyd, that he had deserted from the
+British navy at a tender age, and since then had been through a series
+of incredible adventures and injustices, which disproved the old adage
+that you can't keep a good man down.
+
+At last Owen intimated that he had a business proposition to discuss,
+and they adjourned to the sidewalk.
+
+"Do you want to earn some money? " asked Hicks.
+
+"Well, that depends," said Boyd, doubtfully.
+
+"Easy money," suggested Owen.
+
+"That's the only kind worth going after," commented the sailor.
+
+"That's where we agree with you, my friend "said Hicks.  "We are after
+easy money and plenty of it.  Plenty for us and plenty for you, too, if
+you can keep quiet about it."
+
+"That's the kind of talk I like to hear.  But as honest man to honest
+man, I want to warn you that there mustn't be too much work to it.  I
+don't believe in the nobility of labor.  I believe that work is the
+crowning shame and humiliation of the human race.  It's all right for a
+horse or a dog or an ox to work, but a man ought to be above it. It's
+degrading, interferes with his pleasures and wastes his time."
+
+"I feel the same way, "agreed Owen, "but somebody has got to work to
+make shoes and food for us."
+
+"Yes," admitted the sailor, "regretfully there will always have to be
+some work done, and I'm sorry for the poor guys that must do it.  But
+there's been too much work done."
+
+"Those sentiments are very noble," said Owen.
+
+"It's all very fine to worry about your fellow man.  But you would like
+to have plenty of money even  if the rest of the world is fool enough
+to keep on working."
+
+"I suppose so," said the sailor, "but I'm a reformer and my business is
+to talk, not work."
+
+"That's just what we want you to do," said Owen and Hicks in answer.
+
+Then they found a table in the rear of a saloon where they could unfold
+their plan.
+
+Boyd was to be introduced to a foolish young girl who had a barrel of
+money.  He was to tell her a deep-sea yam along certain lines, and Owen
+and Hicks would take care of the rest.
+
+"The question is," said Owen, "whether you can talk and act like a sort
+of reformed pirate."
+
+"Leave that to me," he assured them, and led the way out of the saloon
+and into still another grimy and disreputable place.  It was Axel
+Olofsens pawnshop and second-hand general supply and clothing store.
+
+After much pawing over ancient, worn and rusty weapons, Boyd was at
+last fitted out.  Ole was paid about sixty per cent of what he asked
+and left to the enjoyment of his Scandinavian melancholy.
+
+"You look like a pirate now, sure enough," said Owen, observing Boyd's
+effect on the driver of the taxicab.
+
+"I look it, but I don't quite feel it yet," said Boyd, with deep
+meaning.  "There is something lacking."
+
+"What can it be?" asked Hicks.
+
+"About three fingers of red-eye," the sailor explained, pointing to a
+saloon.  "That will make my disguise just perfect."
+
+In the saloon Hicks and Owen made a little map, wrinkled it and soiled
+it on the floor, then gave it to the pirate.
+
+"Tell her," said Owen as he called for a taxi, "that it is only a copy
+of your original, which is all worn out."
+
+The nearer they approached to the house the more talkative became the
+"pirate." He demanded to know more details of what was to be done, and
+finally assumed an air of authority.
+
+"You say that rich girl is crazy to see something worth writin' about?
+Now, I know something better than pirates and buried treasure," shouted
+the pirate confidently.
+
+"Yes, no doubt," Owen replied soothingly and with some alarm at the
+man's bravado.  "But it's pirates she is interested in just now."
+
+"Never mind, I say I know something better," insisted the "pirate.  "If
+she will go and do what I'm goin' ter tell yer she'll sure see
+something like she never dreamed of.  Now listen to me sharp!"
+
+It was an extraordinary proposition the "pirate" made.
+
+Owen laughed a gentle discouragement and shook his head, but Hicks
+fixed his eyes keenly on the man and was evidently turning the
+suggestion over in his mind.
+
+Owen's key admitted the three to the front hall without ringing, but a
+maid happened to cross the hall and caught sight of Boyd.  With a
+scream and a flutter she retreated.  Owen seated his two confederates
+in the hall and went in search of Pauline.
+
+Owen found Pauline alone in the library. Never did a villain propose a
+scheme to a beautiful girl at a more favorable moment.  Half the
+afternoon and a little while after dinner she had been absorbing
+"Treasure Island," and now came Owen asking her if she would like to
+meet a reformed pirate and go on a thrilling and adventurous
+expedition.
+
+"Owen, you are a perfect angel . Bring in your pirate.  I'm sorry,
+though, that he has reformed."
+
+Pauline shook hands with Hicks, but hardly noticed him.  She had eyes
+only for the "pirate," who impressed her mightily.  With awe and
+admiration she saw his scowling and squinting eye run over her and then
+travel about the room.  Pauline approved of the "pirate," but the
+"pirate" did not approve of Pauline, and he almost told her so.
+
+But he met the warning eyes of his confederates and restrained
+himself.  He had his story to tell and he would do it.  After all, that
+was the best way to attack this girl and her fortune.
+
+"Tell us about the treasure," said Pauline eagerly.
+
+"Hush!" he shouted in a voice that made the girl jump.
+
+"I'll tell you, but, by the blood of Morgan, if one of you ever tells a
+living soul I'll cut his liver out," said the "pirate."  Pauline
+gasped, and the secretary told him that it wasn't considered good
+manners to point with a sharp knife   But they all swore to secrecy and
+the "pirate" proceeded:
+
+"I was but a slip of a lad when I ran away and sailed from Liverpool in
+the good brig Nancy Lee with as villainous a crew as I ever seen.
+Where we was bound for and why is none of your business.  Them that
+planned that voyage has cashed in their souls to their Maker and -- ah,
+well, as I was saying, they was a villainous crew, low and vile and
+bloody-minded.  I was the cabin boy and slept on the transoms in the
+captain's cabin.  The weather was awful and the grub was worse.
+
+"But all went well till we reached the roarin' forties.  The skipper
+knew how to handle sailors, you bet he did.  When they came aft to kick
+about the grub he knocked 'em down before they said two words."
+
+Pauline gave a little exclamation of dismay at this point and the
+"pirate" turned to her in explanation:
+
+"You see, knockin' 'em down quick like that avoids a lot of cross words
+and unpleasant arguments such as makes hard feelin's on long voyages.
+
+"Yes, as I was saying', all went well until the second mate got to
+knockin' 'em out with his left hand, which the same was all right, too,
+but he was heard to pass a remark one day that he only hit landlubbers
+with his left hand.
+
+"The crew they was insulted, and that very night the second mate went
+overboard.  Who done it nobody knows, leastways the captain couldn't
+find out.  It made the old man peevish like and he got to arguin' with
+them sailors instead of wallopin' 'em the way he oughter done, and one
+day they turned on him.
+
+"It was all over in a minute.  They had the old man thrown and tied.
+The first mate came runnin'in, firin' his pistols, but they downed him,
+too.  I took the wheel while they decided what to do.  'Bloody Mike,'
+their leader, had about persuaded the men to send the captain and mate
+to Davy Jones's locker and the carpenter was riggin' the plank for 'em
+to walk when I up and puts in a word.
+
+"I pleaded for their lives and, though Mike was dead agin' the idea,
+they voted to let them live.  The last we saw of 'em they was driftin'
+off in the jolly boat with a jug of water and a loaf of bread."
+
+The mariner paused and Pauline suggested delightedly:
+
+"And as soon as they had cooled down they were grateful to you and made
+you their leader?"
+
+"They did not," answered the "pirate."  "They broached a cask of rum in
+the forward hold, and I overheard 'em plotting to throw me to the
+sharks."
+
+"How awful," said Pauline.
+
+"Yes, miss," agreed the "pirate."  It was awkward and embarrassing like
+for a mere slip of a lad. So I up and goes into the captain's cabin and
+gets all the pistols and knives and cutlasses there was and brings 'em
+out on deck.
+
+"Pretty soon them drunken devils come a-tumblin' out of the fore hatch,
+picks up half a dozen capstan bars and some belyin' pins and a marlin
+spike or two and runs aft a-hollerin' and yellin'.  I gives 'em one
+warnin' and then fires."
+
+The "pirate" stopped, coughed and looked around.
+
+"Oh, please go on," begged Pauline.
+
+"Yes, miss," replied the sailor, "but this talking affects my throat.
+Could you possibly --?"
+
+"Why, certainly," interrupted Owen, "I'll get you a drink."
+
+After the sailor had swallowed the biggest drink ever poured out in
+that house he continued:
+
+"Yes, that was as neat a fight as I ever was in.  There was some twenty
+of 'em all told."
+
+"And what happened then?" demanded Pauline.
+
+"Well, Miss, it come on to blow, and there was the old ship staggerin'
+along under full sail.  It was all I could do to keep the old hulk from
+foundering', at that, but I stuck to the wheel day after day and night
+after night.  To keep from freezin' I had to drink a lot of grog.  Oh,
+a powerful lot of grog.  So much grog that I've been dependent on it
+ever since -- and I'll take a little now, if it's agreeable."  It
+wasn't exactly agreeable, but he got it and continued.  "Finally we
+fetched up, ker-smack, on the rocks of a desert island.  All the boats
+had been smashed and carried away by the storm, so I had to build a
+raft.  The first two loads was all provisions, and then I took the
+treasure ashore --"
+
+"What treasure?" asked Pauline.
+
+"Oh, bless your heart, didn't I tell you about the treasure?"
+
+"No," said Hicks, with a scowl, "and that's the part we want to hear
+about."
+
+"Oh, money ain't everything," rebuked the "pirate" in a lordly manner.
+"There was a matter of a million dollars or so in good British gold,
+and what it was on the ' Nancy Lee' for is nobody's business.  I took
+it all ashore, an' buried it on the island.  Here's a copy of the chart
+I made, and you three is the first to lay human eyes on it."
+
+While Pauline examined reverently the dingy bit of paper the "pirate"
+concluded his yarn.
+
+"After I'd buried the last f it, I rigged a mast on the raft and
+fetched up on one of the Bahamas."
+
+"And you have never been back to get the gold?" queried Pauline.
+
+"No, miss; though I've started many's the time.  But a poor seafarin'
+man like me finds it hard to fit out a proper expedition.  If you fancy
+the notion and want to go along with me and pay all the expenses I'll
+divvy up half and half with you.  What do you say?"
+
+Pauline looked at Owen and Hicks, who nodded approvingly.  She had no
+great faith in finding any gold.  Old Mr. Marvin had said that treasure
+bunts rarely produce any results.  But he had also remarked that they
+were very thrilling, and here, surely, was adventure well worth a
+little time and money.  Pauline agreed, and the "pirate" was in the
+midst of imposing a blood-curdling oath of secrecy when Harry demanded
+admittance.
+
+Nobody, least of all the sailor, would tell him what was in the wind,
+except that they were going off on a trip of adventure.  The young man
+disapproved of both Hicks and the "pirate," and the latter showed his
+dislike of Harry.  It was with regret that the man of the sea
+recollected Owen's stipulation that Harry must on no account be allowed
+to go with the party.  Nothing would have pleased the "pirate" better
+than to have got these two happy and innocent representatives of
+"ill-gotten gains "alone with him on the high seas.  Pauline, too,
+wished to have Harry who was frowning and suspiciously demanding
+information.  But she had sworn the oath of a buccaneer, and far be it
+from her to break faith with the confiding freebooter.
+
+So, once more Harry was kept out of Pauline's councils.  He was a
+little provoked at her this time, for her willfulness seemed almost
+perverse after the lesson she should have learned from the aeroplane
+wreck.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE TREASURE HUNTERS
+
+Excitement and activity pervaded the house.  Sunday and Monday every
+one, including Harry, soon knew that Pauline was to take Tuesday's
+steamer to Old Nassau, in the Bahamas.  Harry intended to quietly board
+the steamer a little earlier than Pauline and surprise the party by
+appearing after the ship was well out to sea.  His plans were'
+shattered by the young lady's unexpected "early arrival."  Harry, with
+a suitcase in each hand, met her face to face on the pier.  There was
+nothing for him to do but confess, kiss her goodbye and go.  It was
+with a pang of regret that she saw him toss his two suitcases covered
+with college team labels into a taxicab and depart.
+
+An hour later the four treasure hunters stood looking over the rail
+watching the last passengers come aboard.  The "pirate," in a new blue
+suit, huge Panama hat and light pink necktie, though a rather unusual
+sight, had been toned down in appearance to a degree that permitted him
+to walk about among people without causing a crowd to collect.  Hicks,
+too, at Owen's suggestion, had adopted quieter attire.
+
+Just as the gangplank was about to be pulled in the deckhands waited to
+permit a very feeble and bent old man to hobble aboard.  He had long,
+white hair, and his face was mostly gray whiskers, except a pair of
+dark spectacles.  A porter followed him bearing two brand new
+suitcases.
+
+The adventurous four were soon comfortably perched in steamer chairs
+watching New York harbor slip by them.  They had barely reached the
+Statue of Liberty when the "pirate" launched forth on one of his
+Munchausen-like tales of the sea.
+
+Highly colored, picturesque, untrue and absurd as a stained glass
+window, nevertheless these yams took on a semblance of reality from the
+character of the narrator himself.  In all his stories the "pirate" was
+the hero.  Nobody noticed that a steward had placed a fifth steamer
+chair beside the sailor until that worthy reached one of the main
+climaxes of his narrative.  At that point he felt a hand on his
+shoulder and looked around into the whiskers and black spectacles of
+the old passenger.  The cackling voice remarked:
+
+"It's a lie.  It's a lie.  It's a lie."
+
+Every one was astonished, but even the "pirate" had a trace of respect
+for such great age, and said nothing in reply.  After a while he
+continued, only to be interrupted by the same words.
+
+This was too much to endure, and though the if  "pirate" held his
+tongue they rebuked the old dotard by walking away and leaning over the
+rail.  The conversation wandered to the subject of sharks, and Pauline
+asked if they were as stupid as they looked.
+
+"Don't you believe it," the "pirate" assured her.  "Them sharks look
+stupid just to fool you.  Why, I remember a time not so long ago down
+in Choco Bay, on the coast of Colombia, there was an old devil who used
+to sneak up alongside sailin' vessels in a fog.  He carried in his
+mouth the big iron shank of an anchor he'd picked up from the wreck."
+
+"What did he do that for?" asked Hicks.
+
+"So the iron would deflect the compass and make them run the ship onto
+the Kelp Ledges, off the Pinudas, Islands.  If a ship went down he
+stood a good chance of eating one or two o' the passengers.  But I
+don't mind sharks.  If you want to know what really annoys me, it's
+them killer whales in the Antarctic that come a crowdin' and buttin' up
+against ye."
+
+"It's an internal, monumental, epoch-making lie," cackled a voice
+behind him.  Every one looked, and there was the old man.
+
+The "pirate" was now thoroughly exasperated.  If he couldn't tell a
+story without being interrupted in this manner life wasn't worth
+living.  He announced that he would find the old man and thrash him.
+Owen and Hicks were annoyed, but they feared the result of the sailor's
+fury.  They might all be arrested on arriving at Nassau.  This would
+interfere with plans, and must not be thought of. to appease the
+wrathful "pirate" Owen offered to have the old man thrashed so soundly
+that he would probably be glad to stay out of sight the rest of the
+voyage.
+
+There were some rascally looking men of Spanish blood among the second
+cabin passengers who, as Owen and Hicks observed, looked needy and
+unscrupulous.
+
+The secretary found no great embarrassment in explaining that he wished
+the old man thrashed quietly and privately.  The Spaniards agreed to
+beat him thoroughly for the trifling consideration of ten dollars.
+They would even throw him overboard for a very reasonable sum
+additional.  But the bargain was struck at ten dollars for a moderate
+beating, and the foreigners were warned that as he was delicate they
+must be careful not to kill him.
+
+During the next hour or two the old man passed the four treasure
+hunters in their steamer chairs, but each time the "pirate" ceased
+talking before he came within earshot.
+
+At last the old man stopped in front of Pauline and gazed long at the
+"pirate." He studied the rascal's face, apparently trying to remember
+the identity of the man.  Slowly the aged head nodded as if he was
+saying to himself.  "Yes, he is the same man."
+
+Then, turning to Pauline and shaking a warning finger, the old man
+delivered a surprising message.
+
+Pauline was startled.  The three men leaped to their feet.  It was with
+the utmost difficulty that she was able to prevent violence.. Owen
+excused himself to hunt up his Spaniards and demand an explanation for
+their slowness.  To his surprise they declared that they had tackled
+him and that he was as quick and powerful as a gorilla.  He had
+thrashed them both and they were glad to escape with their lives.
+
+The ex-secretary was incredulous, but they showed cuts and bruises and
+demanded their money, saying that a joke had been played on them.  When
+Owen refused one of them drew a stiletto and the ten dollars was
+forthcoming.
+
+Returning, ruefully, he related the failure of the Spaniards.  The
+"pirate" at once said:
+
+"Now, let me handle him."
+
+A few moments later Boyd cornered his ancient adversary on a deserted
+and wind- swept piece of deck.
+
+"Old man," snarled the "pirate," "you say all my stories are lies.
+Only your gray hairs have saved you from a thrashing before this."
+
+"If it's my gray hairs that stop you, I'll remove that obstacle."
+
+The "pirate" was amazed to see the aged person take off his hat and
+remove a gray wig with his left hand while his right fist collided with
+the "pirate's" eye.  When consciousness returned he was lying on the
+deck with no living thing in sight but a seagull aeroplaning on slanted
+wings over his head.  His return to the party was more rueful than
+Owen's.
+
+"What is the matter with your eye, Mr. Boyd?" asked Pauline
+innocently.
+
+"Why, you see," said the "pirate," "I was looking at a girl with one of
+these new slit skirts and I stumbled and bumped against a ventilator."
+
+"I see," commented Owen to help him out.  "You sort of slipped on a
+sex-appeal, so to speak."
+
+"Yes," said the sailor, gratefully.  "It was just like that."
+
+"It's a lie," said a high, thin voice from somewhere, and they noticed
+that a porthole behind them was open.
+
+Pauline found conversation difficult.  Hicks, as a man of few words,
+which gave him an undeserved reputation for wisdom.  The "pirate" had
+given up spinning yams on account of the old man's unfailing
+interruption.  Owen's mind, too, was preoccupied with a growing
+suspicion.  So the adventurous young lady went to her stateroom and
+wrote a letter to Harry.
+
+The sailor intimated that he had important news which could be only
+told in the privacy of Owen's stateroom.  The secretary suspected this
+to be only a maneuver on the "pirate's" part to get acquainted with the
+whiskey he knew Owen kept with him.  But the seafarer unfolded the tale
+of his black eye not truthfully nor accurately, except in that he had
+recognized Harry under the disguise of the old man.
+
+"I more than half suspected it," said Owen, "and I have been watching
+his stateroom.  But there is no way any one can see into his room
+unless by getting a look in through the porthole."
+
+"And there's where you get a good idea," said the "pirate."
+
+"But there's no good having a peep' at him without his disguise now
+that it's Harry," objected Hicks.
+
+"No," said the "pirate," turning on Owen his lusterless sea-green eyes,
+faded by much grog to a dimness that reminded one of the faint lights
+set in ships' decks and known as "dead-eyes."  "No, but your porthole
+idea is just the scheme to get at him and get rid of him.  I can slip
+down a rope tonight when all is quiet and the fool passengers are over
+on the other side looking at the bloody moon."
+
+"And then what?" said Owen.
+
+"I goes down the rope and shoots the old fool!  I mean the young fool
+-- through the porthole."
+
+"Why, that's murder!" cried Owen.  "We'd all swing for it."
+
+"No, it ain't murder; it's suicide, 'cause I'll throw the gun in there
+where they'll find it when they break the door in, and everybody'll
+think he shot himself."
+
+"It's practical," commented Hicks, but Owen protested.  At last it was
+decided that a fourth man was necessary to do the shooting, and the
+"pirate" volunteered to produce him.
+
+"There's an old shipmate o' mine down in the stoke hole working like a
+nigger.  He'll be glad to do the trick for ten dollars, but we'll make
+it fifty because the poor fellow has a wife and children and needs the
+money.  I'll go get him."
+
+Owen and Hicks went on deck while Boyd descended to the fiery vitals of
+the steamer.  It is not an easy matter to smuggle a grimy stoker from
+his furnace to the upper passenger decks, but the "pirate" managed it.
+
+Meanwhile Harry was not losing time.  He had taken a dictograph from
+his baggage, borrowed a few dry batteries and a coil of wire from the
+wireless operator.  He carefully installed the instrument in his
+stateroom, and led the wires out under his door to the passageway.
+From there it was an easy task to carry them along the edge of the
+carpet to the door of Owen's stateroom.  Arrived at the point, he was
+compelled to leave pliers, wire and the receiving instrument under a
+chair.
+
+Like many another stateroom door, Owen's could not be locked easily
+from the outside, so when the three conspirators went out they left it
+unlocked.  The old man slipped in a moment later and quickly placed the
+dictograph under the lower bunk.
+
+Returning to his own room, the old man took up his instrument and
+listened.  But he was not a very expert electrician and the dictograph
+for a long time failed to give anything but roars and crackling sounds,
+though he was convinced there were several persons talking.  A last he
+got the thing adjusted in time to catch the last sentences of the
+conversation.  He recognized the voice of the "pirate."  It said:.
+
+"An then we lowers you down the rope to his porthole.  You sticks your
+gun in and shoot the old fool.  Don't forget to throw the gun in
+afterward, so they'll think he killed himself.  See?"
+
+"Sure, I got yer, matey," replied a strange voice.
+
+After this the dictograph must have got out of order as nothing further
+came over the wire.
+
+After closing the porthole Harry started to take off his disguise with
+a view of revealing himself and having Owen, Hicks and the "pirate"
+arrested.  Then it occurred to him that he had not heard Owen or Hicks
+talking and very likely they were not in the room at all.
+
+It was probably a crazy, drunken scheme of the old sailor whom he had
+tormented.  Neither Owen nor Hicks had any suspicion, so far as he
+knew, that behind the whiskers and eyeglasses was Harry.  Owen could
+have no object in shooting him.
+
+"Can it be that I am jealous of this man Owen?" he wondered.  "Polly
+has been taking his advice against mine lately.  What can that mean?"
+
+Peace reigned during the evening while the old liner plunged and rolled
+past wicked Cape Hatteras.  While the passengers listened to the sad
+orchestra in the saloon Harry, still in his whiskered disguise, sent a
+wireless to a lawyer in New York requesting him to telegraph Pauline at
+Nassau something that would make her come home.  Then he went back to
+his stateroom and locked the door.
+
+As he stepped in he caught sight of the unbeautiful countenance of Mr.
+Boyd squinting wickedly at him from far down the passageway.
+
+"Just for that evil grin of yours, Mr. Pirate," thought Harry, "I am
+not going to let you or your friend shoot me until after daylight."  So
+Harry kept his porthole closed tight that night, sleeping rather
+restlessly without his accustomed ventilation.
+
+Twice he heard a faint scraping sound on the outside of his cabin, and
+a dark shadow eclipsed the faint nimbus of light which the foggy night
+sent through his porthole.  On the deck directly over his head three
+dark figures sat in deck chairs, while a fourth paced the deck, his
+cigar glowing like the tail lamp of a distant automobile.
+
+The fog began to lift just before dawn, and the stoker, making another
+trip down his rope, found the porthole open.  A hasty inspection of the
+decks indicated that it was safe to go ahead.
+
+Owen, Hicks and the "pirate" quickly lowered the stoker, sitting in a
+little swing known on the sea as a "bo'sun's chair."  In his hand he
+carried a pistol which Hicks had provided.  Each of the three
+conspirators had revolvers, but the racetrack man's weapon was chosen
+because he had obtained it from a source to which it could not be
+traced.  Down went the stoker, his bare feet clinging to the gently
+swaying side of the ship.
+
+The porthole was open, and there in the dim interior of the cabin the
+light was reflected from a pair of spectacles.  There, too, were the
+whiskers and gray hair.  The old man seemed to be asleep in his chair
+right near the porthole.  The stoker cocked his revolver and held it
+ready for instant action.
+
+The steamer's fog horn blew a blast at the fast thinning fog.  This
+noise was just what the stoker wanted.  He quickly plunged his pistol
+into the porthole and fired it point blank in the very face of the old
+man.  There could be no question of missing.  He looked up at the three
+eager faces and nodded that all was well.
+
+"I've got him," he called out, and was about to hurl the pistol into
+the stateroom when an unpleasant and unexpected thing happened.  A
+brawny fist shot out of the porthole and collided with the stoker's
+coal-blackened jaw.
+
+More from surprise than the force of the blow, the stoker fell backward
+into the sea.  The three watchers on deck saw the proceeding, and only
+one, the "pirate," had presence of mind to hurl a lifebuoy.  No alarm
+was sounded.  The steamer went on into the sparkling morning sea,
+leaving behind her a profane and disgusted stoker.  This unfortunate
+had only a lifebuoy to aid him on a fifteen-mile swim to shore.
+
+"Never mind," said the "pirate" after the conspirators had gotten over
+their first fright at the dashing of their plans.  "I have an idea;
+it's a corking idea, and you'll all like it."
+
+"What is it?" asked Owen nervously.  "Here is your drink now; what's
+your idea?"
+
+But the "pirate" wouldn't tell . He objected that it was too startling
+for them to carry in their timid brains.  He would unfold it when the
+time came, and he promised them that it would be the greatest and most
+daring project they had ever heard.  A murderous glare lit up the faded
+eyes and he chuckled to himself, but no offers nor threats would induce
+him to part with his secret.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A FLIRTY BUCCANEER
+
+Arrived at Nassua, the party proceeded to the King Edward House, where
+Pauline found a telegram from Philip Carpenter, the lawyer, advising
+her to return as soon as possible to attend the signing of certain
+important papers.  On account of the message all hands made haste to
+hunt for a small steamer or launch to complete the trip.
+
+Though none of the four saw him, the old man was at the hotel.  He lost
+no time in assuming another and very different disguise, observing to
+himself that the most valuable part of his college education might
+prove to be the secrets of "make up" he had learned in his college
+dramatic club.
+
+Owen, with his usual forethought, had arranged in advance to be put in
+touch at once with all available boats.  As a result a gasoline launch,
+with a cabin and stateroom, about 100 feet long, which had once been a
+yacht, was chartered.  The "pirate's" stipulation that no stranger
+should see his island made it necessary for Pauline to deposit a check
+for $2,500 for its safe return.
+
+The next morning provisions were brought aboard, the "pirate" declaring
+that he could run the engine, and all was ready when a difficulty
+arose.  Who was to cook?  Pauline volunteered, but Owen objected, and
+finally the "pirate's" objections to a stranger were overcome.
+
+A dark-skinned half-breed, with long, black hair, who had earned half a
+dollar by helping carry things on board, volunteered in a gruff voice.
+
+"I'se fine cook.  Best cook on the island.  I cook very cheap."
+
+Time was too valuable to investigate the man's ability, so he was
+hired.  Off went the white launch.  Owen steering under instructions
+from the "pirate," who soon proved he knew gasoline engines.  Out of
+the harbor they went, and then coasted along the beautiful shores of
+the island.  The sea was calm and the cruise uneventful for some time,
+when the "pirate" called every one's attention to the fact that it was
+a long time since breakfast.  He went below and addressed the cook, who
+had shut himself up in his tiny galley, as sailors call a boat's
+kitchen.
+
+"What's your name?" demanded Boyd.
+
+"Filipo."
+
+"Are you a nigger?"
+
+"I guess so; I dunno."
+
+"Well, what were your father and mother?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"That's funny; but what I want to know is how soon grub will be ready?"
+
+"Right away, senor."
+
+"All right, Filipo; see that there is plenty of it."
+
+"Dod foul my hawser, if this ain't what yer might call pleasant,"
+declared the "pirate," showing his few teeth in a smile that reminded
+Pauline of the spiles of an abandoned pier.
+
+Pauline was pacing the deck apart from the others, in a pleasant
+dreaminess scanning the endless azure of the hashed waters.  Her
+thoughts roamed forward and backward -- forward to the vague magic land
+of adventure, where she was to win treasure and delight, fortune and
+fame; backward to a big, lovely, splendid house in New York City, where
+a certain tall young man, with brown, unruly hair and shoulders broad
+as a sheltering wall, must be pining for her.
+
+Some one began whistling in the cabin. Pauline paid no attention to it
+at first, but as the tune suddenly shifted to the very latest musical
+comedy air she became interested.  Owen never whistled, and Hicks, she
+imagined, seldom went to the theatres.
+
+The song shifted from whistle to words:
+
+"I'm a greatly wicked person.  If there's anybody worse on This
+terrestrial circumference of guile (Though I very broadly doubt it) I
+should like to know about it, For I want to be the blackest thing on
+file.
+
+"I'm a bad-mad-man, my dear, I'm a liar and a flyer and flirty
+buccaneer.  I've done everything that's awful that a human being can
+I'm a bad--ma-a-d man."
+
+"The song from 'Polly Peek-a-boo.'  Harry and I heard it only two weeks
+ago," mused Pauline.
+
+Moved by a sudden whimsy, she entered the cabin.  There was no one
+there but the cook.  In his dingy linen suit he was standing at the
+table peeling potatoes and whistling.  He stopped as Pauline entered, a
+tall powerful man, though of slouching posture, he bowed
+deferentially.
+
+"No like me sing -- no sing," he suggested.
+
+"On the contrary, I like it very much.  You sing very well indeed,
+Filipo.  Would you mind telling me where you heard the song you were
+just singing?"
+
+"Big American man, up Nassau -- he sing'um.  Very fine man -- big fool
+daughter," replied Filipo.
+
+"You speak very good English when you sing," remarked Pauline.  "Why
+don't you do it all the time?"
+
+The cook hesitated.
+
+"Speak good English all time -- bad English when sing!"
+
+Pauline began to scrutinize half suspiciously this remarkable menial,
+but he kept stolidly at work at the potatoes, and his dark skin, his
+scraggly beard, his bagging trousers upturned over bare feet, his
+general dilapidation of appearance, proved him nothing but one of the
+common derelicts of the languid islands.
+
+"If you could peel potatoes instead of butchering them, there would be
+a little more to eat in case we run out of supplies, Filipo," suggested
+Pauline.
+
+He turned on her a frank American grin.  For an instant the twinkle in
+the keen blue eyes upset her.
+
+It was so, like the twinkle in a pair of keen blue eyes that were
+supposed to be figuratively weeping for her fate in far-off New York.
+But instantly he changed his attitude.
+
+"No like cook -- cook quit," he grumbled.
+
+"'Oh, no, indeed, Filipo, you must not be offended.  I was just
+speaking to Mr.  Owen this morning about raising your salary."
+
+A thick voice came to them from the cabin door.
+
+"I begs to report, Miss," said Blinky Boyd, the pirate, reeling in,
+"that there be mut'ny in yer crew.  Mr. Hicks and Mr. Owen, Miss, has
+rebelled against me authority and has refused me drink."
+
+"That is an outrage, Mr. Boyd.  They do not realize how your
+nerve-racking adventures have shattered your strength.  I will attend
+to it myself," said Pauline sympathetically.  "Filipo, give Mr. Boyd a
+drink."
+
+"Drink?  Yes, meem," replied Filipo, with such unwonted alacrity that
+Pauline turned in surprise.
+
+She saw the slouching figure of the cook suddenly stiffen to his full
+stalwart height.  She saw an ill clad, but majestic giant stride toward
+the pirate, bowl him over with a gentle tap, pinion his arms and legs
+in a lifting grasp and carry him toward the door of the cabin.
+
+Cries of rage came stuffily from the thick throat of Boyd.
+
+"Lemme go, ye scum, lemme go," he yelled.
+
+"Filipo!  Filipo!  Stop this instant!  How dare you treat Mr. Boyd in
+such a manner?" cried the indignant girl.
+
+"You say, 'Give - him drink.'  He say, ' Lemme go," answered Filipo,
+pausing with his squirming burden.
+
+"Drink!  Ye fool, drink!  She is felling ye ter gimme a drink,"
+screamed the hero of desperate encounters.
+
+"Big, fat drink," agreed the cook, as he strode toward the rail.
+
+Pauline rushed upon him.  The peril of her precious pirate stirred all
+her courage.  She saw her dreams vanishing -- the chief narrator,
+navigator and guide of the treasure voyage suspended in two strong arms
+over the blue deep.  Forgetting that he was accustomed to conquer
+twenty men single handed, she felt only pity for his plight.  Her soft
+but determined hand gripped the cook's.
+
+"Filipo, obey my orders!" she commanded.
+
+"Yes, Mem.  Let 'um go.  Give 'um drink.  Big liar need big drink."
+
+He lifted the struggling but utterly helpless form of the pirate over
+his shoulders, then, with a sudden stooping movement, he made as if to
+plunge it into the sea.
+
+"Help! Help!" cried Pauline, running up the deck.
+
+Hicks and Owen rushed from their staterooms. Blinky Boyd was quivering,
+gasping beside the rail.  They found a slouching, uncommunicative cook
+stolidly washing dishes in the galley.
+
+Some hours later while Boyd was sleeping off his potations and Hicks
+and Owen were deep in conference on deck, Pauline slipped down into the
+galley ostensibly to explain the rudiments of the culinary art to the
+cook.
+
+"The trouble is you have no respect for a potato, Filipo.  You slash
+the poor thing to pieces, and then you boil it only long enough to hurt
+its feelings."
+
+"Peel potato nice, good," he apologized.  "Then peel 'um pirate.
+Filipo want to peel pirate; boil him just half-hurt him feelings.
+That's how."
+
+"Oh, I see.  But I think you do Mr. Boyd a great injustice, Filipo.  He
+has consented to come all the way from New York with us and take
+command of our boat and find the buried treasure, and --"
+
+"Buried potatoes," snapped Filipo with a sudden reversion to his
+unimpaired English.
+
+"Well, at least you understand about tomorrow's breakfast now, don't
+you?"
+
+"Yes, mem.  Boil 'um eggs to death; no peel 'um."
+
+"No, no, no, Filipo -- boil them two minutes and a half.  Here, take my
+watch and go by that.  You must be very careful of it, Filipo."
+
+"Yes, mem; boil 'um long time; stick fork in, see when soft."
+
+"No!"
+
+Pauline caught the watch from him.  "You don't boil the watch at all,
+Filipo.  You boil the eggs and watch the watch.  Can you tell time,
+Filipo?"
+
+"Yes, Mem."
+
+"How long is an hour?  Peel potatoes -- hour is ver' ver'  long.  Talk
+to ship's lady - whist! -- hour is no time," answered Filipo with
+upcast hands.
+
+Again she eyed him through her long lashes a little askance.  He was
+rather subtle, this half-breed cook, for one who could not even boil an
+egg.
+
+"I will let you have the watch, Filipo," she said gravely, "but you
+must give it back to me.  It is one of the most precious things I have
+. It was given to me by -- Filipo, were you ever in love with a girl?"
+
+"Su-u-ure, mem!" replied the cook with sudden enthusiasm.  "Love
+daughter big American -- no love me.  Big American daughter start from
+Nassau -- get buried treasure -- not!"
+
+"Filipo, where do you get all your New York slang?"
+
+"Big American daughter, she sling slang-good," said Filipo.
+
+"Why did you fall in love with her?"
+
+"Nice girl -- no eat much, no scold cook, no talk about potatoes --
+just big fool 'bout buried treasure."
+
+"What do you think love is?"
+
+"Love-huh!" grunted the cook.  "I like girl; girl no like me.  Chase
+all 'round world -- no good."
+
+"That watch was given to me by the man I love, Filipo," said Pauline.
+"You won't-boil it -- or anything, will you?"
+
+As Filipo took the tiny diamond-scarred timepiece from Pauline's hand
+there was a sound as of some one choking at the top of the steps.
+
+The cook sprang to the deck, but there was no one in sight.  He
+returned to Pauline, while Blinky Boyd, gasping more from astonishment
+than fear, reeled up to Owen and Hicks on the forward deck.
+
+"She's gone clean crazy," he panted.  "She treats that there cook as if
+he was a nat'ral human man instid of a sea-rovin' gorilla, worse'n the
+one I beat In Afriky."
+
+"No more gorillas for a while, Blinky," commanded Hicks.  "What's
+happened now?"
+
+"She's gone an' guv him her jooled watch to boil eggs by," said the
+pirate.
+
+"By George, we will have to do something with that fellow," muttered
+Hicks to Owen as they walked away.
+
+"Do suthin' to him!" Blinky Boyd was fuming in the wake of Owen and
+Hicks on their stroll up deck.  "Do everythin' to him; make 'im walk
+the old board; draw'n quarter 'im.  Didn't he attempt me life an' ain't
+he at present engaged in stealin' the fambly jewels?"
+
+"Well, have you got any ideas?" asked Owen.
+
+"The first thing," whispered Blinky, "is to git him under the
+in-floo-ence of licker.  They never was no cook could stand up agin'
+the disgraceful habit o' takin' too much and doin' too little.  Get 'im
+under the in-floo-ence."
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"Then -- well, ain't they a lot o' good blue water floatin' around atop
+the fishes?  Ain't they some accommodatin' sharks swimmin' atop the
+water?"
+
+"That's a bit crude -- just to throw a man overboard for nothing," said
+Owen, willing to arouse Boyd's anger.
+
+"Fer nothin'?"  Didn't he insult the master o' this ship.  Ain't he
+tried to starve us to death?  Fer wot kind o' nothin', says I."  Boyd
+smote his caving chest in emphasis of his accusations.
+
+"And he would have the diamond watch on him in case he should be picked
+up," suggested Hicks quietly.
+
+"That's so," said Owen.  "He would have been swimming to shore with the
+stolen watch and drowned."
+
+"But, of course, he would swim to shore, unless -- well, it's a case of
+making sure beforehand.  We could persuade him to go in and try to kill
+Blinky here while Blinky's asleep -- then rush in and finish him.  Even
+Pauline was a witness to the attack he made on Blinky this afternoon."
+
+The pirate's glowing countenance suddenly, went white.
+
+"Not this trip," he said fervently.  "I ain't goin' to kill no man in a
+trap like that.  I'm goin' to see it done fair and square in the open
+-- with plenty o' drink in 'im an' 'is conscience clear.  I wouldn't
+see no man die with murder in 'is heart fer me."
+
+"I don't like it," said Owen nervously.  "I don't like the idea of
+doing too much.  We've got one big piece of work to do that concerns
+her."  He nodded in the direction of the cabin.  "Dye mean to say we
+can't get a poor half-breed cook off this boat without killing him?
+Why not discharge him?"
+
+Hicks uttered a grim chuckle.  "I must say I never thought of that.
+Get a boat manned, will you, Boyd, and we'll put him ashore within half
+an hour."
+
+"All hands for'ard," bellowed the pirate's voice.  The "all hands "were
+Owen, Hicks, the pirate and Pauline.
+
+"Why all hands?  Can't you handle the cook yourself?" said Owen.
+
+"Not to put that cook ashore -- ye need a navy," said Boyd.
+
+Backed by Owen and Hicks, he moved to the cabin.
+
+"You, cook, there -- ye're fired.  Get off the boat.  Yer kerriage
+waits," he cried down at the busy Filipo.
+
+Filipo shuffled almost meekly toward the speaker.  He saw the skiff
+alongside and Hicks and Owen nearby.
+
+"Grab 'im," ordered the pirate.  "Here's the irons."  He produced a
+pair of rusty handcuffs that had been brought along, among other
+ominous-looking junk, to impress Pauline.
+
+But Filipo was not "fired" yet.  With a sudden long-distance lunge he
+knocked down the pirate, who, thought he was at a safe distance.  But
+Hicks, who had been well schooled in street-fight tactics, thoughtfully
+stuck out a leg and tripped the cook, who fell upon the groaning Boyd.
+Boyd, though down, was by no means  "out," and held Filipo tight while
+Owen and Hicks slipped on the handcuffs.
+
+"Now to the boat with 'im an' dump 'im ashore wherever It looks hottest
+an' hungriest."
+
+"Yah," he snarled in the face of the prostrate cook, "ye don't
+interfere no more with the capting of this here vessel. I hopes ye "
+
+But his sentence was cut short, or rather it ended in a shriek of pain
+and fright, as the cook, suddenly swinging himself from his shoulders,
+landed a terrifically propelled right foot in the pirate's middle.
+
+He was pinned down again the next moment, but Boyd's yell had
+penetrated to the cabin.
+
+"What is the matter -- who is hurt?" cried Pauline, rushing to the
+group on deck.
+
+"We have had to order this fellow put ashore.  He has twice attacked
+Boyd, and besides he is useless as a cook," explained Owen.
+
+"You will assuredly do nothing of the sort," announced Pauline. "You
+will take those horrid iron things right off and set him free."
+
+"But, my dear Miss Marvin, he is a desperate man.  It is dangerous."
+
+"What did we come here for but to get into danger?" cried Pauline.
+"Besides, Filipo is the most interesting person on the ship.  I have
+just devoted a chapter to him in my book, and if you think I'm going to
+spoil my book because Mr. Boyd gets hurt, or the potatoes aren't done,
+you're much mistaken."
+
+Owen obediently knelt and unlocked the clumsy handcuffs.
+
+"You are free, Filipo," said Pauline with the air of a proud princess
+releasing a serf.
+
+"No fired?" grunted Filipo.  "Too bad.  Bum job."
+
+"Now go back to the kitchen, and promise not to strike Mr. Boyd any
+more."
+
+"No hit 'um.  Boil 'um. three minutes; stick fork in hum," said the
+cook with a cannibal glare at the still writhing pirate.
+
+He shuffled off to his pots and pans.  Blinky scrambled to his bunk,
+and Pauline retired to elaborate the fascinating character of Filipo in
+another chapter of her book of adventure.
+
+She did not realize how late it was when at last she put down her pen
+and moved with soft, slippered steps to the door of the cabin.
+
+Over the great vault of the heavens the stars were sprinkled like
+silver dust.  The boat rolled softly, dreamily on the listless waters.
+A cool breeze scented with the fragrance of the spicy land cooled her
+brow.  She realized that her little stateroom had been very stuffy.  It
+was beautiful here in the hushed night alone.  She moved out on deck.
+
+They had come to anchor for the night off St. Andrew, and the few faint
+lights of the town tinged the scene with life.
+
+Pauline was thinking of Harry.  It would have been nice if he were here
+now, in the moonlight just for this evening.  Of course if he were a
+regular member of the party, he would spoil the trip by his grumpiness,
+and probably prevent them from finding any treasure at all.  But Harry
+was a good companion -- usually, and Pauline was getting a little tired
+of the company on the yacht.
+
+The night was so still that even her light footstep could be heard on
+the deck.  And she was surprised to hear a muffled hail from some
+invisible craft astern.
+
+As she moved to the rail -- her tall form in the yachting suit standing
+out plainly in the moonlight -- she saw a small boat scurry away.  She
+thought she recognized their own small boat -- the one the yacht towed
+-- and she quickly made sure that this was true.
+
+Pauline turned toward the cabin to rouse the others for a real pirate
+chase, when she was silenced and stunned by the sight of Filipo, the
+cook, staggering out of the galley, with his bearded chin drooping on
+his breast, his knees swaying under him, his arms weaving cubist
+caricatures in the air and his voice raised in unintelligible song.
+
+He was quickly followed by the Pirate, who, to Pauline's amazement,
+actually presented a picture of sobriety in contrast to Filipo.
+
+But on seeing her, Boyd looked frightened.
+
+"They have stolen the skiff," cried Pauline.
+
+"No, Miss," said Boyd; "they was four of 'em come aboard in one boat,
+an' we let 'em take ourn ashore to bring a double load o' supplies."
+
+Pauline was grievously disappointed.  She turned her wrath upon the
+musical and meandering Filipo.
+
+"Filipo!" she demanded.  "Go to bed at once."
+
+For answer he reeled toward her.
+
+"Cook boiled -- boiled three minute," he said.
+
+Then with a lurch he fell sprawling at her feet.
+
+Boyd had started back to the cabin in haste and excitement.  Pauline's
+first instinct was to leave the inebriated man, but pity mastered her
+and she stooped to lift him.
+
+He sprang to his feet without her aid.  His blue eyes looked clearly
+into hers.  His body towered again to its commanding height as it had
+done when he was about to finish the Pirate.
+
+He stooped and spoke rapidly, sharply in her ear. There was no pigeon
+chatter.  It was straight English.
+
+But as the door of the cabin opened again and Boyd came out, the tall
+form sank into itself, the knees began to rock, the arms to weave and,
+staggering back up the deck, he disappeared in the cabin.
+
+Pauline stood stupefied.  She had been so startled by the sudden
+transformation of the man that she had hardly understood his strident
+words.
+
+Only one thing she could remember.  He had commanded her to go to bed
+and bar her door.  She obeyed but she could not sleep at first.  It
+seemed that hours had passed when a sound outside her door brought her
+to her feet.
+
+She moved to the door and softly opened it.  Across the threshold lay
+Filipo, wide awake.
+
+"Go to bed," he said.  Again she obeyed and this time she slept.
+
+The next morning everything seemed outwardly as usual, the skiff had
+been restored to its place astern.  The Pirate was intoxicated; the
+cook sober.  But there was the threat of trouble in the air, Pauline
+felt it in the attitude of all the men, even of Owen and Hicks.
+
+The Pirate showed a strange new tendency to make friends with Filipo.
+
+"Can you steer, cook?" he asked after the latter had announced that
+dinner was ready.
+
+"Yes," said Filipo.
+
+"All right, take the wheel and keep her as she's going till we round
+that point ahead there."
+
+Filipo took the wheel and the others descended to find the cabin table
+set.  There was a prodigious amount of fried steak and boiled potatoes
+as the main part of the meal.  To their dismay they found the steak was
+as tough as leather.  A wail of sorrow arose when the potatoes proved
+to be so hard that  Pauline doubted if they had been boiled more than
+three minutes.
+
+The "Pirate," whose table manners savored of the forecastle, tried a
+biscuit and found it as hard as stone and almost as heavy.  In his
+anger he hurled it at the side of the cabin and was horrified to see it
+go through the boat's side.  He did not know that the biscuit happened
+to strike a hole that had been temporarily stopped up with putty and
+paint.  He turned speechless to the others and saw Hicks lift a biscuit
+on high about to dash it onto the cabin floor.
+
+With instant presence of mind he seized the arm of Hicks, and in a
+hoarse voice shouted:
+
+"Don't do that, you'll sink the ship.  Look what mine did."
+
+They all gazed in amazement at the ragged aperture in the side of the
+cabin through which the sparkling waters of the Atlantic could be seen
+dancing past.
+
+Events moved swiftly that afternoon.  Owen, peering in the galley
+porthole beheld the disguised cook remove his wig to wash his face and
+recognized the curly light hair of Harry.  About four o'clock the
+launch tied up to the landing at the small village of St. Andrew.
+There Owen had opportunity to reveal his discovery of Harry's presence
+to the other two conspirators . They were frightened at first but soon
+agreed that it was a fine chance to get rid of both at the same time.
+
+The pirate confided to them that he had brought a clock-work bomb along
+and had it in his bag.  A few minutes' discussion produced a simple
+plan.
+
+Owen sent the disguised Harry with a bucket, in search of a spring and
+Pauline was already hunting strange flowers among the palms and
+creepers.  This left the conspirators free to place the bomb under the
+cabin floor boards, a matter which Owen attended to himself.  It was
+set to explode two hours later.  Pauline and Filipo were then summoned
+and told that there were comfortable lodgings and a good meal
+obtainable at a village just the other side of the long narrow point of
+land.  If Pauline and Boyd and Filipo would go around in the launch
+Owen and Hicks would climb through the jungle and get there in time to
+have a meal already upon the boat's arrival.  The two parties separated
+and all was quiet for some time.  Pauline sat on deck with the pirate
+endeavoring to engage him in conversation.  But he grew surlier and
+surlier in his answers, looking frequently at his watch and often
+stopping below for a drink.
+
+After about an hour and three-quarter, Pauline became a little
+frightened at his behavior and descended to the cabin.  There was the
+cook reading a cook book, evidently his own.  The moment Pauline was
+out of sight the pirate heaved a sigh of relief and abandoned the
+wheel.  Stepping softly to the stern he pulled in the small boat which
+was towing astern, leaped in adroitly and cut it adrift.
+
+"Filipo," said Pauline, "you told us you were a good cook."
+
+"Yes, senorita, I thought I was."
+
+"Have you ever cooked before?"
+
+"No, but I have a cook book which tells you how every one may be a
+cook.  I thought --"
+
+Filipo, did not finish his sentence.  His eyes were roving around the
+cabin in search of something and Pauline was looking very hard at him.
+
+"What's that ticking sound?" inquired the cook.  He went to the cabin
+clock and listened.  No, it wasn't that.  Pauline could hear it, too,
+and it wasn't her tiny watch.  Filipo made a search of the cabin and
+finally located the sound under the floor.  A moment more and he had
+laid bare the pirate's bomb.  He leaped on deck and took in at a glance
+that the pirate had left in the only boat.
+
+In another instant he was below again, tearing off his wig.
+
+"Polly, it's I.  There's an infernal machine ticking here ready to blow
+us up."
+
+He tried to lift up the bomb, but it was wedged fast.
+
+"Harry, for Heaven sake, what do you mean?"
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute in the water as soon as we have jumped
+overboard.  Come."
+
+He seized Pauline, carried her up on deck.
+
+"Where's Mr. Boyd?"
+
+"Gone.  Take this," answered Harry, putting a life preserver around
+her.
+
+
+"Now, will you jump or shall I throw you overboard?  One, two, three."
+
+"I'll jump," said Pauline and with arms around each other they leaped
+into the warm ocean.  On went the white launch serene and unruffled by
+the desertion of its crew.  In answer to Pauline's demand for
+explanation Harry only answered:
+
+"Wait."
+
+Finally it came.
+
+A belch of flame shot up from the launch driving a column of smoke far
+into the sky, where it spread out and formed a majestic ring, which
+floated and curled for many moments.  A concussion reached them through
+the water and another in the air smote their ears.
+
+The after part of the launch rode on the waters for a moment and then
+disappeared.  Finally a succession of waves tossed them and passed on.
+
+"What does it mean?" gasped the girl.
+
+"Insanity -- sheer, downright insanity.  That wretch of  a 'pirate' was
+a crazy man.
+
+"He placed that bomb, intending to kill all of us.  And Owen deserves a
+sound thrashing for having anything to do with such a murderous
+lunatic."
+
+"I think you're rather hard on Owen, Harry," said Pauline.  "Of course,
+we all know that pirates aren't nice persons -- but nobody could
+foresee that the man was crazy."
+
+"Well, perhaps.  But don't talk, we have a mile and a half swim to
+shore."
+
+They were spared that ordeal by the Silurian liner Caradoc.  Arrayed in
+borrowed clothes they were notified of a second rescue and came out on
+deck in time to behold in the dusk of evening the "pirate."  He was
+relating to an admiring throng how he had stuck by the burning ship
+till it exploded.  He had actually been blown into the air and had
+fallen by good luck into the little boat.
+
+"It's a lie," said Harry in the old man's cackling voice.  The "pirate"
+heard the voice of the old man and saw the face and the blond hair of
+Harry.
+
+It was too much for his evil and murderous mind to bear.  With a shriek
+he hurled himself over the rail into the sea.  The Caradoc stopped and
+searched, but no trace of the "pirate" could be found.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE COURTELYOU RECEPTION
+
+Two weeks later Pauline and Harry were sitting in the library.  Through
+the half-closed blinds a soft breeze bore to them the fragrance of
+carnations and roses.
+
+For the first few days after their return Pauline was so thankful they
+had not lost their lives that she was reconciled to not having found
+the treasure.  But only for the first few days.  She was already
+growing restless.
+
+"You're wasting time, Harry," she said impatiently.  "I'd rather face
+anything than be bored to death."
+
+"Polly, it's got to stop; it isn't safe, it isn't sensible, it isn't
+even fun any more.  Won't you drop the whole freakish thing and marry
+me?"
+
+Harry was holding Pauline by the hand as she drew her dainty way out of
+the library.  In laughing rebellion she looked over her shoulder and
+jeered at him.
+
+"Oh, I thought it was I who was going to be afraid," she said.
+
+"Well, if you aren't, who is going to be?"
+
+"You," she tittered.
+
+He drew her back with a gentle but firm grasp.
+
+"Honestly, Polly, aren't you satisfied yet?  Adventure is all right for
+breakfast or for luncheon once a month, but as a regular unremitting
+diet it gets on my nerves."
+
+"Still thinking of your own perils?" she volleyed.
+
+Harry's fine keen face took on a look of earnest appeal.  He let go her
+hand, but as she started to run up the stairs he held her with his
+eyes.
+
+"You dear, silly boy," she cried, returning a step and clasping him in
+an impetuous embrace.  "You are the nicest brother in all the world -
+sometimes -- but just now I think that adventure is nicer than brothers
+-- or husbands.  I'm having the time of my life, Harry boy, and I'm
+going on and on, and on with it until I've seen all the wild and wicked
+people and places in the world."
+
+Harry caught her hand and smiled down at her in surrender.
+
+A ring at the door bell and the entrance of the maid caused Pauline to
+flutter up the stairs.  They were preparing to attend the Courtelyou's
+reception that evening to the great Baskinelli, whose musical
+achievements had been equaled only by his social successes during this,
+his first New York season.
+
+"Anyway," she twinkled from the top of the stairs, "you needn't be
+frightened for tonight.  Nothing so meek and mild as a pianist can hurt
+you."
+
+Harry tossed up his hands in mimic despair and started back to the
+library.
+
+"Yes, I know she is always at home to you, Miss Hamlin," the maid was
+saying at the door.
+
+"What a privileged person I am," laughed Lucille Hamlin.
+
+She was Pauline's chum-in-chief, a dark, still tempered girl, in
+perfect contrast to the adventurous Polly.  She greeted Harry with the
+easy grace of old acquaintanceship.
+
+"Still nursing the precious broken heart?" she queried.
+
+"For the love of Michael, me and humanity," he pleaded, "can't you do
+something?  She won't listen to me.  I'm honestly, deucedly worried,
+Lucille."
+
+"You know very well that nobody could ever do anything with Polly.  She
+always had to have her own way -- and that's why you love her, though
+you don't know it, Harry.  Shall I run upstairs, Margaret?" she added,
+turning to the maid.
+
+"No, you're going to stay here," commanded Harry, seizing her hands.
+"You've got to do something with Pauline.  You're the only one who
+can.  She wants a new adventure every day, and a more dangerous one
+every time.  Talk to her, won't you?  Tell her it isn't right for her
+to risk her life when her life is so precious to so many people.  No,
+wait a minute; sit down here.  I'm not half through yet."
+
+He drew her, under laughing protest, to a seat beside him on the
+stairs.  She realized suddenly how serious he was.  She let her hand
+rest comradely in his pleading grasp.
+
+"Why, Harry, yes, if it is really dangerous, you know, I'll do anything
+I can," she said gravely.
+
+They did not see the cold gray face of Raymond Owen appear at the top
+of the stairs.  The face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
+
+In her boudoir Polly was laying out her finery of the evening.  There
+came a soft rap at the door.
+
+"Come in," she called, and looked up brightly in Owen's furtive eyes as
+he opened the door and motioned to her.
+
+"Don't say anything, please, Miss Marvin," he whispered, "just come
+with me for a moment."
+
+Bewildered by his manner, she followed to the top of the stairs.  He
+directed her gaze to the two young people in earnest conversation
+below.
+
+It was a picture that might well have startled a less impetuous heart
+than Pauline's.  Harry's hand still clasped Lucille's, and he was
+leaning toward her in the eagerness of his appeal.
+
+"You, will?  You promise?  Lucille, you've made me happy," Pauline
+heard him say.
+
+Through mist-dimmed eyes, dizzily, she saw the two arise.  She saw the
+man she loved clasp Lucille's other hand.  She saw the girl who had
+been her friend and confidante since childhood draw herself away from
+him with a lingering withdrawal that could mean -- ah, what could it
+not mean?  Polly fled to her room.
+
+In Owen's subtle secret battle to retain control of the Marvin millions
+fate had never so befriended him.  None of all the weapons or ruses
+that he had used to prevent the faithful attachment of Harry and
+Pauline was as potent as this little seed of jealousy.
+
+Pauline rang for her maid.
+
+"Tell Miss Hamlin that I am not at home," she said in a voice that
+started haughtily but ended in a sob.
+
+"But, Miss Marvin --" Margaret tried to demur.
+
+"Tell Miss Hamlin that I am not at home," repeated Pauline.
+
+Lucille had just started up the stairs, leaving Harry with a
+sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
+
+"Well, even if I caret do anything with that wild woman," she laughed
+back at him, "you know Pauline bears a charmed life.  Nothing has ever
+happened to her yet.  Guardian angels surround her -- as well as
+heroes."
+
+Harry walked into the library.  The agitated Margaret met Lucille on
+the stairs.
+
+"Miss Marvin is -- Miss Marvin is not at home," the girl said, flushing
+crimson.
+
+Lucille paused, dumfounded.
+
+"But, Margaret, you know I thought -- I really thought she was, at
+home, Miss Hamlin.  I hope you won't be offended with me."
+
+"I insist upon seeing her," cried Lucille.  "I don't believe you are
+telling me the truth.  I'm going right up to her room."
+
+Margaret burst into tears.
+
+Lucille quickly reconsidered.  Indignation took the place of
+astonishment.  She hurried down the stairs and rushed through the door
+without waiting for Margaret to open it.
+
+Pauline, back in her own room, vented her first rage in tears.  With
+her hot face pressed against the pillow, she sobbed out the agony of
+what she thought her betrayal -- her double betrayal, by courtier and
+comrade at once.  But the tears passed.  Too vital was the spirit in
+her, too red flowing in her veins was the blood of fighting ancestors,
+too strong the fortress of self-command within the blossoming gardens
+of her youth and beauty for the word surrender ever to come to her
+mind.
+
+True, she had found an adventure that stirred her more deeply than the
+peril of land or sea or sky could have done.  Here was a thrill that
+had never been listed among her intended tremors.  She sent for Owen.
+
+Masked as ever in his suave exterior and his manner of mingled
+obsequiousness and fatherliness, he came instantly.
+
+"Mr. Owen, have you known -- have you known that this was going on?"
+
+"I feel that it is my duty to know what concerns you -- even what
+concerns your happiness, Miss Marvin," he answered.
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"I mean that I have long had my suspicions."
+
+But again the very perfection of his deceit brought Pauline that
+feeling that she had had since childhood that sense of an insidious
+influence always surrounding her, always menacing and yet never
+revealed.  This influence, which Owen seemed to embody, was the
+antagonist of that other mysterious power, so real and yet so
+inexplicable, that warded and protected her -- the spirit of the girl
+that had stepped from the mummy.
+
+But Pauline had seen with her own eyes; she did not need any word of
+Owen's to convince her of the falsity of her lover.
+
+She was quite calm now.  She dressed with the utmost care.  Margaret,
+who had seen her in such anger only a short time before, was surprised
+at her sprightliness and graciousness.  A slightly heightened color
+that only added to the luster of her loveliness, was the single sign of
+her inward thoughts.  She summoned her own car and left the house
+alone.
+
+The drawing room of the Clarence Courtelyou mansion was ablaze with
+light.  There was a little too much light.  The Clarence Courtelyou
+always had a little too much of everything.
+
+There was a little too much money; there was a little too much gold
+leaf decoration in the drawing room, a little too much diamond
+decoration of Mrs.  Courtelyou, and, if you were so fastidiously
+impolite as to say so, a little too much of Mrs. Courtelyou herself.
+
+But Mrs. Courtelyou was struggling toward gentility in such an amiable
+way that better people liked her.  The motherliness and sweet sincerity
+of her -- the fact that she loved her frankly illiterate husband and
+worshipped, almost from afar, her cultured daughters was the thing that
+brought her down from the base height of the "climbers "and lifted her
+kindly, harmless personality to the high simplicities of the elite.
+
+She made the natural mistake that other wealthy mendicants at the outer
+portals of society have made the mistake of pounding at the gates.
+Instead of letting the splendor of her charitable gifts, the
+gracefulness of her simplicity, carry her through, she went in for the
+gorgeous and the costly.
+
+As a sort of crowning glory she began to "take up" artists and actors
+and musicians.  She gained the good graces of the best of them, and in
+her kindly innocence she won the worship of the worst.
+
+It was thus that she came to the point of holding a reception for
+Baskinelli.
+
+Not that any one had heard anything black, or even shadowy, against
+Baskinelli.  He had arrived recently from abroad, his foreign fame
+preceding him, his prospective conquests of America fulsomely foretold,
+his low brow decorated in advance with laurel.
+
+Mrs. Courtelyou added him to her collection with the swiftness and
+directness of the entomologist discovering a new bug.  She herself
+loved music -- without understanding it very deeply -- and Baskinelli,
+whatever might be his other gifts, could summon all the cadences of
+love from the machines that people call a piano -- engine of torture or
+instrument of joy.
+
+For half an hour Harry paced at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"I wonder if she's ever coming," he fumed to himself.  "It takes 'em so
+long to do it that they drive you crazy, and when it's done they're so
+wonderful that they drive you crazy."
+
+"Did you -- did you wish anything, sir?" asked the butler, entering.
+
+"No -- just waiting for Miss Pauline, Jenkins -- just waiting," sighed
+Harry.
+
+"Why -- if I may presume to tell you, sir -- Miss, Marvin has gone to
+the reception," said Jenkins.
+
+"Gone!" Harry cried abruptly, hotly, then remembered that he was
+speaking to a servant and swung into the reception room.
+
+He put on his hat and coat and rang for Jenkins again.
+
+"How long ago was it that Miss Pauline went out?"
+
+"Almost an hour ago, sir."
+
+Harry slammed his way out of the door.  It was not until he was in the
+car on his way to the Courtelyous that he began to think -- began to
+think with utterly wrong deductions, as lovers always do.
+
+"I must have said too much," he told himself.  "She's crazy about these
+wild pranks and she thinks I'm a stupid goody-goody.  What a fool I was
+to try to prevent her!"
+
+"You aren't very nice, Mr. Marvin, to snub my pet musician -- my very
+newest pet musician," Mrs. Courtelyou rebuked him, as he entered.
+
+"I didn't mean it.  I was waiting for -- why, my car went to pieces,"
+he explained.  "Is Pauline here?"
+
+"Here?  She is the only person present.  Baskinelli hasn't spoken a
+word to any one else.  He won't play anything unless she suggests the
+subject.  I am glad Mr. Owen is here to protect her."
+
+From the scintillant, filmy mist of women around the piano Lucille
+emerged.  She came swiftly to Harry's side.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked.
+
+"What is?  Tell me." he replied.  "What did you say to her? "
+
+"I didn't see her, Harry.  She sent word that she was not at home."
+
+"You don't mean -- not after you started upstairs."
+
+"Yes -- and she hasn't spoken to me all evening."
+
+"And she left me waiting at home for half an hour.  It's outrageous."
+
+Harry strode across the floor just as the music ceased, and Baskinelli
+arose, bowing to the applause of his feminine admirers.
+
+"May I ask the honor to show to you Madame Courtelyou's portrait of
+myself?  It is called 'The Glorification of Imbecility,'" he said as he
+proffered his arm to Pauline.
+
+He was a small man, with sharp features shadowed by a mass of flowing,
+curling hair -- the kind of hair that has come to be called "musical
+"by the irreverent.  The sweep of an abnormal brow gave emphasis to the
+sudden jut of deep eye sockets, and a dull, sallow skin gave emphasis
+to the subtle sinister light, of the eyes themselves.
+
+Pauline accepted the proffered arm of the artist, but daintily,
+laughingly, she turned him back to the piano.
+
+"You haven't yet escaped, Signor Baskinelli," she said.  "We have not
+yet heard 'Tivoli,' you know."
+
+"Tivoli," he cried, with hands upraised in mock disdain.  "Why, I wrote
+the thing myself.  Am I to violate even my own masterpieces?"
+
+There was a twitter of mocking protest from the women.  Baskinelli
+began to play again.
+
+"Pauline, may I speak to you -- just a moment?" Harry's vexed voice
+reached her ear as she stood beside the piano.  She turned slowly and
+looked into his bewildered, angry eyes.
+
+"A little later -- possibly," she answered, and instantly turned back
+to Baskinelli.
+
+From her no mask of music, no glamour of others' admiration could hide
+the predatory obsequiousness of Baskinelli.  She was not in the least
+interested in Baskinelli.  She had loathed him from the moment when she
+had looked down on his little oily curls.  But if Baskinelli had been
+Beelzebub he would have enjoyed the favor of Pauline that evening -- at
+least, after Harry had arrived.
+
+The glowing piquant beauty of Pauline enthralled Baskinelli.  He had
+never before seen a woman like her -- innocent but astute, daring but
+demure, brilliant but opalescent.  When at last they strolled away
+together into the conservatory his drawing room obeisances became
+direct declarations of love.
+
+Pauline began to be frightened.
+
+She fluttered to the door of the conservatory.  But there she paused.
+Voices sounded from the end of a little rose-rimmed alley.  They were
+the voices of Harry and Lucille.
+
+Baskinelli was at her side again.
+
+"If I have said anything -- done anything to offend," he said, with
+affected contrition, "you will let me make my lowliest apologies, won't
+you?"
+
+Pauline hardly heard him.  She was intently listening to the low
+pitched voices.
+
+"I -- I think I will run back to the others," she cried suddenly.
+Baskinelli was left alone.
+
+"I congratulate you, Signor, on the success of the evening," said a
+voice at his shoulder.  "There are few among the famous who can conquer
+drawing rooms as well as auditoriums."
+
+The musician turned to face the ingratiating smile of Raymond Owen.
+
+"I thank you -- I thank you, sir.  But I do not believe you.  My
+'conquest' has turned to catastrophe.  I have lost everything."
+
+"You mean that you are dissatisfied with the applause?" asked Owen.
+
+"No!  No!  Applause is nothing from the many.  There is always one in
+his audience to whom he plays from his soul."
+
+"And that one -- tonight?"
+
+"The lovely Miss -- what, now, is her name -- Marvin.  She bewitches me
+-- and she scorns me."
+
+"Signor Baskinelli, there are other places than drawing rooms, or even
+conservatories, in which to capture those who captivate."
+
+"I -- do I quite grasp your meaning, Mistaire Owen?"  He tried to
+disguise the suspicion under an accentuated accent.
+
+"I think so, Monsieur Picquot."
+
+At the name Baskinelli turned livid.  He made a movement as if he would
+lunge at the throat of Owen, but his fury withered under the glassy
+smile.
+
+"So -- we met in Paris?"
+
+"Once upon a time -- a little incident in the Rue St. Jeanne.  A young
+woman was concerned in that incident -- and was not heard of
+afterward."
+
+"And you are trying to blackmail me for the death of Marie Disart!
+Ha!  That is a jest," cried Baskinelli.
+
+"I am trying to do nothing of the kind.  I simply reminded you of the
+little affair.  I know as well as you that it was all beautifully
+cleared up, and a man is still in prison for it.  I know you are as
+safe here as that man is in jail, Signor Baskinelli."
+
+"What are you talking about, then?"
+
+"The little woman that so charmed you here.  I remarked merely that
+those who are captivated can capture."
+
+"Not in this country -- not among the Puritans.  One must be good --
+and unhappy."
+
+"You haven't forgotten your little friends, Mario, and Di Palma and
+Vitrio?  They are all respected residents of New York.  We know, where
+they might be found."
+
+"At Cagliacci's?"
+
+"Precisely.  Dining upon the best of spaghetti and the richest of
+wines, and paying for it at the point of a stiletto."
+
+"But -- ha!  You are talking nonsense.  We could not find them; they
+could not find us."
+
+"We might telephone and try," suggested Owen.  "Cagliacci, you know, is
+now up- to-date.  He has a telephone.  He considers it a sign of
+respectability."
+
+"And then what do you propose?"
+
+"Picquot -- I mean Signor Baskinelli, I propose nothing.  Unless
+possibly there might be -- after the reception -- a little motor trip
+to Chinatown.  It might amuse the ladies."
+
+"You are right.  I will invite them all," said Baskinelli.
+
+"And how about calling up Marie at Cagliacci's just as an old friend?"
+
+"It might be best."
+
+They moved together down the corridor and Owen directed their way to a
+little study secluded from all other apartments of the great house.
+
+"You seem to be familiar with the home of our gracious hostess,"
+remarked Baskinelli.
+
+"I make it a rule to be familiar with all homes in which Miss Marvin is
+entertained."
+
+"Miss Marvin?  You are, then a relative?"
+
+"I am her guardian."
+
+"Ah-h!  You have control - perhaps -- of certain small sums bequeathed
+to her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you would like to have as few persons as possible in the Chinatown
+party?"
+
+"As few as possible."
+
+In a place known only as Cagliacci's, in the dreg depths of Elizabeth
+street, the ringing of the telephone bell was much more startling, much
+more unusual than the crash of a pistol shot or the blast of a bomb.
+
+The habitu's moved quietly to the door that leads to the roofs, while
+Pietro Cagliacci himself wiped the dust-covered receiver on his apron
+and put it to his ear.
+
+He spoke softly, tersely.  The conversation was very brief.  Within a
+minute after he had hung up the receiver three grimy-clad, grim-visaged
+men left the place silently.
+
+Harry and Lucille came out of the conservatory.
+
+"I tell you there wasn't anything said between us that could have
+caused it," he was saying.  "I was fighting the whole thing hard, but I
+was fighting it like a beggar.  I am always a beggar with Pauline."
+
+"But you told her it wasn't right that she was risking other people's
+lives?"
+
+"No, I told you to tell her that."
+
+In spite of her distress over Pauline's coldness, Lucille burst into
+laughter.
+
+They were just emerging into the music room.  Pauline, like the others,
+turned at the unexpected sound.  She gave one glance at the two and
+turned haughtily away.
+
+Baskinelli was bustling about, making up an impromptu excursion party.
+
+"Ha!  You people of New York -- you do not know what is in New York.
+All Europe is here -- and you never cross Fourteenth street -- I mean
+to say Fifth avenue."
+
+"It is more dangerous to cross Fifth avenue than to cross the ocean --
+that's probably the reason," said Harry.  "The traffic cops along the
+Gulf Stream are so careful."
+
+Pauline stopped Baskinelli's intended reply.  She wanted Harry to be
+ignored utterly.  Her anger had made him flippant.  His flippancy had
+put the seal of completeness upon her anger.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+BASKINELLI'S QUARRY
+
+A flutter of polite alarm attended Signor Baskinalli's invitation.
+
+From the sheltered glitter of a Fifth avenue drawing room to Chinatown
+was a plunge a little too deep.
+
+But Baskinelli was insistent and Pauline was his ardent and efficient
+recruiting officer.  Quite a troop train of limousines carried the
+invaders to the uncelestial haunts of the Celestials.
+
+Baskinelli rode in the car with Pauline and Owen.  He had cast off the
+dignity of the master musician and assumed an air of whimsical
+recklessness.  Harry and Lucille were in the following car.
+
+"Oh, please stop fidgeting," exclaimed Lucille.
+
+"I'm as nervous as you are."
+
+"I know," said Harry, "but I hate to have her alone with that little
+black snake for five minutes."
+
+"Owen is with them."
+
+"Owen is worse."
+
+The machines drew up in Chatham Square, and the little procession that
+moved across to Doyers street -- dainty slippers on blackened
+cobblestones, light laughter tinkling under the thunder of the "L,"
+human brightness brushing past the human shadows from the midnight dens
+-- made contrasts picturesque as a pageant in a catacomb.
+
+Pauline, on the arm of the chattering Baskinelli, led the way.
+
+"Isn't this splendid?" she exclaimed.  "I am sure you won't disappoint
+me, Signor Baskinelli.  I hope you aren't going to show us a happy
+Chinese family at supper.  Only the most dreadful sights amuse me."
+
+"Ali, but we, must not take risks," replied Baskinelli.  "There are
+some beings in the world, Miss Marvin, so exquisitely precious that a
+man would commit sin if he placed them in peril."
+
+"But only the worst and wickedest places," she admonished Baskinelli.
+
+He leaned suddenly very near to her.
+
+"Do you really mean that, Miss Marvin?" he asked.
+
+"Indeed I do," she answered.
+
+"Very well.  But first we shall go to the new restaurant.  It is yet
+too early for the worst and wickedest to be abroad or rather to seek
+their lairs."
+
+They climbed a brightly lighted staircase into one of the ordinary
+Chinese restaurants of the better sort which are conducted almost
+entirely for Americans, and where Boston baked beans are as likely as
+not to nudge almond cakes on the bill of fare and champagne flow as
+commonly as tea.
+
+They gathered around one of the larger of the cheaply inlaid tables,
+and Baskinelli took command of the feast.
+
+Harry sat in grim silence, watching Pauline like a protecting dragon.
+Lucille was sick at heart and repentant of coming.  The others chatted
+merrily among themselves.  But by common consent Pauline seemed to have
+been surrendered to the attentions of the evening pest, who had become
+a midnight host.
+
+He leaned toward her with an ardor that he did not even attempt to
+disguise.  "You are the most wonderful woman in --"
+
+"Please make it the universe," pleaded Pauline.  "There are so many
+most wonderful women in the world."
+
+"No, let us say chaos," he whispered.  "The chaos of a man's heart can
+be ruled only by the charming uncertainty of woman."
+
+The intensity of his words brought to Pauline again the twinge of
+alarm.  Unconsciously she looked around for Harry.  It was the last
+thing in the world she had meant to do.  She was angry at herself in an
+instant, for his fixed, guarding gaze was upon her.  She met his eyes
+and turned quickly to Baskinelli.
+
+"Chaos?  I've always loved that word," she flashed.  "There must be so
+many lovely adventures where there are no laws."
+
+"I said the chaos in a man's heart could be ruled by a woman," said
+Baskinelli.
+
+The impudence of this sudden love making moved her unexpectedly to
+defiance.
+
+"Please let it be ruled, Signor Baskinelli," she said, turning away
+from him.
+
+Baskinelli had sense enough to see that he had gone too far.  He turned
+to the others as the soft-footed Orientals began to spread the mixed
+and mysterious viands on the table.
+
+He glanced at Owen.  By the slightest movement imaginable, by the least
+uplift of his black brows, Owen answered.  For the first time
+Baskinelli knew that the lovely quarry he pursued had a protector --
+and no mean, no weak protector.
+
+But the arrival of the repast quickly covered the general
+embarrassment.  Everybody could see that Pauline and Harry had had a
+quarrel and that Pauline, was flirting outrageously with Baskenelli
+simply for revenge -- that is, every one except Harry could see it.
+
+"Pardon me, but is that what you call a graft investigation that you
+are making, Miss Hamlin?" inquired Baskinelli.
+
+"No, but the food is so funny.  There are so many queer things present,
+but unidentified," laughed Lucille.
+
+"Like a reception to a foreign artist," interrupted Harry with a
+vindictive glare.
+
+"Or shall we say like the conversation of an unhappy guest," said
+Baskinelli, smilingly turning to note the entrance of a little party of
+newcomers at the further end of the restaurant.
+
+A dashing, well-dressed, fiery-eyed foreigner, the tips of whose waxed
+mustachios turned up like black stalagmites from the comers of his
+cavernous mouth, was accompanied by two nondescript figures, who seemed
+to be embarrassed more by the fact that they had been recently cleansed
+and shaved than by their rough red shirts and mismatched coats and
+trousers.
+
+The man of the tilted mustachios gave brief, imperative orders to the
+waiters, whose languid steps seemed to be quickened by his words as by
+an electric battery.  The other two sat silent, like docile dogs in
+leash.
+
+Only for an instant Baskinelli's eyes rested upon the group.
+
+"And having tasted the food of the gods, how would you like to visit
+the gods themselves?" he asked.
+
+Pauline agreed enthusiastically.  "You mean a joss house -- a Chinese
+church, don't you."
+
+"Yes."
+
+The joss house that most visitors see in Chinatown is the little one up
+under the roof at the meeting of Doyers and Pell streets -- at the toe
+of the twisted horseshoe made by these tiny thoroughfares of black
+fame, where, in spite of all the modern magic of  "reform," men still
+die silently in the hush of secluded corridors and women vanish into
+the darkness that is worse than death.
+
+The little joss house is interesting in the same way that an Indian
+village at a State fair is interesting.  Behind its gaudy staginess and
+commercial appeal it still holds something of reality from which the
+imagination can draw a picture of an ancient worship that has held a
+race of millions in thrall for thousands of years.
+
+But it was not to the little joss house that Signor Baskinelli guided
+the party.  In the little joss house the bells are pounded without
+respite, the visitors come and go at all hours of the day and night --
+save the few set hours when the joss sacrifices profit to true prayer.
+
+Baskinelli took his guests to the joss house of the Golden Screens.
+
+Save for its greater size and more splendid accoutrement, it was little
+different from the other.  But it was walled, in its back alley
+seclusion, deep behind the outer fronts of Mott street, by a secrecy
+almost sincerely sacred.
+
+The motor cars remained far behind across the square as Baskinelli led
+the party through the dismal streets and stopped before a dark
+doorway.
+
+A dim light flared behind the door and a Chinaman in American dress
+admitted them.
+
+"I am beginning to be really bored," said Pauline.
+
+"Wait; give the wicked a chance," said Baskinelli.
+
+They climbed three flights of dingy, narrow stairs, lighted with
+flaring gas jets.
+
+"Wonderful," jeered Pauline.  "Not even a secret passage or a
+subterranean den!"
+
+The others followed her laughing lead up the stairs.
+
+A Chinaman came out of the door on the second landing, stopped, started
+in innocent curiosity at the dazzling visitors and went down the
+stairs.  Everything was as still and commonplace as if they had been in
+the hallway of a Harlem flat building.
+
+The silence was not broken or the seeming safety disturbed in the
+slightest by the soft opening of the first landing door, after they had
+passed -- that is, after all but Owen had passed.  No one but Owen saw
+the piercing black eyes and the tilted mustachios of the face that
+appeared for an instant at the door.
+
+There was a corridor, not so well lighted, at the top of the third
+flight of stairs.  In the dim turns the women drew their skirts about
+them, a bit wary of the black, short walls.
+
+The passage narrowed.  They could move now only in single file, and
+even then their shoulders brushed the walls.
+
+Only a far, dull glow from a red lamp over a door at the end of a
+passage lighted their way.
+
+Baskinelli tapped lightly on the door.
+
+It was opened by a venerable Chinaman in the flowing robes of a
+priest.  He looked at them doubtfully.  Baskinelli spoke three words
+that his companions did not hear.  The priest vanished.  Quickly the
+door was reopened and they stepped into the dim, smoky, stifling
+presence of the joss.
+
+The choking scent of the punk always at the folded feet of the idol was
+almost suffocating.  The place had other odors less noxious and less
+sweet.  Chinamen were lounging in the room as if it had been a place of
+rest.  Three priests were on their knees before the joss swaying
+forward till their foreheads almost touched the floor, their
+outstretched arms moving in mystic symmetry with their rocking bodies.
+
+A great brass bell hung low beside the idol.  But no priest touched the
+bell.
+
+The joss itself was almost the least impressive thing in the room.  It
+stood, or squatted, six feet high, on a block pedestal at the side of
+the room.  The simple hideousness of the painted features served no
+impressive purpose, but as contrast to the exquisite decorations of the
+room.
+
+Screens of carved wood, so delicately wrought that it seemed a touch
+would break the graven fibers, were flecked with inlay of pearl and
+covering of gold.
+
+One of the peculiar features of the room was a suit of ancient Chinese
+armor -- a relic that had been rusted and pit-marked by time, but now
+stood brightly polished beside the statue of the god.  A huge two-edged
+sword was held upright in the steel glove.
+
+By the dim light behind the idol the shadow of the sword was cast
+across the blank face of Baskinelli as he moved forward.  He stepped
+back quickly.  The shadow fell between him and Pauline.
+
+Again the ancient priest answered a summons at the door.  Again he
+parleyed for a moment -- then opened it to the three swarthy foreigners
+who had been in the restaurant.
+
+Baskinelli turned for just in instant to glance at the tall man with
+the tilted mustache, then resumed immediately his conversation with
+Pauline.
+
+"Why do all the Chinamen run away like that?" she asked.
+
+"It is the end of the service; you see the priests are going, too."
+
+There was a furtive haste about the departure of the Orientals.  And
+there was a quavering in the manner of the oldest priest -- the only
+one who remained -- that seemed born of a hidden fear.
+
+The old priest lifted one of the lamps from a wall bracket and set it
+on the floor beside the idol.  He knelt near it and began to pray.
+
+The three Italians waited only a moment, then followed the Chinese out
+of the room.
+
+"It is late -- we ought to be going," pleaded Lucille.
+
+Complete silence had fallen on the room and her words, a little
+tremulous, had instant effect on the other women.
+
+"What about it, Baskinelli?  Had we better be going?" asked one of the
+men.
+
+"Yes -- yes, I beg only a moment.  I wish to show Miss Pauline the --"
+
+"You mean Miss Marvin, do you not?" blazed Harry, striding to
+Baskinelli's side and glaring down at him.
+
+"I was interrupted.  I had not finished my words. They are, at best,
+awkward, I beg --"
+
+"You beg nothing," said Harry through clenched teeth.  Then slowly,
+grimly:
+
+"I want to tell you, you little leper, that if anything happens here
+tonight -- it is going to happen to you."
+
+He was so near to the musician that the others did not hear.
+
+Baskinelli backed away.  Pauline, with the swift, inexplicable, yet
+unerring instinct of woman, moved as if to seek the shelter of Harry's
+towering frame.
+
+He did not see her.  He had whirled at the sound of the opening of a
+door -- a peculiar door set diagonally across a corner of the room
+behind the joss.
+
+Through the yellow silk curtains that hid the entrance came two
+Chinamen as fantastically hideous as the embroidered dragons on the
+tapestry.
+
+"Put those men out; they cannot come in here; they are full of opium,"
+commanded Baskinelli.
+
+"Stop; let them come in; we are going," said the mild voice of Owen.
+
+The understanding look of Baskinelli met his.  Baskinelli frowned and
+Owen smiled.  They were playing perfectly their roles.
+
+The two Chinamen shuffled into the room.  The priest arose in jabbering
+protest.  They argued with him acridly.  A few feet away one could see
+that their cheap linen robes covered the ordinary street garb of the
+Chinamen; that the ugly lines on their faces were painted, as on the
+face of the Joss.
+
+Baskinelli was laughing.  The others watched the argument in silence.
+Every one but the host, and Owen, and Pauline, seemed a little
+nervous.
+
+Suddenly the lamp on the floor went out.  There was another at the
+farther side of the room, but its dim light made the scene more weird
+than darkness could have made it.
+
+"Well, I thought we were going," snapped Harry's strident voice.
+
+"We are," replied Baskinelli. "Miss -- er -- I am afraid to speak --
+Miss Marvin, shall we go?"
+
+Pauline took his arm.
+
+"Ali, but I have forgotten the most precious sight of the evening,"
+suddenly exclaimed the musician.  Only a moment -- look here."
+
+Interested, Pauline did not notice that Owen softly shut the door upon
+the receding footsteps of the others.  Baskinelli guided her back to
+the little door behind the screen -- the door from which the Chinamen
+had entered.
+
+Baskinelli drew aside the curtain.
+
+"There -- that is one form of adventure."
+
+Pauline looked through the curtain.  A suffocating, narcotic odor came
+to her.  What she saw was stifling not only to the senses -- but to the
+soul.  She turned away.
+
+"Polly!"
+
+Harry's voice rang through the little choked room like a thunder
+blast.
+
+"We are coming - we are quite safe," called Baskinelli, with the sneer
+tinge in his tone.
+
+"Very well, then; hurry."
+
+Harry's manner aroused Pauline's temper again.  She purposely
+lingered.
+
+The two Chinamen were arguing violently now with the priest.
+
+Harry had closed the door and followed the others down the outer
+passage.
+
+"Miss Marvin -- Pauline!" called Baskinelli with sudden passion.  "Have
+you a heart of stone?  Can you not see me helpless in your presence?
+Do you know what love is?"
+
+He stepped towards her and tried to take her in his arms.  But she was
+stronger and far braver than he.  She thrust him aside and fled through
+the door.
+
+Baskinelli followed, protesting, pleading.
+
+Strangely, as she fled through the narrow corridor, the low, flaring
+gas jets were extinguished one by one.
+
+She groped in darkness.
+
+Baskinelli's pleading voice became almost a consolation, a protection.
+
+Her elbow struck something in the passageway.  The something shrank at
+the touch.  She heard a quick drawn breath that was not Baskinelli's.
+She tried to run.  The tiny passageway chocked her flight.  She plunged
+helplessly between invisible, but gripping walls.  She reeled and
+screamed.
+
+There was the sound of a struggle behind her.  She heard Baskinelli
+crying for help -- but, oh, so quietly!  She reached the stairs.  The
+stairs were blocked by a closed door.  The door was barred.  But there
+was a light left burning by the door.
+
+Her weak hands beat upon the panels, helplessly, hopelessly.  How
+should she know that there were two doors, locked and sealed beyond?
+
+Her wild screams rang through the long passage, through the dark, above
+the shuffle and beat and cursing of the staged fight.
+
+In the dim light she could see the three Italians grappling with the
+other men.  Baskinelli's voice called to her reassuringly. It might
+well.  Baskinelli was in no danger.
+
+She placed her softly clothed shoulder to the door and strove to break
+it.  She screamed again.
+
+"Harry!  Harry!"
+
+Dull crashes answered.  There was the crack and cleaving of splintered
+wood.
+
+"Hold on!  I'm here!" she heard.
+
+She fell beside the door.  Strong arms seized her.  For an instant she
+felt that she was saved.  But she looked up into the lowering face of a
+man with tilted mustachios.  From the wide thick lips came threats and
+curses.
+
+From the outer passageway sounded the crashing of the doors.
+
+She let herself be lifted, then, with sudden exertion of her trained
+strength, she broke the grasp of the man.
+
+The door fell open.
+
+Harry, bloody and tattered, stood there -- alone.
+
+"Polly?"
+
+"Oh - yes -- where are the others?  They'll kill you -- run!" she
+cried.
+
+He ran forward into the black corridor.  A knife thrust, sheathed in
+silence, ripped his shoulder gave him his cue.  He had one man down and
+trampled.  But another was upon him and yet a third.
+
+A sharp pain dulled the pulsing of his throat.  He felt a tickle down
+his bared and swinging arm.
+
+He fought blindly in the dark.
+
+"Polly!" he panted.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+*     *     *     *     *
+
+In the Joss House of the Golden Screens the two Chinamen, dazed with
+opium, set of purpose, were still arguing with the trembling priest.
+
+The door fell open and a white woman -- with bleeding hands -- fell at
+their feet.
+
+"Ha, she has come back!" cried one of the Chinese in his own tongue.
+
+There was the sound of steps in the outer passage.
+
+"Quick -- inside!" breathed the Chinaman, pointing to the den.
+
+They lifted Pauline.  The old priest stopped them.
+
+"Not there -- not there!" he cried.  "Any one would look in there."
+
+They dragged her back.  The priest hurried to the outer door and locked
+it.
+
+There was the blunt, battering thrust of a body against the door.
+
+"Open, or I'll break it in!" yelled the voice of Harry.
+
+The priest opened the door.
+
+In deferential silence he saluted the battle grimed newcomer.
+Battered, panting, bleeding, Harry lunged at the man, gripped him.
+
+"Quick -- where is she?  You'll die like a spiked rat.  Where?" he
+roared.
+
+The two other Chinamen were kneeling before the Joss.
+
+There was a moment's silence, then a strange sound -- like a cry heard
+afar off.
+
+Harry strode to the little pedestal where the suit of armor stood.
+
+"Where is she? -- or I'll rip this place to cockles!" he thundered.
+
+"We do not know what you mean," said the priest.
+
+The two Chinamen began to jabber.
+
+Other figures reeled from the room behind the curtains.  But over all
+their clamor sounded again the faint cry -- distant, but near.
+
+In a flash Harry caught from the mailed glove the haft of the sword.
+As he rushed across the room the Chinese withered away from him.  There
+was a crash as the great sword fell upon one of the windows.  Through
+the broken pane Harry shouted for help.  His voice was like a clarion
+in the silent streets.
+
+He turned in time.  Three Chinamen, with drawn knives, were upon him.
+He swung the unwieldy sword above his head.  Its sweep saved him.  He
+dashed at the Joss.  Again he lifted the sword.  A grasp and then a
+wail of fear sounded through the room.
+
+He struck.  The head of the statue thudded to the floor.
+
+The Chinese rushed upon him.  They were desperate now in the face of
+the violation of their god.  But he was behind their god prying open
+the secret door to the hollow within the statue.
+
+"It's all right, Polly," he said as he drew her gently forth.
+
+He stood above her with his back to the wall swinging the sacred sword
+against the onslaught of fanatic men.  They fell before him, but more
+came on.
+
+His hands could hardly hold the mighty weapon.  For more than half an
+hour he had been fighting.  He was weakening but he braced himself and
+swung for the last time.
+
+There came a hammering at the door.  It crashed in.  Police clubs
+whistled right and left.  The Chinese fled into their secret lairs.
+
+*     *     *     *     *
+
+"And I guess that will be all," panted Harry in the taxi that took them
+home.  "I don't think you'll ask for any more adventures after this
+one."
+
+"Why didn't you pick up the Joss's head?" replied Pauline.  "It would
+have looked so nice and dreadful in the library?"
+
+But the glory of her golden hair nestled upon his torn shoulder and he
+knew that he would go through all the perils in the world for happiness
+like this.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+KABOFF'S WILD HORSE
+
+For several months after old Mr. Marvin's death, Owen had kept to his
+cubby-hole room adjoining the financier's small, plain-furnished,
+workaday office.  But recently he had got the habit of doing his work
+in the library, where the tall, pure statues looked down upon his
+skulking head and the grand old books that had borne their messages of
+good from generation to generation, held their high thoughts in stately
+contrast to his skilled and cruel plots.
+
+Above the bowed bald head that was planning the death of a young girl
+to gain her fortune stood a figure of Persephone-child of innocence and
+sunlight shadowed by black robes of Dis.  Upon the coward who feared
+all but the darkest and most devious passages of crime shone high,
+clear brows of Caesar and Aurelius.  Gray folios of Shakespeare held up
+to the ambitious ingrate the warning titles of "Lear" and "Hamlet" and
+"Macbeth."  And by his side brooded ever that mystic relic of the
+farther past -- the Mummy, from whose case had stepped a daughter of
+the Pharaohs in the likeness of Pauline.
+
+But Owen thought little of contrasts.
+
+He was opening his mail on a morning in early May when he came across
+an envelope addressed in the awkward scrawl of Hicks.  He tore it apart
+nervously, for if Hicks could be moved to write, it must be a matter of
+concern.
+
+"Dear Owen, No doubt he suspects you of foul play. He has seen his
+attorneys and is about to take steps to have you removed from the
+trustee-ship."
+
+The paper crackled in Owen's trembling hand.  So the Baskinelli
+incident had gone a little too far.  Harry Marvin had sense enough to
+know that he would not have to fight three murderous Italians and a
+rabble of Chinese unless there had been a plot behind Pauline's peril.
+It might be best to go directly after Harry -- to put him out of the
+way first.  And yet, Owen pondered, there was no proof of anything
+wrong.  Pauline was admittedly plunging into these adventures of her
+own free will.  Nothing could be proved against him or Hicks.
+
+He resumed his work.  Among the letters lay an advertising dodger which
+had been dropped through the door.  Owen glanced at it carelessly at
+first, then with keen interest.  He read it over:
+
+"BALLOON ASCENSION FROM PALISADES
+
+Signor Panatella, the famous Italian Aeronaut, will make parachute drop
+from height never before attempted."
+
+The ascension was to be made that afternoon from one of the amusement
+parks on the New Jersey shore of the Hudson.
+
+"This is Providence," he muttered to himself, catching up the dodger.
+Slipping through the door and up the stairs, he tapped at the door of
+Pauline's room.  When there came no answer he entered swiftly, laid a
+paper on the table and glided back to the hall, back to the library.
+
+From there he called up Hicks.
+
+Hicks' domiciles were so many and suddenly changeable that he claimed
+nothing so dignified as a regular telephone number.  But he had
+scribbled on the bottom of his note the number of a saloon on the lower
+West Side.
+
+He was there when Owen rang.
+
+"Hello, Hello,. . . . Is that you, Hicks ?. . . . I want        to see
+you. . . .  What?. . . .  No, right away . . . . .Broke?. . . you
+always are .... you'll get the cash all right.. . . .What's that? ....
+Come here? .... Not on your life.  I'll come to you .... Not half that
+time .... I'll take the motorcycle.  All right .... Good-by."
+
+He hung up the receiver, went up to his room and got into cycling kit.
+As he came down stairs he met Pauline, who was returning from a
+shopping trip.
+
+"Good morning, Owen," she said brightly.  "Do you know, I believe there
+is more peril in a dry goods store than on a pirate yacht.  What parts
+of my new hat are left?"
+
+"Only the becoming ones."
+
+She sped on up the stairs.  After her first imperative inquiries of the
+mirror concerning what she considered her wild appearance, she picked
+up the letters on her dressing table and began to run through them.
+
+The large black type of an advertising dodger loomed among the
+letters.
+
+Pauline tripped down the stairs.  To Harry, seated on the steps
+enjoying the Spring sunshine and puffing a leisurely cigarette,
+appeared a mysterious vision.
+
+He knew by the elaborate way in which she took her seat beside him and
+hid the piece of paper in her hand that she had some new whim in
+fermentation -- something to ask him that she knew he wouldn't want to
+do.
+
+"Yes," he said, moving along the step away from her.  "I know you've
+just bought me the loveliest cravat, that I'm the nicest brother in the
+world, that I look so handsome in Springy things and -- well, what it
+is?"
+
+Pauline pouted at the other end of the step.
+
+"I'm going up in a balloon and jump down," she announced, "from a
+height never before attempted."
+
+"Polly I You are going to do nothing of the --"
+
+"No, I wasn't going to, until you grew so great and grand.  I just
+wanted to go over and see him fly."
+
+She tossed the dodger over to him.  He glanced at it.
+
+"Well, if you promise you aren't plotting any more pranks, I'll take
+you."
+
+"That's a worth-while brother.  It's a pink one."
+
+"Pink one?"
+
+"Cravat, of course."
+
+Harry groaned.  "Give it to the cook," he pleaded.  "He wears 'em
+alive.  If that fellow goes up at 2:30.you'd better hurry."
+
+"I'll be ready before you are."
+
+She rose quickly, but Owen, looking, listening, had time to close the
+door unseen, unheard.
+
+At the rear of a little West Side saloon, he signaled with his horn,
+and Hicks came out.  He was a bit shabbier than usual, and he had been
+drinking, but he was not intoxicated.
+
+Owen locked his machine and taking his arm walked him rapidly up the
+avenue.
+
+"What do you mean by writing to me?" demanded Owen.  "Haven't I told
+you never to put words on paper?"
+
+"Oh, I guess you got that house wired so nobody'll catch you," grunted
+Hicks.  "Live wires, too-clever butlers, footmen, maids, chauffeurs,
+cooks; you're safe enough."
+
+"You forget those are your wires.  They don't know they're working for
+me.  Hicks, are you out of your head?  Have you told Bemis that you and
+I are working together? "
+
+"Sure not; but that butler is no fool, Mr. Owen."
+
+"Was it from him you found out that Harry had the lawyers after us?"
+
+"No -- queer thing that, that -- it wasn't."
+
+"Who, then?"
+
+"The little Espinosa."
+
+"Espinosa -- in New York?"
+
+"Yes -- met her at the Trocadero a week ago.  She'd seen old Calderwood
+already.  I guess she blackmails him -- the old reprobate, and him the
+noble counselor at law for Mr. Harry Marvin!"
+
+"So you put her on the scent -- for us?"
+
+"Why not?  The young fellow's been acting suspicious for a long time."
+
+"You did very well."
+
+"How about some money -- I haven't seen the color of a roll since you
+put that fool Baskinelli into the game.  Ain't you coming across?"
+
+"Certainly; here," said Owen, handing over enough to sate even the
+predatory greed of Hicks.  "Now, what I want you to do is to find me
+some one among your horse racing friends who is down and out enough to
+take a little cash job -- at certain slight risks?"
+
+"Yes -- what?"
+
+"I want a good rider on a wild horse.  He could make a thousand dollars
+in an afternoon if the horse should happen to get wild at the right
+time and do the right thing."
+
+"Hm'm," mused Hicks.  "I wonder if Eddie Kaboff has still got his
+livery stable down on Tenth avenue.  We might go see."
+
+After ten minutes' walk Hicks brought up in front of a bill-plastered
+door in a fence.  He held it open for Owen and they passed across a
+vacant lot to a large dilapidated-looking stable at the further end.
+
+The short, dark man who sat in a tilted chair against the doorway and
+puffed lazily at a pipe, seemed to embody the spirit of the building
+and the business done there.
+
+He was a man who had once -- in the days of racing -- been called a
+"sport."  He might still be called "horsey" and would consider the term
+a compliment.  But Eddie Kaboff's fame and fortune had both dwindled
+since the good old betting days when little swindling games larded the
+solid profits of crooked races.  One by one his thoroughbreds had given
+up their stalls to truck horses, just as Eddie's diamond studs had
+given place to plain buttons.
+
+His beady black eyes watched the two newcomers on their way across the
+lot, but he gave no sign of recognition until Hicks and Owen reached
+the door.
+
+"Hello, Eddie," said Hicks.
+
+Kaboff got up slowly and extended a flabby hand to his acquaintance.
+He was introduced to Owen, who let Hicks do the talking.
+
+"What's new, Eddie?"
+
+"Nuthin'."
+
+"Still got that wild horse you never was able to sell?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Can you still manage him yourself?"
+
+"I guess I could, but he ain't safe to take among traffic."
+
+Hicks stepped close to Kaboff, talking in rapid whispers.  The little
+man turned white.
+
+"No, no; I'm too old for that kind of game," he said.
+
+Owen drew from his pocket a roll of yellowbacks -- the biggest roll
+Eddie Kaboff had seen since the days of  "easy money."
+
+"This much to try it," said Owen, "and as much again if you make good."
+
+Kaboff's glance wavered a moment between the penetrating eyes of Owen
+and the money in his hand.
+
+"Take it; it's yours."
+
+The flabby hand closed almost caressingly around the roll.  "We'll go
+in and have a look at the brute," he said.
+
+They followed him through a line of stalls to a large padded box at the
+far end of the barn.  A beautiful bay saddle horse occupied the box.
+Kaboff entered and called the animal, which answered by flying into a
+seeming fury, plunging about the box, kicking, rearing and snapping.
+
+"Same old devil," muttered Hicks.  "He'll do."
+
+The sight of an apple in Kaboff's hand calmed the animal.  It came to
+him and ate docilely while he slipped a bridle over its head.  Once
+outside the stall, however, it began another rampage.
+
+Hicks held a last whispered conversation with Kaboff, giving him minute
+instructions.
+
+"I can just try it, you know," said Kaboff.  "I can't guarantee to get
+away with it."
+
+"As much again if you do, you know," said Owen as he started briskly
+away with Hicks.
+
+The place that Panatella had chosen for the start of his balloon
+ascension was a field upon the crest of the Palisades above the
+amusement park.
+
+Panatella had brought with him from abroad a reputation for dare-devil
+adventures in the air.  And he had proved his reckless courage in the
+several brief ascensions that he had already made on this side.
+
+Today, with his promise of the longest parachute drop on record, people
+flocked to the field from New York and all adjacent New Jersey.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't always invite that velvet-pawed servant on our
+trips," grumbled Harry to Pauline, as Owen went for his dustcoat.
+
+"Owen is my trustee and guardian.  You have no right to speak of him as
+a servant.  Besides, when he's along he keeps you from being silly."
+
+Harry stamped out to the garage, swung a new touring car around to the
+door, and soon, with Owen and Pauline, was speeding for the ferry.
+
+Signor Panatella was superintending the filling of the great gas bag.
+He was a tall, lithe man in pink tights beneath which his muscles
+bulged angularly like the gas filling the balloon bag.
+
+A Latin rapidity of speech and motion added to the pink tights made him
+comically frog-like, and even the abattis of medals on his breast could
+not save his dignity.
+
+He bustled about giving orders to the workmen who were preparing to cut
+the ropes, then flitting back to the crowd to answer the questions of
+impromptu admirers.
+
+Pauline had left the car and was standing between Owen and Harry near
+the rapidly filling bag.
+
+"I wish I could talk to him, too -- he's so cute and hippety-hoppy,"
+she said.
+
+Owen stepped to Panatella's side.
+
+"Would you permit the young lady to see the balloon basket?" he asked.
+
+"With pleasure," said the airman after a glance at Pauline.  He led the
+way to the basket, and helped Pauline up so that she could look at the
+equipment, the anchor with its long coil of rope, the sand bags and
+water bottles.
+
+She was plainly fascinated as Panatella explained the manner of his
+flight and his drop through the air.  As she saw them attach the basket
+to the tugging bag she was thrilled.
+
+At this moment there was a flurry of excitement on the outskirts of the
+crowd.  A horseman on a beautiful bay mount, that was evidently
+unmanageable, came plunging and swerving down the field.
+
+The crowd broke and scattered in front of the menacing hoofs that flew
+in the air as the vicious animal reared.
+
+The horseman, clad in a somewhat threadbare riding suit, was a small
+man with beady black eyes that turned from side to side as he swayed in
+his saddle.  He seemed to be afraid of his mount and to be looking for
+help.  But it was remarkable that apparently so poor a rider held his
+seat and actually managed to bring the beast to a nervous stand some
+fifty yards from the balloon.
+
+The little man looked around over the heads of the crowd.  He caught
+sight of Owen beside Pauline near the balloon basket.  The lifting of
+his riding cap might or might not have been a salute and signal.
+
+"Oh, I wish I hadn't promised Harry not to go up.  I know Signor
+Panatella would take me," sighed Pauline.
+
+Harry had turned away to watch the actions of the strange horseman.
+
+"You might scare him a little," Owen suggested.
+
+Those words were the greatest risk he had taken in all his deeply laid
+plots.
+
+Pauline caught at the suggestion eagerly.  She sprang lightly from the
+little platform into the balloon car.
+
+A murmur of mingled astonishment, applause and alarm rose from the
+crowd.  Two of the workmen were cutting the last ropes that held the
+basket to earth . Ten others were holding it with their hands awaiting
+the airman.
+
+Panatella purposely delayed the moment of mounting the basket.  The
+tugging of the huge balloon against the strength of a dozen men gave
+impress to his feat, and he liked the state of suspense.
+
+But the sound from the surprised throng called his attention now to a
+scene that made him forget affectation and effect.  He started to run
+toward the basket, shouting peremptory orders:
+
+"Out of the car; out of the car instantly, madame!  You are risking
+your life."
+
+His excitement infected the crowd.  Surging, it seemed to sweep with it
+the rider on the restive horse.  For, as a hand was suddenly lifted in
+the midst of the crowd the horse apparently overcame the legs braced to
+spring, it shot forward directly at the balloon basket.
+
+The hand that had been raised was the hand of Raymond Owen.
+
+All was happening so swiftly that neither Harry nor Panatella reached
+the basket before the maddened animal.
+
+The crowd had given way in panic before it.  Cries of fright were
+mingled with cries of pain as the beast charged straight upon the men
+holding the basket, felling and crushing them with shoulder and hoof.
+
+For an instant a few desperate hands held to the wrenching car.
+Panatella had all but reached the platform; Harry was within arm's
+length of it, when, with a writhing twist the bag jerked the basket
+sideways and upward, knocking to the ground the last two men who had
+held it and whirling forth into the deathly emptiness of space a
+cowering, stunned girl, whose white face peered and white hands pleaded
+over the basket rim -- peered down upon the upturned faces of thousands
+who would have risked their lives to aid, but who stood helpless in
+their pity, hushed in fear.
+
+For a moment Harry had stood dazed.  It was as if the twanging taut of
+the ropes, as the bag tore almost from his grasp the most precious
+being in the world, had snapped the fibers of action in him.
+
+The daze passed quickly, but in the moment of its passing.  The
+balloon, risen now five hundred feet in the air, had swept its way
+westward over a mile of ground.
+
+Harry turned to look for his motor car.  Standing as he was at the spot
+from which the balloon had ascended, he now faced a human barricade.
+With a shout of warning he charged at what seemed to be a vulnerable
+point in the files of wedged shoulders.  The wall resisted.  The throng
+was lost to all but the dimming view of the balloon.  Harry swung right
+and left with his broad shoulders.  He tore his way through.
+
+The car was standing where he had left it on the outskirts of the
+field.  As he approached it he saw Owen emerge from the crowd and hurry
+toward a runabout that had just been driven upon the field.
+
+"What's the matter?" yelled a man in the machine, and Harry recognized
+the voice of Hicks.
+
+"Miss Marvin -- carried away in the balloon!" cried Owen in a tone of
+excitement that was not all feigned.  He joined Hicks beside the
+runabout.
+
+Harry sprang to the seat of his touring car.  It seemed to leap
+forward.  He shot past the two conspirators and heard Owen's voice
+calling after him:
+
+"Wait!  Where are you going?  I'll go with you."
+
+"You're too late," shouted Harry bitterly, over his shoulder.  An
+envelope of dust sealed itself around the spinning wheels of the big
+machine as he took the road after the balloon.
+
+Steadfast but hopeless he fixed his eyes upon the unconquerable thing
+in its unassailable element -- a thing that seemed to be fleeing from
+him as if inspired by a human will.  Death rode beside him at his
+breakneck speed, but he did not know it.  He knew only that he must
+follow that black beacon in the sky - that he must be there when its
+flight was over -- when the end came.
+
+He did not know that Owen and Hicks, in the runabout, were also
+following -- that they, too, watched with an interest as deep as his,
+with a hope as poignant as his hopelessness, the dizzy voyage of
+Pauline.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+FROM CLOUD TO CLIFF
+
+"Wonder what he thinks he can do," growled Hicks as they sat in the
+runabout and watched Harry pass them.
+
+"Trying to break his own neck -- for nothing," replied Owen.  "If he
+keeps up that speed we'll get both birds with one sand bag."
+
+"I hope so.  He didn't speak, did he?  You can see by the way he acts
+he don't want us around -- even now."
+
+"It doesn't matter what he wants -- it's what he does."
+
+"You don't think he can save her?"
+
+"He might -- and I don't want her saved this time, Hicks, you
+understand.  I can't afford it this time.  I've said too much."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Where did you get this runabout?"
+
+"Upper East Side -- private party; I didn't want to do any business
+near home."
+
+"That's right."
+
+"How much is this machine worth?" asked Owen irrelevantly.
+
+"Oh, six or seven hundred -- it ain't new.  Why?"
+
+"If anything should happen to it, there wouldn't be any trouble,
+provided the bill was paid, would there?"
+
+"I got an idea the owner would grab at $3oo for this here buggy.  But
+why?"
+
+"And if this automobile disappeared, vanished -- no trace of it; you're
+sure there wouldn't be any investigation?" pursued Hicks.
+
+"Yes -- it would be all right, I tell you.  But I want to know what
+your scheme is.  How can you use this machine to get rid of Harry?
+Tell me," Owen insisted.
+
+"Never mind -- yet.  How do you make the course of the balloon now?"
+
+"I guess she'll go over Quirksborough and then up between Hoxey and
+Brent."
+
+"Then we can pass him at Quirksborough."
+
+"How do you figure that?"
+
+"He'll stop for gasoline.  He hasn't got enough to go more than two
+miles beyond there.  I saw that he hadn't when we set out."
+
+"What do you want to pass him for?  Why not let 'em both break their
+own merry little necks an' us pick 'em up an' do the weepin'
+afterward?  That's our music."
+
+"You fool!  Don't you think a balloon ever came down safe yet?  Don't
+you know that young devil has got his head full of schemes to beat me
+out' again?  I tell you we've got to make sure of this trick.  We've
+got to get him."
+
+Unconsciously Hicks brought the machine to a stop as both men strained
+their eyes at the balloon, now traversing a lower course more slowly.
+
+They saw Pauline stand erect in the basket and lift the heavy anchor
+over the side.
+
+Harry, going at terrific speed on the deserted road, saw the drop of
+the anchor with a thrill of hope.  At least - even if it was useless in
+itself -- it showed him that Pauline was brave and calm enough to use
+her wits.  He waved again but there was no answering signal.
+
+Suddenly the balloon itself was lost to sight from the road.  At the
+lowering angle, drawn downward partly by the anchor and partly by the
+gradual loss of gas, it swung over the hills.
+
+The road led between two hills.  Beyond it curved to the east and
+north.  As he reached the curve Harry was surprised that the balloon
+was not in sight.  When after circling another hill Harry had still
+failed to pick it up he was alarmed as well as puzzled.  The hills had
+muddled his senses of direction, but he knew that he was near the river
+again -- back on the verge of the Palisades.  This added to his fears.
+
+There was but one thing to do, though -- follow the road.  He went on
+slowly.
+
+Suddenly he uttered a cry and threw on full speed.  Over the top of a
+high, jagged cliff, set like a rampart between two bastion knolls, he
+saw the upper half of the gas bag.
+
+It veered and tossed in the wind like a tethered thing.  The basket was
+invisible, but Harry knew that the anchor had caught on the cliff
+side.
+
+As he neared it he discovered that what was a cliff on one side was the
+river wall on the other.  He thanked heaven that the road led to the
+top of it.  He turned the machine up the road, which threaded narrow
+ledges through growths of bramble and stunted trees.
+
+He saw and turned sick in soul and body, for the pulling of the balloon
+held the basket almost inverted, and Pauline was not in the basket.
+
+The anchor had doubled itself into rock or root far down the cliff
+side.  From it the balloon dragged toward the river instead of toward
+the shore.  The taut rope writhed fifty feet out from the top of the
+declivity.
+
+To the edge of the cliff crawled Harry.  He moved rapidly, but at the
+uttermost verge he paused and covered his eyes with his, hand.
+
+At last he looked down.
+
+To Pauline on her wild flight had come increasing calm.  As she felt
+the balloon reaching lower levels -- though it still soared high above
+the hills -- she even allowed herself a little hope.  Leaning over, she
+watched the shining blades of the anchor dance through the air.
+Northeastward she could see the waves of the great river dancing.  On
+the little anchor, hung her hope of life; in the water beyond the
+farthest cliff lay her final peril.
+
+She had lost track of Harry and the other automobile long ago.  She had
+given up all hope of aid from any living thing.
+
+The balloon moved slowly above the palisade.  The anchor dragged on the
+landward side of the knolls.  These were sheer rock that the steel
+talons clawed in vain.
+
+The balloon moved out over the river, then suddenly glided back.  An
+eddy of breeze from the water had turned its course.  The anchor
+dangled along the river wall of the precipice.
+
+Pauline seized the rope.  She alternately pulled and loosened it,
+trying to hook the anchor to tree or shrub.  Suddenly she was flung
+forward -- almost out of the basket.  The balloon had stopped with a
+jerk.  Hopefully, fearfully, she pulled in the rope.  The anchor held.
+The balloon was tugging and swaying wildly, but its tether did not
+break.  She looked down at the ledge.  Between her and that narrow
+footing the only thoroughfare was two hundred feet of swaying rope.
+She pulled upon the rope again.  She dropped two more of the heavy
+ballast bags over the side, and the bag shook and groaned upon its
+stays as it dragged the anchor deeper into the rock.  She put her feet
+over the edge of the basket.  With her hands clutching the rim, she
+lowered herself.  Taking her hands from the basket and grasping the
+rope, she started down.
+
+The raw hemp tore her hands.  The fearful strain upon her arms made her
+sick and faint.  Only desperation nerved her after the first ten
+yards.  The wrenching of the balloon whirled and jostled her.  At
+first, holding only by her hands, she was flung out from the aut
+halyard like a flag.  Then instinct told her to wrap her feet around it
+and she trembled on.  She looked down once, saw the far swaying river,
+and looked quickly up again.  It was not until her groping feet touched
+the rock of the ledge that she opened her eyes again.  At the top of a
+slender rope whirled and veered and battled a balloon with an empty
+basket.  The sound of creaking ropes mingled in her ears with the
+chugging of a motor car.  The chugging seemed a long way off, but its
+noise seemed to make her dizzy.  She sank in a dead faint upon the
+narrow ledge beside the hooked anchor.
+
+"Pauline!  Pauline!  It's I -- Harry.  Can't you hear me?  Pauline!"
+
+There came no sound in answer -- only the creaking of the balloon rope
+in the air, the rasping of the anchor fluke upon the stone.
+
+He sprang up and back to the motor and began throwing out the robes,
+blankets, tools and chains.  He laid a blanket on the ground and began
+to slash it into strips with his pocket knife.  In the ends of the
+strips he cut slits and linked the slits with the chains to form a
+rope.  He paused only once in his frantic labor.  That was when he
+rushed back to the edge of the cliff to look again and call again-in
+vain.  He fastened the chain at the end of his strange line to a
+sapling growing some ten feet back of the verge and with a throb of
+relief saw the other end drop to within a few feet of the unconscious
+girl.  He tested the strength of the cable by pulling on it with all
+his might.  It did not give.  He put himself over the cliff side and
+began the descent.
+
+Owen and Hicks had not only lost the balloon, but had lost Harry, too.
+They could follow him only by the deep cut tracks of his flying car,
+and these were as likely to be over marshes and fields as on the
+highway.
+
+More than once Hicks urged that they turn back.
+
+"We can't do no good," he argued.  "If they ain't dead they ain't --
+that's all."
+
+"I've got to be sure," muttered Owen.
+
+The little runabout had a hard fight to climb the cliff that Harry's
+big car had taken so easily.  But as they came through the grove into
+view of the balloon and the empty basket the two felt amply rewarded
+for their worry and trouble and toil.
+
+"By George, it has happened.  It's done!" cried Owen.  No artist gazing
+on a finished masterpiece, no conqueror thanking the fates for victory
+could have spoken with more triumphant fervor.
+
+But Hicks was out of the machine and running to Harry's car.  He saw
+the shreds of the blankets; he saw the knife; finally he caught a
+glimpse of the chain that was fastened to the sapling.
+
+"Don't be so sure," grumbled Hicks.  "Come on -- but come quiet."
+
+He got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the
+cliff.  Owen followed him.  Together they drew back with gasps of
+surprise and anger.
+
+Hicks sprang to his feet.  His big-bladed knife flashed in his hand.
+He sawed excitedly at the small chain.  A low curse escaped him as the
+blade bent on the links.
+
+Owen had dashed to Harry's auto.  He was back with a pair of heavy
+pliers.  In a flash he had cut the chain.  The end of it shot over the
+cliff.  There was a startled cry from below.
+
+It was several minutes before Hicks and Owen looked down again.
+
+The man they thought they had just killed and the girl whom they had
+marked to die stood on the ledge in each other's arms, oblivious of
+life or death, or foe or friend, of everything but love.
+
+Pauline was still aquiver with the shock of her waking.  A cry ringing
+above her had brought her from her swoon and she had looked up to see
+the terrible balloon still reeling over her and to find Harry dangling
+from a rope's end not ten feet away.
+
+She rose weakly and stretched out her arms to him.
+
+"Be still; don't move, dear," he called softly.
+
+"You can't help me.  You --"
+
+There was a sudden snapping sound from over the top of the cliff.  The
+chain end of the line fell upon his shoulders.  He dropped joltingly to
+the ledge and lunged forward toward a further fall.  It was the soft
+arms of Pauline that caught and held him.  Both trembling a little as
+their lips met.
+
+From overhead came the sound of a starting automobile.  Harry shouted
+at the top of his voice.  There was no answer.  He stopped quickly and
+picked up the severed end of the life line.
+
+Look; it wasn't broken; it was cut;" he cried.  "Good heaven, Polly,
+who is it that hates us like that?"
+
+For answer she merely nestled nearer in his protecting arms.
+
+They sat down on the ledge, and Harry's keen eyes watched the tantrums
+of the balloon in the wind.  It was pulling fiercely toward the river
+now, but the anchor held fast.
+
+Suddenly Harry sprang up.  Pauline started to follow his example, but
+he motioned her to stay where she was.  In his hand gleamed the
+revolver, that he had carried ever since the battle in Baskinelli's
+den.
+
+"Who is it?" whispered Pauline.  "Can you see some one?"
+
+He raised the revolver in the air, took aim and fired.  The balloon
+rope at his feet suddenly slacked and he caught at its sagging loop to
+gave the anchor from loosening.  He fired twice again at the balloon
+bag, and Pauline, clinging to his shoulder saw the monster that had
+held her a slave to its elemental power, that, like some winged gorgon
+had held her captive in the labyrinth of air, crumple and wither and
+fall at the prick of a bullet; saw it collapse into a mass of tangled
+leather and rope and slide in final ruin down the smooth cliff.
+
+She looked at Harry with the whimsical smile that she could not
+suppress even on the dizzy heights of danger.
+
+"Did you really think I would fly away again?" she asked.
+
+"Hopeless ward," he said.  "Pitiful case.  Miss Pauline Marvin, crazy
+heiress -- thinks she's funny when she's merely getting killed.  No,
+Miss Flippancy, I wanted a line to slide the rest of the way on," he
+announced as he gave the anchor rope a twist around a rock.
+
+Pauline's merriment vanished like a flash.
+
+"Oh, I can't do it again, Harry, I can't," she cried tremulously.
+
+"It will be easy this time," he told her.  "Here, give me your hands."
+
+With a piece of the blanket rope he tied her wrists together, and
+placed her arms about his shoulders, grasping a rope that sagged away
+to the wrecked balloon on the road far below.  He placed a leg over the
+ledge, wrapped it around the rope and bracing the other foot against
+the rock wall, started joyously on his fearful task.
+
+Joyously, for if ever man rejoiced at the gates of death it was Harry
+Marvin.  To him the chance to risk his life today was a blessing and a
+boon.  It was what he had prayed for, hopelessly, on the long motor
+dash in the wake of the balloon -- just the chance to try and save
+her.  To die with her was all he asked; to die fighting for her was all
+he wanted; and here he was, holding her in his arms on a stout rope,
+already half way down the cliff.
+
+At the bottom he let her feel the firm earth once more.  "Now you can
+open your eyes," he said.
+
+With his torn hands he started to lift her arms from his neck; but she
+clung there, weeping.
+
+"Oh, Harry, you are so patient, so good and brave, and I have made you
+risk your life again for me."
+
+"Sure; that's it; worry about me, now," he grumbled, although he held
+her tenderly and close.  "When will you find out that my life doesn't
+matter; it's yours that counts?"
+
+"I will never, never do it again," said Pauline like a naughty child.
+
+"You used to say that when you were four years old.  It was usually a
+lie," said Harry.
+
+"I love you," said Pauline irrelevantly.
+
+"Then why-in-the-dickens-don't-you-marry me?" he demanded.
+
+"Because --"
+
+She stopped.  Steps sounded from the roadway.  They peered through the
+thicket that concealed them and saw Owen approaching.
+
+Pauline hailed him.  He turned toward the thicket in obsequious haste.
+
+"Thank Heaven, Miss Marvin," he cried.  "It must be a miracle.  And you
+are safe, too," he added, turning to Harry.
+
+"How did you know I was ever in danger?" inquired Harry grimly.
+
+"We heard shots," explained Owen.  "We saw the balloon fall and we knew
+what you had done.  It was magnificent.  I congratulate you."
+
+"Congratulate Polly," said Harry.  "She slid out of Heaven, while I
+only slid down hill."
+
+"Where is your car, Mr. Marvin?"
+
+"Up on the hill -- if the kind persons who cut the chain didn't take it
+with them."
+
+Owen did not change color.  "I will go and see if it is there.  If not,
+I'll find Hicks and his runabout.  He's waiting somewhere about."
+
+He set off briskly up the road.
+
+"Polly, you still trust that man?" asked Harry.
+
+"One has to trust one's guardian, doesn't one?"
+
+He tossed his hands above his head in a gesture of  "Give it all up."
+
+"That's right; keep 'em there," said a rough voice, and a wiry man with
+white handkerchiefs tied over his face below the eyes sprang with
+crunching strides through the bushes.  "Keep up your hands, I say," he
+thundered at Harry, as he leveled a revolver.
+
+Pauline was beside him and Harry dared not move.  But Pauline dared.
+With the resourceful courage that always inspired her she whipped his
+revolver out his hip pocket and fired at the intruder's head.
+
+His hat fluttered off into the road.  He sprang at Pauline and wrested
+the gun from her.  As Harry rushed him, he had no time to fire, but the
+butt of one revolver crashed on the young man's forehead.  Harry sank
+unconscious in the road.
+
+Pauline knelt beside him.  She was screaming for Owen -- even for
+Hicks.  Hicks was instantly beside her but not to aid or rescue, for
+Hicks was the man with the handkerchief mask.  He half dragged, half
+carried Pauline to a thicket that concealed the runabout.  He drew a
+roll of tire tape from under the seat and bound it cruelly around her
+lips.  He took ropes and tied her hands and feet, placed her in the
+seat beside him and started the machine.  If Harry, struggling to rise
+out of the dust of the road, could have seen Pauline now, bound and
+gagged beside Hicks in the runabout, he would have known her to be in
+greater peril than ever the balloon had brought her.
+
+Pauline was not long unhidden.  As the quick ear of Hicks caught the
+sound of wheels, he grasped her roughly by the arm and thrust her into
+the bottom of the machine.  Without taking his hand from the lever or
+slackening speed, he pulled a blanket over her and tucked it in with
+one hand.
+
+"Don't move, either," he growled, "or you know."
+
+A farmer on his wagon came around a bend.  His cheery "good morning"
+brought only a grunt from Hicks, but the sound of the kind voice
+thrilled Pauline.  She struggled under the blanket and almost reached a
+sitting posture before Hicks crushed her back.
+
+The runabout had flashed by, but the farmer had seen something that
+alarmed even his stolid mind.
+
+When a half mile up the road he came upon a young man, dazed and
+wounded, staggering through the dust, he drew rein and leaped out.
+
+A draught of whiskey from the farmer's bottle braced Harry.
+
+"You passed them on the road?" he cried.
+
+"A machine with a man in it and somethin' else -- somethin' in the
+bottom of it that moved," said the farmer.
+
+"A horse," said Harry, "quick -- one of yours will do."
+
+The farmer hesitated.  Harry thrust money into his hand.  "Quick," he
+shouted.
+
+Together they unharnessed the team.  Coatless and hatless, tattered,
+wounded and stained, Harry swung himself to the bare back of a
+stirrupless steed and galloped out on what he knew was the most
+dangerous of all the pathways of Pauline.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE OLD GRIGSBY HOUSE PAYS PENANCE
+
+To young Bassett, of The American, the excitement of existence, since
+he became a reporter and joined the jehus of the truth wagon, had
+consisted mainly of "chasing pictures" in the afternoons and going to
+strings of banquets at night.  He had no more enthusiasm for
+photographs than he had for banquets.  Word painting and graining was
+his art.  And so when a big story walked up and beckoned to him he was
+as happy as a boy in love.
+
+It had been a dull day for news.  The evening papers were barren of
+suggestions and the assignments had run out before Bassett's name was
+reached.  That meant another afternoon of dismal lingering in the
+office, without even a photograph to chase.
+
+Bassett flung himself disgustedly into a chair and straightened a
+newspaper with a vicious crackle as the last of the other reporters
+hurried out.  He thought he caught a gleam of merry pity in the
+reporter's eye.  Never mind.  Let 'em laugh.  Let 'em wait.  One of
+these days he'll be the one getting the real stuff and putting it
+through, too, from tip to type, without a rewrite man or a copy reader
+touching it.  Let 'em wait!
+
+"In a balloon?  Where?"
+
+The suddenly vibrant voice of the city editor talking over the
+telephone caused Bassett to lower his paper and hushed even the chatter
+of the office boys.
+
+"Palisades -- Panatella; yes.  Who's the girl?  You don't know?"
+
+The paper dropped from Bassett's hands.
+
+"Much obliged.  I'll have a man over there, but you go right ahead."
+The city editor clicked down the receiver and whirled in his chair.
+
+"Oh -- Bassett.  Our Weehawken man says a young woman has been carried
+off by Panatella's balloon.  They've lost the balloon.  Get a car and
+get over there quick.  Go as far as you like, only find the girl and
+let me hear from you -- quick."
+
+Bassett jumped to a phone and ordered a high-powered machine to meet
+him at Ninety-sixth street.  He ran down William street, with his straw
+hat under his arm, and dived into the subway.  An express had him at
+Ninety-sixth street in a few minutes.  His machine was there.  They
+dashed for the ferry and were on the aviation field before the
+bewildered crowd that had witnessed the runaway flight of the balloon
+had dispersed.
+
+Bassett jumped out and mingled with the people.  They knew nothing
+except the general direction toward the west that the balloon had
+taken.  Automobilists had pursued for a long way, but had seen the gas
+bag turn to the north and disappear in the hills.  The automobilists
+had returned -- most of them.  Two who had been with the girl before
+she leaped into the basket had not returned.
+
+Bassett got back in the car beside the driver, and they glided off on
+the westward road.
+
+Every one in the farm houses along the route had seen the balloon.  But
+the houses were further and further apart as Bassett's course was drawn
+northward and, often he missed the trail.
+
+The trail was blazed by the wheel ruts of a giant touring car and a
+small runabout that frequently left the highways and plowed across the
+fields.  He lost them in the middle of a field that was marshy where
+the automobiles left the road and rock-dry at the middle and further
+side.  After a half-hour's maneuvering he ordered the driver to go back
+to the road.
+
+"Maybe they done the same thing - -turned round an' come back,"
+suggested the chauffeur.  "Hello, what kind of a rig is that?" he added
+as a wagon appeared around a bend in the road.
+
+The peculiar thing about the "rig" was that while it was a tongued
+wagon with whiffletrees for two horses, there was only one horse.  The
+driver, a bearded farmer, was urging the patient animal on, although it
+was impossible for it to do more than plod in its awkward harness.
+
+"What's the matter?" called Bassett, cheerily, as the machine drew
+alongside and stopped.
+
+"I dunno," replied the farmer, shaking his grizzled bead.  "Ef I was a
+young feller like you I'd go right off an' find out."
+
+"I'll go right away; what's up?"
+
+"I dunno.  I ain't knowed anythin' like it in this part o' the country
+in fifty year.  First, down yonder on the old river road I meets a
+autymobile, with a man drivin' it and somethin' alive an' movin' lyin'
+in a blanket by his feet.  I ain't got more'n a half mile back from
+there when I finds a fine young feller, with his good clothes -- what
+he's got left -- tore to pieces, no shoes, or hat on him, an' his head
+bleedin' bad from cuts.  'Where are they?  Did you see a autymobile?'
+he yells at me.  I tells him what I had saw, an' he takes my off hoss
+there an' goes gallopin' up the road."
+
+"What road?" cried Bassett.
+
+"Ye circle this here field an' climb the hill, then take the first
+turn."
+
+"Which way?"
+
+"West, if you don't want ter jump in the river."
+
+"What, we're back at the river," gasped Bassett.
+
+"That's about my luck.  The balloon's gone over the river; it's in New
+York, and some Harlem reporter is leading it down to his office on a
+leash to have it photographed, and I'm -- I'm hoodooed, that's all."
+
+"I dunno," said the farmer, "but ef ye ast me, I'd say that feller in
+the autymoble was makin' for the woods beyond Quirksborough.  It's
+lonely up through there, an' he had somethin' in that there machine
+that he wanted to keep lonely, I'm guessin'."
+
+Bassett motioned to the driver to go on.  "We might as well see what it
+is; the balloon's gone home for supper," he said bitterly.
+
+In five minutes they reached the turn where the farmer had last seen
+Harry Marvin disappear.  They took the turn into an ill-kept,
+dust-heavy road that had cast its blight of brown upon the reeds
+bordering it.  The woods became more and more dense and the road more
+narrow.  In some places the dust was crusted, as it had dried after the
+last rain, and the men in the automobile could see that the wheels of
+another machine and the hoofs of a galloping horse had plunged through
+this crust but a short time before.
+
+Around a bend in the road, going at full speed, Bassett sighted Harry
+Marvin for the first time.  He stood up beside the driver and hailed
+him, but Harry did not even turn around.  The beat of his horse's hoofs
+drowned the sound.  The deep lines of the runabout's wheels in the dust
+held his gaze and his senses to one thing alone -- the rescue of
+Pauline.  He urged the poor beast to its last tug of strength.  Weak
+and dizzy from his wound, he knew that he could go but a little way
+afoot.  The road's high, close-set wall of trees was broken for the
+first time by a little clearing.  Harry's passing glance showed him
+that there was a house in the clearing.  He was exhausted and a thirst,
+but his eyes swept back to the wheel tracks on the road.
+
+The runabout had gone on.  Harry, without drawing rein, was about to
+follow.  But suddenly, weirdly, the rickety walls of the deserted house
+gave forth a sound, a rattle and a crash, and from a shuttered window
+beside the low-silled door bellied a sheet of smoke.
+
+Harry reined the foaming horse and sprang off.  Freed of his weight,
+the animal staggered on a few paces and fell, panting, in the dust.
+
+Harry did not see it.  He was battering at the door of the burning
+house.
+
+Hicks could hardly be called a nervous or a timid man.  He was
+certainly not a coward, like Owen; but neither did he have the shrewd,
+scheming mind which was the bulwark of the craven secretary's
+weakness.  At the moment when they discovered the young lovers safe at
+the foot of the cliff after the escape from the balloon and rock ledge,
+the two arch conspirators were two very different men.  Owen was
+shaking like a leaf in his terror of discovery, but thinking of a
+hundred schemes to save himself.  Hicks was deadly cool, and thinking
+of just one thing -- immediate and cold-blooded murder.
+
+But now, although he thought he had killed Harry, although he knew he
+had Pauline gagged and bound in the bottom of the runabout, Hicks was
+afraid.  He was afraid of the incompleteness of the thing.  He was
+eager to have done with the girl as well as with the man.  And now this
+latest plan of Owen's was but another chapter of procrastination.
+
+The incident of the farmer's curiosity had unnerved him, too.  He put
+back over his face one of the white handkerchiefs that he had taken off
+when he began the flight.
+
+"There's no more 'pity-the-poor-girl' stuff in this," he said gruffly
+to Pauline.  "If you don't keep quiet I'll kill you. I mean what I
+say."
+
+He still had the instinctive crook sense to conceal his natural voice.
+Hicks was afraid, but as mile after mile fell behind them and the
+westerning sun gave promise of the early shelter of dark, he began to
+gain confidence.  He mumbled to himself reminiscently:
+
+"The old Grigsby house, eh?  Nobody but --" he checked himself.
+"Nobody but somebody would thought've that."
+
+The "old Grigsby house," in front of which the runabout came to a stop
+after many miles of travel, was set back from the road about three
+hundred yards.  In front of it and on either side, the trees had been
+cut away, but a tangle of riotous shrubbery lined the path to the
+door.  Behind the house the trees had been left untouched, and now in
+its tottering condition the venerable building literally rested on two
+of the great elms, like an old man on crutches.
+
+The windows were few and shuttered.  The black steel blinds were dead
+as the eyes of a skull.  The steel was not rusted and only a little
+weather-stained.
+
+There were no steps to the door.  It opened on the ground level, with a
+cracked board serving as both porch and foot mat.  The signs of
+attempted preservation were what gave the place its ominous air.  There
+was a menace in the steel shutters of the old Grigsby house, and in the
+fact that the path to the door was kept clear.
+
+Up this path Hicks carried Pauline.  Before he lifted her in his arms
+he tested her bonds.  He did not know that Pauline was too terrified to
+conceive the simplest plan of action.  Compared with the fear that
+possessed her now the torturing suspense of the balloon flight seemed
+like peace and safety.
+
+Hicks held her with one arm while with the other he unlocked the low
+door.  Swinging heavy on strong hinges, it opened into a narrow hall,
+mildewed with the dampness of decay, the dust of disuse.  He carried
+Pauline up the stairs, which groaned and bent under his steps and
+pushed open a door.  There was a broken chair, a table, a cot, a
+washstand, with pitcher and bowl, and a small oil lamp set in a bracket
+on the wail.
+
+Hicks laid Pauline on the cot, and lighted the lamp, using the same
+match for a cigarette.  He seemed spurred by a desire to get away as if
+the tottering, grimy halls held memories too grim for even his hardened
+soul.  After testing the shutters of the window, which were locked on
+the outside, he stepped back to the cot and cut Pauline's bonds, and
+removed the bandage from her lips.  As she fell back in a half swoon he
+hurried through the door, closed and locked it and went down the
+stairs.
+
+Half way down he stopped abruptly, stood for a moment listening, then
+hastened on, dropping his cigarette over the banister.  He did not see
+where it fell.  He did not care.  His only aim was to get out -- to get
+away.  He had heard a sound as he came down the stairs that turned his
+fear to terror -- it was the distant grumble of an automobile horn.  He
+locked the door and sped down the bramble- walled path to the
+runabout.  He had left it in the middle of the road, so that as he
+leaped in and started again it left no swerve of its wheel ruts toward
+the old Grigsby house.  It was five miles to the nearest town, but
+Hicks made it in twenty minutes, and without hearing again the
+threatening automobile horn.  The first thing he did was to telephone
+to Owen.
+
+For half an hour Owen had been locked in the library of the Marvin
+house.  The events of the early afternoon, the failure of his best-laid
+plans, the suspense of waiting the result of Hicks's final move, had
+made him a nervous wreck.  He had lighted a dozen cigars and thrown
+them away.  As many times he had picked up the telephone only to set it
+down again without calling a number.  At last he had taken out the thin
+tube of light pills, had drawn the shades, switched on the electric
+lights, and sat down to wait for the half-peace that morphine brought
+to his conscience.
+
+As he leaned back in his chair, awaiting the effect of the drug, the
+mummy in its case stood in front of him.  He closed his eyes in a
+pleasant stupor.  He opened them in terror.  For a moment his hands
+were outstretched in front of him, with claw-like fingers clutching at
+thin air; then he covered his eyes with them to shut from view the
+mummy, which stood over him, its upraised hand pointing to him the
+finger of accusation; its woman's eyes blazing with anger; its cold
+lips speaking a message that chilled his blood.
+
+The telephone bell jangled again and again before Owen found courage to
+open his eyes.  When he did so he clutched at the instrument, eager for
+the sound of a human voice.
+
+"Hello! . . . Yes, this is Owen . . ." He glanced apprehensively over
+his shoulder at the mummy.  Its hand was lowered and it stood
+motionless as before.  He turned excitedly back to the telephone.
+"It's YOU!  Hicks? . . . What news?  ". . . . She's at Grigsby's?
+What do you mean?  Somebody after you? . . . .  Not him?    . . . .  I
+give you my word there hadn't been anything on that road for two
+months. . . . What have you done?  What!  Nothing?  You should have
+called the police from Jersey. . . .  All gone to pieces? ... Stay over
+there, I'll join you tonight.  Yes, go back to the house and watch. . .
+.  What?  . . . . All right."
+
+Pauline, left alone, began to regain her courage.  After a few moments
+she was able to stand up and move slowly about her prison room.  She
+tried the door and the window shutters mechanically.  She searched the
+room for something that might be used to batter down the door.  There
+was nothing.  She sat on the cot and tried to think.
+
+She sprang up again, trembling.  The dry, choking smell of smoke had
+reached her.  Hicks's lighted cigarette had fallen among the wisps of
+old wall paper in the hall.
+
+She ran to the door.  Baffled, piteous, alone, she turned -- and looked
+on death.
+
+For through the cracks in the floor flashed now the golden daggers of
+flame in sheaths of stifling smoke.  She cowered, choking, by the outer
+wall of the room.
+
+The flame daggers grew into scimitars.  The inner wall caught fire.
+There was no outlet for the suffocating smoke.
+
+She sprang to the middle of the room and seized the broken chair.  With
+all her might she crashed it against the door.  It fell in pieces at
+her feet.
+
+She picked up a leg of the chair and, running to the window, pounded
+upon the shutters.  She screamed, and beat upon the shutters.  It was
+the rattle and crash upon the shutters that made Harry rein in his
+horse before the old Grigsby house.
+
+He saw smoke burst from the lower windows, and, battering on the locked
+door, he heard her screams.
+
+"Harry!  Harry!"
+
+It was to him she called again in her peril, as she had called before
+-- in the wreck of the yacht, in the den of Baskinelli, and even this
+day from the rim of the runaway balloon.  Always, inspired by that
+call, he had found their way to safety.
+
+He thrust the full weight of his mighty body against the door which
+held like solid rock.
+
+"Harry!  Harry!" came the cries again.
+
+"I'm coming, Polly; I'm here!"
+
+He dashed to where a heavy tree limb had fallen, carried it to the
+door, raised it and charged with it as a battering ram.  He might as
+well have slapped the door with his flat palm.
+
+He looked at the windows whence the smoke poured -- smoke mingled with
+flame.  Half crazed by the cries from above, he raised the limb to try
+to break the shutters.  He stopped and let it fall.  The toot of an
+automobile horn and the excited voice of young Bassett stopped him.
+
+"What's doing?" gasped the reporter.  "Is anybody in there?"
+
+Harry pointed to the shuttered window of the upper room.  The cries
+came again, and with the sound, of the woman's voice Bassett turned
+sick.  He made a dizzy charge at the door, but Harry caught him back.
+
+"All three together," he said.
+
+They flung their strength at the portal -- but still it held.
+
+Bassett turned away, sobbing.  He looked up to see Harry spring into
+the big car which he forced through the brambles.
+
+"What are you doing?  You're crazy!" yelled the chauffeur, running
+toward the machine.
+
+"Get her -- if I can't -- after the smash!" was Harry's answer.  The
+car lunged on at full speed.
+
+The impact rocked the burning house.  Frame and door crashed down
+together before the battering car.  It plowed for half its length into
+the smoke and fire, stopped an instant, quivered and backed out again,
+splendid ruin.
+
+On Harry's forehead a deep cut streamed.
+
+Bassett sprang to catch him, but he climbed out unhelped.  Together
+they leaped the shattered wall.  Through searing smoke they climbed the
+quaking stairs and burst into the shuttered room.
+
+The lamp still flickered dimly in its bracket.
+
+"Pauline," called Harry, chokingly, "Pauline, answer me."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+On hands and knees he groped over the hot floor.  He found her by the
+window, where she had fallen.  And flames choked them as they fled.
+
+Outside he knelt beside her, chafing her hands, when she wakened.  He
+had turned her so that she did not see the towering glare of the flames
+as the old Grigsby house furnished burnt penance for its crimes.
+Pauline raised her arms and touched tenderly his bleeding brow.  He
+lifted her into the car that Bassett and the driver had patched up.
+
+"Home, James," said Bassett, with a tired grin, but stop at a telephone
+somewhere and let me tell my boss that I've got a piece for the paper."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DOUBLE CROSS RANCH
+
+"I tell you, Harry, I can't endure it.  I couldn't face anyone I know.
+I want to run away -- far, far away, where nobody ever heard of
+balloons or automobiles, or me."
+
+"Polly, you aren't afraid of a little talk, are you?  Everyone is
+saying how brave you were, and, here, when the danger's over, I find
+you a flimsy little coward!"
+
+She picked up one of a pile of newspapers that lay on the stand beside
+her, and thrust it before Harry's eyes with a manner at once
+questioning and rebuking.  He read the head lines:
+
+SOCIETY GIRL CARRIED
+	OFF IN BALLOON
+
+Miss Pauline Marvin Has Remarkable Experience
+	After Accident on Palisades.
+
+Harry laughed and patted her hand reassuringly. "Oh, but that's only
+one of them," wailed Pauline.  "Look at this one:
+
+PAULINE MARVIN
+	LOST IN THE SKY
+
+"Can any woman live after that," she cried.
+
+"Why, it's no crime to be lost in a balloon," said Harry.  "See, they
+tell it just as it was -- they make you a real heroine."
+
+"A man might live it down, dear, but a woman, never!  To be 'lost in
+the sky' is altogether too giddy.  Margaret!" she called.
+
+The maid stepped quickly forward.
+
+"You may pack my things, Margaret, and be sure to put in some warm
+winter ones.  Is the snow on mountains cold like real snow, or is it
+like the frosting on cake?" she inquired, turning again to Harry.
+
+"What are you up to this time?" he demanded.
+
+"Montana first," she proclaimed with a melodramatic flourish.  "And if
+I am followed by my fame or by my relatives -- I shall go on -- to the
+end of the world."
+
+Harry had long ago abandoned the idea of laughing at her whims.  Even
+the most fantastic of her projects was serious to her.
+
+He merely looked at her in mute suspense awaiting the fall of the
+blow.
+
+"You needn't begin to see trouble-yet," she laughed.  "But I am going,
+Harry.  I'm going to accept Mary Haines's invitation and visit her and
+her nice, queer husband on their ranch.  You remember Mrs. Haines, that
+dear Western girl that we met on the steamer when she was on her
+honeymoon?"
+
+"Well, it's pretty tough just at this time," objected Harry.  "Business
+is bothersome, and I ought to be here; but if you insist "
+
+"Oh, you're not coming with me," stated Pauline, cheerily.  "In the
+first place you are not invited, and in the second place you are not
+needed in the least.  Now get me a telegraph blank."
+
+He came back with the desired paper and a fountain pen and she
+scribbled:
+
+Mrs. Mary Haines, Rockvale, Montana.  Care Double Cross Ranch.
+
+Arrive Thursday at 8 a. in.  Will explain haste when see you.,
+
+Pauline Marvin."
+
+Run down and 'phone that to the telegraph office," she told Harry.
+"And now for the packing, Margaret."  She thrust a tiny foot in a pink
+slipper over the edge of the bed.
+
+"But you are ill, Miss Marvin," protested the nurse with a first faint
+assertion of authority.
+
+"That's so," said Polly.  "How can we get around that?  Oh, yes; it's
+time for your airing, dear -- and when you come back I shall be well
+and packed."
+
+"Plenty of air," suggested Harry sarcastically from the doorway, "if it
+takes you as long to pack as it does to put on your hat."
+
+Pauline flung him a laughing grimace and he strode off to the library.
+As he was repeating the brief message to the telegraph office he did
+not hear the light footfalls that ceased at the library door, nor could
+he see the drawn, gray face of Owen who heard the message spoken over
+the telephone, and was passing up the stairs with his slow, dignified
+tread when Harry came into the hall.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Harry.  I see you are quite yourself again.
+Yesterday was a terrible day."
+
+"You do look done up," retorted Harry, curtly, as he picked up his
+hat.
+
+Owen's step was not slow or dignified after the door shut upon Harry.
+He sprang up the last stairs and into his own room.
+
+Here on a small writing desk was another telephone.  He snatched it up
+nervously and gave the call number of the place where he had held his
+first conference with Hicks.
+
+He held a brief conversation over the wire, snapped down the receiver,
+sprang to a wardrobe for his hat and stick and hurried from the house.
+
+The dullness that a sleepless night had left in his eyes had
+disappeared.  The fear that had shaken him ever since the uncanny
+reappearance of Harry and Pauline was dissipated, or at least concealed
+by a new hope -- a new plan of destruction.
+
+He knew only that Pauline was going away and that she must be followed
+-- no matter whither her whims might lead.
+
+Hicks was seated in a corner of the rendezvous drinking whiskey and
+water.  He was plainly in a black mood.
+
+"You got a pretty fat roll yesterday, Hicks. But," Owen drew out his
+wallet, "here is a little.  Get yourself ready to make a trip
+tomorrow.  I'll let you know the time and the train."
+
+Hicks looked covetously at the bills, but he demurred: "You mean we're
+after them two again!"
+
+"Hicks, we must be after them because one of them will soon be after
+us."
+
+"Where they goin' now?"
+
+"Rockvale, Montana.  That is, the girl's going.  What I haven't found
+out yet is whether Harry goes, too.  If he stays here, I'll stay, and
+you'll go West."
+
+"After Pauline?"
+
+"Ahead of her!"
+
+"And then what?"
+
+"Then you will have to use your own judgment.  But don't get excited
+and kill her, Hicks."
+
+He accompanied the sharp warning with the alleviating roll of
+yellowbacks, which Hicks quickly deposited in an inside pocket.
+
+The next morning they shook hands at the gate of the Pennsylvania
+station.  Hicks looking a bit uncomfortable but much improved, in a
+suit of new clothes, and carrying a suitcase, hurried to catch the
+flyer for the West.  A few hours later Owen was wishing a happy journey
+to Pauline at the same station rail.
+
+Mary Haines stood in the low doorway of the Double Cross ranch house
+and gazed down the sun-baked road to where, in the far distance, a
+little wisp of dust was visible.
+
+Laughing, she turned and called to someone inside the house.  A
+towering, slow- moving, but quick-eyed man, in a flannel shirt, with
+corduroys tucked into the tops of spurred boots, appeared on the
+stoop.  Hal Haines was so tall that his broad-brimmed hat grazed the
+porch roof of the house.
+
+"Hal!  Hal!" she cried eagerly.  "What do you think?  Pauline Marvin is
+coming to visit us -- Pauline Marvin! "
+
+"The little girl we met on the ship that I had to yarn to about the
+wild West?"
+
+"Yes, of course.  How you did lie to her!  Goodness, I hope that's not
+why she's coming.  She'll be awfully disappointed."
+
+"Oh, I don't know as it's necessary to disappoint her," said Haines.
+"If the State of Montana don't know how to entertain a lady from the
+East as she likes to be entertained it's time to quit bein' a State at
+all."
+
+"Hal!"  Mrs. Haines eyed her husband sternly.  "I want you to remember
+who Pauline Marvin is.  I'm not going to have her frightened by any of
+your wild jokes."
+
+Haines burst into a ringing laugh.
+
+"Honest, my dear, I promised that young lady if she ever came to
+Rockvale she'd see all the Wild West I told her about.  I gave her my
+word.  You don't want to make me out a liar, do you?"
+
+"You can say that conditions have changed greatly in the last two
+years."
+
+"Oh, come, just one little hold-up the day she gets here.  She'll think
+it's great.  She'll think she's the lost heiress that was carried off
+in the mountains -- the one I told her about."
+
+"I tell you I will not hear a word of it.  She may be ill or something;
+it would scare her to death."
+
+"I'll ask her if she's ill before I let the boys rob the buck-board.
+What dye say, mother?  Just this once."
+
+His boyish joy in the prank brought laughter to her eyes, and he knew
+that his sins would be condoned.
+
+Four days later Hicks, who looked as far from home in his excellent
+clothes as the clothes looked far from home in Rockvale, alighted, from
+a lumbering local train.  He made an inquiry of a man on the platform,
+and, carrying a heavy suitcase, slouched up the main street of the
+town.
+
+Ham Dalton's place was the one the man had directed him to, and Hicks,
+I after engaging the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents,
+scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down
+to the bar and gambling room.  The drink of whiskey he got made even
+his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to
+join a group of calm and plainly-armed spectators of high play.
+
+From the conversation he learned that the dam at Red Gut was washed
+out; that Case Egan, a noted rancher, was in jail for shooting a deputy
+sheriff, and that Hal Haines was expecting a "millionairess gal"
+visitor from New York.
+
+"When'll she be on?" drawled one of the players.
+
+"Tomorrow's express."
+
+"Sence when did the express stop at Rockvale?"
+
+"Sence the president o' the road told it to stop for this here young
+person," replied the informant crushingly.
+
+Hicks was scanning the faces of the men about him with a purposeful
+eye.  Especially he watched one -- a lean man in red shirt and leather
+breeches, booted and spurred, who stood near the table.
+
+Hicks approached him.  "Hello, Patten," he said.
+
+The man whirled so sharply that the revolver he had drawn, in whirling,
+caught in Hick's coat and jerked him into the middle of the room.  The
+poker game went on without a sound or sign of interruption.  The
+bartender took a casual look at Hicks and the gunman, then went on
+talking to a customer, as before.
+
+"Hello, Hicks," said Patten, putting up the gun.  "I'm much obliged
+that I didn't kill you.  We don't greet old friends quite so hasty out
+here, boy, as you do in New York -- especially when we haven't heard
+our right name in some years," he added in a lowered voice.
+
+"How long have you been here, Pat?"
+
+"Eight-nine-twelve years; ever since that friend of yours, Mr. Owen,
+paid me $10,000 for getting rid of a certain -- what he called a
+certain obstacle."
+
+"Which you didn't get rid of?"
+
+"No, he made the mistake of paying me in advance, and it didn't seem
+necessary to harm anybody."
+
+"Got any of the money left?"
+
+The lean gunman held his head back and guffawed.
+
+"It's near here, I guess, but it ain't mine.  It dropped between this
+bar and that table."
+
+"Do you want a little job?" asked Hicks.  "But let's go in the back
+room."
+
+They strolled into an empty wine room and ordered drinks.
+
+"What kind of a job?" asked Patten.
+
+Hicks leaned across the table and whispered rapidly.  His old
+acquaintance drew back, with a sudden suspicion.
+
+"But no foolin' this time," warned Hicks.  "Only part money in
+advance."
+
+He produced $5,000 in bills from his trousers pocket, but secreted it
+again quickly as the waiter appeared.
+
+Patten got up and sauntered out into the barroom, returning presently
+with three men of his own brand -- broad-built, grim-eyed ruffians of
+the far north country -- three of Case Egan's cattlemen.
+
+In the meantime Mrs. Haines was flustered not only by the prospect of
+meeting her distinguished friend, but by the tumultuous staging of the
+great hold-up scene that was to mark Pauline's welcome.  Hal had been
+up at three o'clock in the morning rehearsing the boys in their parts.
+He had set off at five o'clock for the station.
+
+As Pauline, trim in her traveling suit of gray and blithe in the clear
+Western air, tripped from the express, all Rockvale was there to meet
+her.  Hal Haines, mighty man that he was in the region, was red with
+pride as the girl who could stop the express at Rockvale gave him her
+hand in happy greeting.
+
+As he helped her into the two-seated buckboard, no one in the crowd
+noticed the man who had arrived the night before standing on the
+platform and pointing out the girl to Tom Patten who was seen to mount
+and ride rapidly away.
+
+"I hope you saved some of that lovely Wild West for me, Mr. Haines,"
+said Pauline, as the finest pair of horses in the Double Cross stable
+whisked them along the road to the ranch.
+
+"Very little left, Miss Marvin -- very little left; still -- whoa,
+there!  What's this?"
+
+At a bend in the road five masked and mounted men had dashed from cover
+and quickly surrounded the buckboard with a small circle of leveled
+gun-barrels.
+
+Pauline had time to cry out only once before she felt herself gripped
+by powerful hands and dragged from the wagon seat, where Hal Haines sat
+shaking with laughter.  He stood up and started to draw his revolver
+slowly.  From behind him a lasso was thrown lightly and the noose
+tightened around his arms.
+
+He kept on laughing, although he was a little afraid the boys were
+overdoing matters.  He knew his wife would never forgive him for this
+actual kidnapping of Pauline -- he certainly had never intended it.
+
+And she was really frightened.  He could tell that by her cries as she
+was thrust across the pommel of the masked leader's horse and the horse
+was spurred to a tearing gallop down the road.
+
+Haines tried to shout a command and call the joke off, but the riders
+had all followed after their leader, and he was alone in the
+buckboard.
+
+"They needn't have been so realistic with their knots," he said, as he
+struggled to free himself from the rope.
+
+It was ten minutes before he wriggled free.  He picked up the lines and
+drove on toward the ranch -- a little nervous now over the receptions
+he would get, but still laughing.
+
+At the fork where the road to the mountains left the main highway,
+Haines flashed out his revolver in real excitement.  Another group of
+five masked men had driven their horses out of a clump of small trees.
+They fired their revolvers as they surrounded the buckboard.  Then
+suddenly discovering that there was no woman passenger, they tore off
+their masks and came up with quick, eager inquiries.
+
+Perhaps for the first time in his life Hal Haines knew what fear was --
+not fear for himself, but for another.
+
+"Boys, there was another party on the road.  They took her.  I took 'em
+for you," he said in a stifled voice.  "Come on.  Cabot, give me your
+horse; take the rig back and tell Mrs. Haines."
+
+He sprang into the saddle, and, filling their revolvers as they rode,
+the band of jesters, who had suddenly turned so grimly serious, dashed
+back toward town.
+
+Two miles from where Tom Patten had swung Pauline to his saddle bow
+they picked up the train hoofs that left the road and made toward the
+mountains.
+
+The men who had set out so gaily a few hours before rode silently,
+fiercely now.  Mile after mile swept behind them as they held to the
+trail.  Sometimes it followed the roads, sometimes it broke over open
+country.  At last it reached the hills and stopped at the river.
+
+Patten's band had ridden in the water upstream.  After a mile of it the
+leader ordered three of them out on the south side.  They left
+silently, rode five miles across country and separated, each taking a
+different route.  Patten and one companion kept on with Pauline who was
+now almost insensible.  At last they left the stream on the north bank
+and climbed into the higher hill country where they entered a thicket
+and stopped.
+
+"Here we are," said Patten.  His companion dismounted and lifted
+Pauline from the other's saddle.
+
+With a swift daring and dexterity, born of fear, she flung aside his
+arms and sprang toward the horse he had just left.  She tried to mount,
+but her strength was gone.  They tied her feet with a rope and seated
+her on a great fallen tree, while they cleared away a tangle of bushes
+and began to tug with their combined strength at a giant rock, which
+the bushes had concealed.
+
+The stone moved inch by inch until behind it Pauline saw, with a chill
+shudder, the black opening of a cave.
+
+She flung herself from the log pleading piteously.  They cut the rope
+that bound her feet and led her to the cave.  As the giant stone was
+rolled back into its place she uttered one wild far-echoing cry.  Then
+darkness!
+
+For many minutes Pauline lay prostrate.  A dim light from some hidden
+orifice in the top of the cave behind a shelving wall, seemed to become
+brighter as her eyes became more accustomed to the shadows.  She arose
+and began to inspect the cave.
+
+It was a chamber of rock about forty feet long and twenty feet wide .
+The bottom and roof converged slightly towards the end farthest from
+the giant boulder that formed the door.  But even there the cave was
+twenty-five feet high.
+
+The boulder door was set into the rock portal, and not a wisp of light
+came through the brush that, covered the crevice.  Pauline, after a
+brief hopeless test of her frail strength against the weight of the
+granite mass, moved slowly along the wall to the extremity of the
+chamber.
+
+Here, about seven feet from the floor, ran a ledge of rock, between two
+and three feet in width; and, from this ledge upward the wall slanted
+at an angle of forty-five degrees to a wide shelf or fissure.  It was
+from this fissure that the faint light came.
+
+Pauline groped her way back along the other wall to the front of the
+cave again.  Despairing, she sat down on the chill stone.  The events
+of the last few hours had left her in a state of mental vertigo.  The
+hold-up of the buckboard and her carrying off by the bandits seemed
+fantastically impossible.
+
+So this was her "escape" from scenes of adventure.  This was the
+"great, safe, quiet West," where she should forget her perils in New
+York and wait for others to forget them.  She thought of her promise to
+Harry that she would not try to get into any more scrapes.  In her
+former dangers -- even when there seemed hope -- she had a buoying
+trust that there was one man who could save her.  He had always saved
+her.  In his protecting shelter she had come to feel almost immune from
+harm.  But with Harry three thousand miles away and totally ignorant of
+her need of him no sense of imagined protection sustained her now.  She
+took it for granted that Mr. Haines had been made a prisoner or
+killed.  She knew the word would reach Mrs. Haines and the latter would
+invoke all the powers in the State to find her; but she was, sure she
+would be dead before anyone unearthed this fearful hiding place.
+
+The light at the far end of the cave grew steadily more dim and Pauline
+judged that the day was waning.
+
+A rustling sound caught her ear.  Sounds are animate or inanimate.
+This was unmistakably the sound of a living thing.
+
+Pauline trembled a little but she stood up.  Was it man or beast that
+she had for companion in the mysterious cave?
+
+She took a faltering step forward.  The sound seemed to come nearer.
+The cave had gone almost pitch dark, and, suddenly, from the mid-level
+of the back wall -- from the rock ledge -- there flashed upon the sight
+of the imprisoned girl two beady, burning eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE GREAT WHITE QUEEN
+
+Hal Haines' best driving team was lathered with foam and the buckboard
+swung through the gate on two wheels as Bill Cabot drove back to the
+Double Cross Ranch.
+
+The young cowboy whom Haines had ordered to carry the news of disaster
+to Mrs.  Haines, seeing the buckboard and only Cabot driving, knew
+instantly that something had gone wrong.
+
+"What is it, Will?" she called, running down to the gate.  "Didn't she
+come?  Has anything happened to Hal?"
+
+"She was held up and carried off, Mrs. Haines."
+
+"I know; I know.  You played the joke; but what happened?" She looked
+at the foaming horses.  "What made you drive home like this?" she
+demanded.
+
+"She wasn't carried off by us, Mrs. Haines.  Some other crowd got ahead
+of us -- some crowd that meant what they was doing.  The Boss and the
+boys has got the trail by this time, I guess.  The Boss said I should
+come and tell you."
+
+For a moment Mrs. Haines looked at him in doubt.
+
+"Is this another joke, Will?" she asked.  "There hasn't been a hold-up
+in this section for ten years."
+
+"I guess the jokin' is all knocked out've all of us," answered Bill,
+turning shamefacedly away.  "No, ma'am, this is the truth and -- and I
+wish the Boss had took some one else's horse instid of mine."
+
+"Never mind.  They'll have all the men in Montana out to find that
+girl, if this isn't a hoax," cried Mrs. Haines in a voice that choked.
+"Go tell the other boys to get ready.  The Sheriff will want them, if
+Hal doesn't."
+
+She sped back to the house and with a trembling hand rang the bell of
+the old- fashioned telephone that furnished a new blessing to the
+ranches.
+
+A moment later Curt Sikes, the telegraph operator at Rockvale, almost
+fell from his chair as he took the following message over the wire at
+Mrs. Haines's dictation:
+
+Harry Marvin,
+
+Fifth Avenue, New York:
+
+Pauline kidnapped. Come at once.
+
+Mary Haines.
+
+"What -- what's it mean, Mrs. Haines?" he gasped into the transmitter.
+"It ain't the young lady that Hal Just took off the express, is it?"
+
+"Yes, that's who it is, Curt.  Cabot and the boys are coming into town
+as fast as they can ride; but you call Sheriff Hill and get as many men
+as you can-in case we need them.  You'll hurry, won't you, Curt?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am; and I'll get your message right on the wire.  They'll put
+it ahead all along the line."
+
+If Curt's speed in getting the telegram away was inspired partly by
+burning need of telling the news to Rockvale that did not reflect on
+Curt.  He flashed after the New York message a terse call up and down
+the line to "Find the Sheriff," and then bolted out to the platform.
+His shout was heard not only at the little hotel across the street from
+the station, but at the city limits of Rockvale a good mile away.
+Rockvale answered the shout as a clan answering the beacozes flare.
+When Curt Sikes shouted it meant news.
+
+His messages along the line had little effect.  He had spent the
+morning flaunting the news to fellow operators and rival communities
+that the Express had stopped at Rockvale.  They had only half believed
+that, and now this added flourish was too much.   Even Sheriff Hill,
+whom the message overtook at Gatesburg, fifteen miles south, laughed
+when he read it, and started for Rockvale only because he was going
+there anyway to get Case Egan.
+
+There ain't much doubt which is now our leadin' city -- Butte or
+Rockvale," he remarked as he swung to his saddle and set off with two
+deputies.
+
+He found something more than overdone home town pride in Rockvale,
+however.  The narrow streets were filled with men, women and curious,
+wide-mouthed children.  Horses, packed for long riding, with rifles
+bolstered to the saddles, were tied all along the rails of both the
+main hotel and the station.  Curt Sikes was the center of a changing
+but ever interested group, but two of the Haines posse who had just
+come in without any report of capture, but with all the vivid news of
+the hold-up were now the main objects of attention.
+
+Briefly they told the story of the pursuit.  With Haines leading they
+had struck a trail that took them to the river.  They had waded the
+river and found no trail on the other side.  Knowing the bandits had
+taken to the middle of the stream, Haines had divided his party.  He
+sent two men down stream, one on each side and he and the three others
+rode up stream, two on each side.
+
+After long rough riding Haines had found a trail coming out of the
+water.  All four had followed it a long way.  There were three bandits
+making the trail, but the three stopped and each took a different
+direction, one straight up into the hills, one straight down into the
+valley, and the other off here towards town.  Haines and one man had
+started on the trail to the hills.  The other two -- the two talking
+now -- had each taken one of the other trails, but had lost them.  They
+thought Haines would lose his, too.  It had been a clean, up-to-date
+expert piece of work -- this kidnapping.  The getaway had been a work
+of art, just as the hold-up had been a wonder-piece of stage setting.
+
+"You saw all the gang that held you up?" asked the Sheriff.
+
+"We wasn't held up -- tha'd a been a little too rich, I guess," said
+one of the cowboys.  "It was Boss Haines an' the girl that was
+stopped."
+
+"Well, then, I mean did Haines see the gang?  Were any of them
+Indians?"
+
+"Injuns?  No.  The Boss thinks some of 'em were cattle-crooks from the
+Case Egan outfit.  I guess they ain't no Montana Injuns that'd start
+anythin' like that."
+
+"You guess a lot more than you know," said the Sheriff quietly.  "I may
+be calling on any of you boys for some fast work against old Red Snake
+any of these days."
+
+"What's the trouble, Sheriff?"
+
+"Oh, just one of their devils brewing bad medicine again up at
+Shi-wah-ki village.  Red Snake always was a little bit crazy -- talking
+about the thieving white man that stole his country and looking for a
+chance to get the rest of his people killed off."
+
+"I heard that down at Hallick's last wek," drawled a man in the crowd.
+"The Sioux is only waitin' for the Great White Queen to come out o' the
+heart o' the airth an' lead 'em on the warpath.  They got a surprisin'
+plenty o' arms, too, for reservation Injuns.  Know that, Sheriff?"
+
+The Sheriff nodded slowly.  "I wish Haines would get in," he said.
+"I'd like to have a talk with him before we start.  But it's getting
+late."
+
+The dull thudding of tired horses hoofs from the other side of the hill
+below town came, to him as an answer.  Presently Haines and his
+companion joined, silently, the eager crowd at the station.
+
+The owner of the Double Cross seemed to have aged ten years since he
+had driven away with Pauline from that same station platform only a few
+hours before.  He would have given all the acres of the Double Cross
+for just a word about Pauline; he would have given his life to know
+that she was alive.
+
+"There's nothing for it, Sheriff, but to rake the whole country," he
+said wearily.  "They've hidden her somewheres, if they haven't killed
+her.  And if they've killed her, mind, it's me you're to hang for it."
+
+The Sheriff laid a strong hand on his old friend's shoulder.  "I can
+get the state militia out to look for that girl, Hal," he said.  "By
+the way, is there anything -- anything queer about her?" he asked.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, only that her folks have been writing to the Governor at Helena.
+Sikes just gave me this from Governor Casson himself.  Who is this
+Raymond Owen?  Who's been wiring to the Governor?"
+
+"That's her guardian, I think.  H'm," mused Haines as he read the
+message, "that is queer.  I wish they'd have wired me that yesterday."
+
+The Sheriff folded the telegram and putting it back in his pocket,
+stepped up on a box near the hotel door.
+
+"I want to call for a hundred volunteer citizens to go hunt this girl,"
+he announced.
+
+A minute later, all that was left of Rockvale was the buildings and the
+women, children and old men who stood watching a cloud of dust blotting
+the sunset glow and listening to the retreating clatter of a flying
+cavalcade.
+
+Sikes kept the office open late.  At 7 o'clock he telephoned to Mrs.
+Haines at the Double Cross:
+
+"What does he say?" she cried.
+
+"Just one word -- Comin'," said Curt in an aggrieved voice.  "He
+could've sent ten words fer the same price," he grumbled.
+
+Red Snake was one of the younger chiefs of the Sioux.  He was too young
+to have had a share in the bloody last stand of his race in their
+Montana wilderness; but he was old enough to have watched the dwindling
+of spirit and power among them for twenty years.
+
+And every day of watching kindled new hate in the breast of the
+Indian.  In him the spirit of his fathers had left the old unquenchable
+belief in the Day of Restoration, when, by some supernatural
+intervention, the Indians would return to their lands, the lands revert
+to their primeval state, and civilization be lost in the obliterating
+wilderness.
+
+The officers of the Agency had had trouble with Red Snake on several
+occasions.  Twice he had started out at the head of war parties and had
+been caught just in time to prevent bloodshed among the isolated
+settlers.  But of late he had been docile and peaceful.  The new
+disturbances -- the occasional shooting of a cowboy and the petty
+stealing of cattle dated from the beginning of the sway of a new
+medicine man in Red Snake's principal village of Shi-wah-ki.
+
+His name was of many syllables in the native language, but he was known
+as Big Smoke.  He was a young Indian who had spent some years among the
+whites in the Southwest, had made a pretense at getting an education,
+but had reverted violently to the life and faith of his fathers.  Big
+smoke had predicted to Red Snake the coming of the Great White Queen,
+who would empower the arms of the red man to overthrow the whites and
+would make him again master of his rightful lands.
+
+Red Snake, squatted on a blanket beside his teepee, listened with
+immobile features but with a thrilled heart.  He summoned a council of
+the chiefs, secretly, and the medicine man addressed his message to
+them also.
+
+Thereafter the Indians of Shi-wah-ki were restive.  Their growing
+spirit of rebellion manifested itself in foolish little offenses
+against the white men.  These were punished with the white man's
+customary sternness and this increased the rancor of the Indians.  It
+increased, too, their eagerness for the fulfillment of the strange
+prophecy of the coming of the White Queen.
+
+On the very day when the white man's village of Rockvale was in a
+hubbub of excitement because of the kidnapping of Pauline, the village
+of Shi-wah-ki was tumultuous with a different fervor.
+
+Into the circle of the assembled chiefs, rimmed with awed faces of
+squaws and papooses, had danced the weird figure of Big Smoke.  He had
+been called upon by Red Snake to announce what further of the White
+Queen his medicine had revealed.
+
+Big Smoke wore the head of a wolf with cow's horns set over the ears.
+His lithe red body was covered with a long bear skin.  His legs were
+bare to the tops of his gaily beaded moccasins.
+
+He circled the silent group with fantastic gyrations and stopped
+finally in the center.  Lifting his hands, he addressed the tribe.
+First, in glowing rhetoric, he pictured the ancient glory of the Sioux
+-- their wealth in lands, their prowess in the hunt, their triumph over
+all other red men.  He told of their long and brave struggle with the
+white man, who by the intervention of wicked gods had been enabled to
+conquer them.  But the time of vengeance and retribution had come after
+long years.  The Indian was to return to his own.
+
+"The Great Spirit is sending us a leader," said Rig Smoke.  "The Great
+Spirit has spoken to me and said: 'Lo, I will send a White Queen with
+golden hair.  She shall come from the heart of the Earth, and she shall
+lead your warriors against the oppressor."
+
+This was the third time Big Smoke had said this.  That was what made it
+most impressive to the listeners.  Big Smoke had staked not only his
+reputation as a medicine man, but, also his life, upon this wonderful
+prediction, which had aroused his people as they had not been aroused
+in fifty years.  For it was the law of the ancient code that
+fulfillment must follow immediately the third announcement of the
+miracle.  If fulfillment failed there remained only the Great Death
+Stone in the valley.  No prophet of the tribe had ever won in the
+racewith the Death Stone.
+
+And so the chiefs sat in respectful silence and the young braves arose
+eager for the war dance when Big Smoke finished speaking.
+
+The dance, beginning slowly, waxed wilder; the tom-toms beat more
+vibrantly, until the whole village was encircled by the painted and
+bonneted tribesmen.  The red glare of daylight fires illuminated the
+wild faces.  The women cowered with their children beside the teepees.
+In the midst of the tumult, the medicine man stood with hands stretched
+upward calling on the Great Spirit to send the White Queen.
+
+When the dance had subsided, the Council resumed its deliberations.
+
+It was arranged that there should be a hunt that afternoon and the
+foxes or coyotes should be driven as near as possible to the
+settlements.  This would be a means of reconnoitering and it would make
+the whites think the Indians were engaged in peaceful pursuits.
+
+Pauline, after her first startled cry, stood spellbound by the two
+glowing eyes that shone from the far end of the cave.
+
+There was no light now -- save for the eyes.  The rift in the roof from
+which the mysterious glow had come seemed to have been closed
+suddenly.  The pitch darkness made the eyes doubly terrible, and just
+perceptibly they moved and flashed which showed they were living eyes.
+
+Pauline longed to scream, but could not.  Behind those fiery points
+imagination could picture all manner of horrible shapes.  Was the
+creature about to spring upon her?
+
+The eyes vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
+
+The low rustling sound came again; then the utter silence.
+
+Pauline, freed of the uncanny gaze, was able to think and act.  If that
+animal could find its way into her prison house, there must be another
+entrance to the cave.
+
+It was plain that the animal had been crouching on the slant rock above
+the ledge.  Pauline began again to grope around the wall.  She could
+touch the top of the ledge and now in several places she found small
+crevices in the wall by which she tried to climb.
+
+Time and again she fell back.  Her soft hands were torn by the jagged
+rock; her dress was in shreds; her golden hair fell down upon her
+shoulders.  She might have been some preternatural dweller of the
+place.
+
+At last her foot held firm in a crevice three feet above the floor.
+Clutching the ledge-top, she groped for another step -- and found it.
+In a moment she was on the ledge.
+
+She sank there, covering her face with her hands.  The eyes had blazed
+again scarcely three feet away.  She felt the breath of hot nostrils,
+the rough hair of a beast, as the thing sprang.  She felt that the end
+had come, but she still clung to the ledge.
+
+As she uncovered her eyes, slowly, she was astonished to see that the
+faint light had returned.  It came, as she had thought, over a
+concealed shelf of stone above the rocky incline.
+
+The eyes had vanished.  The cave was still.
+
+She began to scale the incline.  Her hands and feet caught nubs and
+slits of the surface and a little higher she felt the cool dampness of
+earth and grasped the root of a tree.  As she drew herself up, she
+looked over the shelf and saw, at one end of it, the open day.
+
+She crawled a little way upon the shelf then stopped.  She hardly dared
+to go on.  What if the opening, large enough to admit the light, were
+too small for her to pass through?  What if the light had been only a
+lure to torture her?  What if she must return into the darkness with
+that thing unknown, the thing with the blazing eyes!
+
+She crept on with her eyes shut.  A stronger glow of light upon the
+closed lids told her she had reached the end of the shelving.  The next
+moment would tell her if she had reached freedom or renewed captivity.
+She looked up.
+
+Three of Red Snake's young warriors had gained most of the plaudits of
+the village during the afternoon of the hunt.  They rode together and
+not only did they bring in many foxes and coyotes but much news of the
+white people.  They had met armed men throughout all the mountain
+country, riding up and down the river.  The armed men had greeted them
+fairly and had asked them for information of other white men who had
+stolen a girl and carried her away.  The white men were thus fighting
+among themselves.  It was a propitious time for the coining of the new
+Queen.
+
+These three young men, about five o'clock in the afternoon, had just
+started the drive of a coyote towards the level country when the quarry
+doubled suddenly and turned into the hills.
+
+With shouts and shots, the Indians pursued it, but their horses were no
+match for it on the devious wooded paths, and grunting their disgust
+they saw it dive into a burrow in a rocky hollow of the cliff.
+
+They dismounted and stood about the mouth of the burrow grumbling and
+"cursing their luck "in an ancient tongue.  At last two of them mounted
+and started to ride away, and their companion followed, slowly, leading
+his horse.
+
+A sound made him turn his head.  With a cry of mingled fear and joy, of
+awe and triumph, he threw himself prostrate before the mouth of the
+burrow.
+
+The other Indians dashed back.  They literally fell from their horses
+to the feet of the wonderful being who had risen from the heart of the
+earth -- the promised goddess who would lead them against the
+oppressors.  In the poor, disheveled person of Pauline, coming from her
+prison cave, they saw their great White Queen.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE DEATH STONE
+
+As the thrilled and frightened Indian lay prostrate at her feet, he
+might well have believed her to be some creature from another world.
+
+Her face was very pale and round it fell in tumultuous glory the
+cascades of her golden hair.  Her dress was torn to shreds by the
+jagged rocks and there was blood upon the delicate hands that she held
+out in pleading to the only living thing she saw-the red man.
+
+He did not move.  She stepped nearer and, stooping, gently touched his
+shoulder.  At the touch he trembled like a leaf, but raised his head
+and looked at her with terror and awe and adoration in his eyes.
+
+"Won't you help me?  I have ben a prisoner in the cave.  I must find
+Mr. Haines -- Haines, do you hear?  Or go to Rockvale -- Rockvale," she
+repeated, hoping that the names at least he might understand.
+
+He motioned questioningly toward his horse, and, at her nod, he sprang
+up and brought the animal to her side.  Helping her to mount, he took
+the bridle and began to lead the way into the thickly wooded hills.
+
+The journey was slow and arduous, but it was not long.  Darkness had
+not yet fallen when the hill trail dipped into a valley, and Pauline's
+weary, hopeful eyes looked down upon a village on the plain.
+
+The hope vanished quickly as she realized that the houses of the
+village were teepees and that the people that moved among them were
+braves and squaws.
+
+An Indian boy of perhaps twelve years sprang suddenly from a thicket
+beside the trail, gave one glance at her, and, with a shriek, set off
+at full speed toward the teepees.
+
+Cries sounded and resounded from the hills.  Tom-toms were beating.
+She became aware that the Indians were swarming about her and
+acclaiming her a guest of unusual honor.  They stopped her horse at the
+entrance to Red Snake's teepee.  The great chief stepped forth himself,
+with Big Smoke, the medicine man, close behind him.
+
+The prophet, who had foretold the coming of the Great White Queen, wore
+a mien of pride and triumph, even as he bowed low before Pauline.  But
+of all the red folk in Shi-wah-ki village, Big Smoke was undoubtedly
+the most amazed at the fulfillment of his prophecy.
+
+The braves who were assigned to lift Pauline from her horse and bear
+her into the Chief's teepee were surprised that one immortal should be
+so weak as almost to fall into their arms, so weary as to be scarcely
+able to walk.  But Pauline, seated upon a high pile of furs within the
+teepee, where the weird light of a fire fell upon her pallid features
+and her flowing hair, presented a picture strange and marvelous.
+
+They gathered around her, Red Snake and the medicine man in the center
+of the adobe, the lesser chiefs behind them, and in another circle the
+ranks of the braves.
+
+Even in her utter exhaustion, the savage solemnity of the gathering
+fascinated Pauline.  Had she been left alone she would have fallen
+asleep upon the piled furs; but this low muttering, grim-visaged
+assemblage of the red men forced her to respectful attention.  That
+they honored her, she understood; but she saw, too, that the Indians
+were all armed and some of them were painted.  As Red Snake arose to
+address the tribe a menacing murmur filled the teepee and the young
+chiefs whetted their knives upon the ground.
+
+Red Snake's harangue, unintelligible to Pauline, had an electrical
+effect upon the Indians.  Frequently as he spoke he turned toward her
+and always when he did so he bent his head upon his breast and raised
+his mighty arms in token of submission to a power mightier than his
+own.
+
+As he finished, Pauline arose, swaying a little from her great
+weakness.  She shook her head in token that she did not understand.
+Her outstretched, pleading hands bewildered, but subdued the warlike
+assembly.
+
+Red Snake called a ringing summons, and from the rear circle of the
+audience shuffled forward the strangest man Pauline had ever seen.  His
+undersized, stooping form was garbed in a miner's cast-off red shirt, a
+ranchman's ex- trousers, a pair of tattered moccasins and a much-dented
+derby hat, with a lone feather in the band of it.  It was White Man's
+Hat, a half-breed interpreter.
+
+As he approached, cringing and bowing, Pauline noted that a
+penetrating, not unkindly eye gleamed from under his bushy brow,
+scrutinizing her in flashes between his obeisances.  Unlike the other
+Indians, he was not afraid to look the Great White Queen in the face,
+as he solemnly repeated the last words of Red Snake:
+
+"According to the prophecy, you have come from the heart of the world
+to lead us against those who steal our land."
+
+Pauline stood for a moment in complete bewilderment.  Then, as the
+meaning of the words, with the meaning of the strange gathering,
+flashed upon her mind, she took a step forward, speaking in earnest
+protest.
+
+But she spoke only to the Chief, for the Indians had broken all
+restraint and were crushing their way out of the teepee, with cries and
+brandishing of weapons.  They swept the little interpreter with them.
+And Red Snake saw in Pauline's look and tone of appeal only the
+pleading of a wronged goddess for vengeance upon her enemies.  He
+called the women of his household, who shyly led the Queen away.
+
+Darkness had fallen as the women glided ahead of her to a spot outside
+the main village, where a spacious teepee had been erected apart.  Only
+a peaceful moon and a firmament glittering with stars lighted their
+path.  But from the town behind came terrifying yells, the rattle of
+tom-toms and occasionally a rifle shot as the braves prepared their
+spirits for the test of battle.  Pauline found her new home filled with
+all the luxuries and sacred relics of the tribe.  There were rugs
+richer than those in the Chief's house; the walls were festooned with
+strung beads, and on the large, low couch of bear skins lay the most
+splendid of Indian raiment.
+
+The women, with better understanding than men of the earthly needs of
+immortals, made her lie down, while they bathed her aching temples and
+wounded hands, replaced her torn garments with a gorgeous blanket robe
+and smoothed her flying tresses into long comfortable braids.  Other
+women came bringing food.  And there was a pipe and a pouch of agency
+tobacco with which the goddess might soothe the hours before repose.
+
+Pauline ate eagerly while the women looked oil in silent approval.
+When she had finished, she arose smiling and signed to them that she
+would rest.  They left softly, and neither the exciting recollections
+of the day's adventures nor the tumult of the braves outside could hold
+her for a moment longer from the blessedness of sleep.
+
+She slept far into the next morning.  But so did the village, for the
+Indians had reveled to exhaustion.  It was nearly noon before she
+attired herself in a fringed and beaded dress of buckskin, with
+leggings and exquisite little moccasins and laughingly permitted one of
+the women attendants to place a painted war feather in her hair.  Thus
+clad and with her wide braids falling, she sat regally to receive the
+morning call of Red Snake.  She was beginning to take a tremulous
+pleasure in the game of being an immortal.  Pauline's questing spirit
+was too happy in adventure not to find a thrill in being thus
+translated from hungering captive to reigning queen, from queen to
+angel.
+
+Red Snake's call was formal and politely brief.  He brought with him
+the amusing interpreter to inquire if the Spirit had found comfort in
+the hospitality of his people, and more particularly if the war dance
+of the preceding night had given her satisfaction.
+
+Pauline replied, with gracious solemnity, that her Spirit had found
+good repose and had been comforted by the pleasant music.
+
+"And when will the White Queen lead us against our enemies -- the men
+of her own color, but not of her kind?" inquired the Chief with
+child-like eagerness.
+
+Pauline hesitated an instant after the interpreter repeated the
+question.  Then, recovering herself, she answered gravely:
+
+"Today, Red Snake, the Queen rests from her long journey out of the
+Happy Hunting Ground.  Tomorrow also.  Upon the next day, perhaps, she
+will lead the warriors."
+
+The little interpreter's keen eyes flashed understandingly as he left
+out the word "perhaps" in repeating her answer.
+
+Red Snake was elated.  He made profound salutations, promised that the
+war party would do her honor, and hastened away to announce the news.
+
+The interpreter lingered, pretending to smooth the door rug.  He looked
+up suddenly and his eyes met Pauline's with an expression of friendly
+interest.  Instinctively she accepted the tacitly offered friendship.
+
+"You are a white man -- you speak English," she said.
+
+"Part white -- part red.  You speak all white," he added
+significantly.
+
+"Of course," she whispered, stepping to his side.  "I am not a Queen --
+not a Spirit.  I do not know why they believe I am.  But I must get
+away -- to Rockvale, to Mr. Haines's ranch, to the white people
+anywhere.  You will help me?"
+
+He looked at her pityingly now.  He had believed that she was an
+accomplice of the medicine man in a shrewd fraud, and he had merely
+wanted to share the joke, risky as it was.  To find her an accidental
+and unwilling monarch struck him dumb.
+
+"That is very hard," he said slowly.  "Look!"
+
+He parted the folds of the teepee door curtain so that she looked out
+toward the village.  Three women sat next the door and beyond were
+groups of braves, still in their war paint, some conversing, some
+stalwart and still.  They seemed to be doing nothing in particular.
+
+"Well?" questioned Pauline.
+
+He led her across the teepee to a narrow slit in the rear curtain.
+Through this she peered as she had peered through the door and saw
+exactly what she had seen though the door -- women crouching at their
+tasks in. the near foreground, an armed circle of warriors beyond.  Now
+she understood.
+
+"I am a prisoner then?"
+
+"They will guard you night and day."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It was prophesied that a Great White Queen would come to lead them to
+battle.  You have come, as the prophet said, and you have promised to
+lead them to battle.  Above all, be proud, and not afraid."
+
+The Interpreter hesitated a moment.
+
+"There was another White Queen whose coming was prophesied many
+hundreds of years ago," he said.  "She came.  She led the Indians
+victory over other Indians and then she vanished in the strangest way.
+I would tell you of it -- but I am afraid.  They say her spirit is
+always near.  Some day you may know how she vanished."
+
+Before she could speak again, he had glided out of the teepee.
+
+While Pauline was away Harry had planned to accomplish mighty labors.
+With masculine fatuity he let himself believe -- before she went away
+-- that a man can get more work done with his goddess afar than when
+Cupid has a desk in his office.
+
+It did not take more than thirty-six hours to turn separation into
+bereavement; not more than forty-eight to turn his "freedom for work"
+into slavery to the fidgets.  The office, instead of a refuge, became a
+prison to him.  However, he made a pretense of sticking to the grind,
+and it was not until the Thursday on which his chartings showed Pauline
+would arrive at Rockvale that he actually quit and went home.
+
+He slipped into the library to be alone.  It was more restful here.  As
+he sat in the great leather chair and unfolded a newspaper, the
+portrait of Pauline smiled brightly down at him in seeming
+camaraderie.  At his side stood the Mummy so intimately associated with
+her and his dead father's strange vision from the tomb.
+
+Harry began to read, but he was still nervous to the point of
+excitement, and his thoughts wandered from the words.  He was suddenly
+conscious of another presence in the room.  He let the paper fall and
+gazed intently at the portrait.
+
+But a moment later, Harry Marvin sprang excitedly from the chair and
+fairly leaped towards the picture.  From somewhere out of the dim air
+of the library a hand had reached and touched his.  It had touched his
+shoulder and then, with a commanding finger, had pointed upward at the
+picture on the wall.
+
+"The Mummy!  It has warned again," gasped Harry.  "Polly, Polly!" he
+cried to the portrait, "I'm coming.  Just hold on."
+
+He strode bark to the table and pressed a bell.
+
+"Tell Reynolds to pack me up, Bemis," he charged the astonished
+butler.  "Tell him it's for Montana in a rush.  Have a machine ready
+for me in fifteen minutes."
+
+Even Bemis's constitutional aversion to haste was overridden.  He sped
+into the hall, calling to the valet,. as Harry picked up a telephone.
+
+"Hello, this is H. B. Marvin.  I want our private car attached to the
+Chicago flyer," he said.  "No matter if it holds up the flyer, I'll
+have President Grigsby's authorization in your hands in five minutes.
+Thank you.  Goodbye."
+
+As he reached the door of the machine, a messenger boy turned up the
+steps.  Harry called to him, took the telegram and read Mrs. Haines'
+message: "Pauline kidnapped; come at once."
+
+With a muffled ejaculation, he dropped the slip of paper and sprang
+into the car, which in ten minutes pulled up to the station just as the
+disgruntled, but curious trainmen were coupling the luxurious Marvinia
+to the eighteen-hour express.
+
+Owen coming quietly down the steps of the Marvin house, picked up the
+telegram which Harry had let fall.  Reading it, he smiled, and he was
+still smiling when another messenger boy followed him to the door.
+Owen took the second message and the smile broadened into an ugly grin
+as he read:
+
+"Raymond Owen Fifth avenue, New York.  All's well.
+		Hicks."
+
+Five days after the disappearance of Pauline, the express stopped again
+at Rockvale station.  As Harry swung from the rear step to the dingy
+platform, there were many curious eyes to observe his arrival, but the
+watchers were mostly women and children.  The men of Rockvale were
+still out on the long hunt for Pauline.
+
+Harry hurried first to the station telephone.  Sikes had got Mrs.
+Haines on the wire as soon as the smoke of the express had been sighted
+ten miles away.  But all she could tell Harry was that there was
+nothing to tell.  His lips were set in a hard line as he hung up the
+receiver.  He asked a few hasty questions of Sikes, hurried across to
+the little hotel, paid for a room and hired a horse.  Blankets and
+provisions strapped behind, he was out and away up the road to the
+mountains within an hour.
+
+And while he urged his sturdy little mount to better speed on his
+uncharted journey, Pauline, not twenty miles away, was preparing for
+the last journey she might ever make.
+
+The blow had fallen.  Her royal place, her immortal power had
+vanished.
+
+The Indians had permitted one postponement of the day of battle.  She
+had said that the Spirits had spoken to her and warned against
+bloodshed upon that day.  It should be the second day thereafter the
+Spirits had said.  The Indians were disappointed, but they bowed to the
+edict.
+
+The morrow passed quietly, but on the next day -- the fifth of her
+royal captivity -- she was summoned from her house by the assembled
+chiefs in battle paint and feathers.  She tried to whisper through the
+doorway that the Spirits had forbidden again, but Red Snake answered:
+
+"You are greater than all other Spirits; you will lead us
+today!"               I
+
+"Tell them," said Pauline to the interpreter, "that the White Queen
+does not lead today!"
+
+Red Snake, his face black with anger, after haranguing the chiefs,
+turned to Pauline:
+
+"Daughter of the Earth -- twice our warriors have been ready for battle
+and you would not lead them.  Today you must go before the Oracle and
+prove your immortality.  The Oracle will tell."
+
+The warriors departed; only the little interpreter remained.
+
+"What does it mean?" cried Pauline.
+
+"It is the race with the Great Death Stone," he answered, and his own
+voice trembled.  "But," he whispered, "I will ride.  I will try to find
+help.  Wait."
+
+He slipped under the back of the teepee.  Unseen by the excited
+Indians, he made his way to the line of ponies, with lariats and rifles
+swung from their saddles.  He picked one and, mounting, rode slowly out
+of the village, speaking here and there to the braves he met.
+
+Pauline, left alone, fell upon her knees and prayed.
+
+Harry met Haines and two of his posse on the road to the mountains.
+
+They were on their way back to a general rendezvous ordered by the
+Sheriff, but Harry continued on his way up the mountain.
+
+Mile after mile the little mustang put behind him while the sun was
+still high.  On the slope of a hill they came to a crossroads, and
+Harry, riding almost blindly, reined to the right.
+
+The pony swerved wildly to the left.
+
+Instinctively Harry gave the frightened horse its head.
+
+A half mile farther on the animal stopped and sniffed the wind.  At the
+same instant Harry heard a feeble shout from the road.  A weirdly
+garbed little half breed lay on the ground holding the bridle of the
+horse that had thrown him.
+
+"Ankle gone," he explained.  "Riding for help, I help was.  You ride
+now.  White girl -- they're killing her up there now."
+
+"White girl?  Where?  Talk fast, man."
+
+"Two miles over the mountain and down to the valley straight ahead.
+You go to the bottom of the valley, not to the top -- not where the
+Indians are.  Climb tree; take my rope; it's the only chance now."
+
+Harry caught the coiled lariat from the other's saddle and rode as he
+had never ridden before.  All was vague in his mind, except that
+Pauline was near, was in peril, and he must reach her.
+
+How, by road and trail, he ever reached the Valley of the Death Stone
+Harry never knew.  Perhaps chance, perhaps some invisible courier
+guided him to the lonely spot.  After long, hard riding he was
+attracted by the low rumble of many voices lifted in a sort of chant.
+Following the voices, he came to the foot of a steep cliff side where a
+long trench, partly of natural formation, partly hewn from the stone,
+made a chute or runway from mountain top to valley.
+
+At the upper end of the runway a motley band of Indians were engaged in
+some weird worship.  Harry started his horse up the steep in the
+shelter of the woods.  When he came to a spot where a huge tree limb
+crossed the runway, he remembered the little half breed's words, "Climb
+the tree; it is the only chance."
+
+Almost at the same instant  from the midst of the Indian group emerged
+two giant braves carrying a white woman between them.  They placed her
+in the runway.  Her golden hair, unbound, floated on the wind.
+
+Harry choked back a cry, threw aside his rifle, caught the lariat, and,
+swinging up the tree, crawled swiftly out on the overhanging limb.
+Concealed by the foliage he waited.
+
+A rifle cracked, and, for the first time, he saw that at the top of the
+runway, behind Pauline, the stood a mighty boulder, almost perfectly
+round, the diameter of which -- about five feet -- fitted the trench so
+well that it could roll in it like a ball in a bowling gutter.
+
+None even among the Indians knew how many times the Stone of Death had
+rolled and been dragged back again to the top of the cliff.  The stains
+upon it were unnumbered.  Up on its surface was written in blood the
+doom of the false prophets and pretending immortals.  None had ever won
+in the race with the Death Stone.
+
+The crack of the rifle was the signal for a group of red men to press
+behind the stone to free it on its fearful course.  It was also the
+signal for Pauline to run.  Her hair streamed wildly in the wind as she
+sped, like a frightened deer, down the deadly path.
+
+The rifle sounded again and the Indians heaved the stone into the
+trench.
+
+It rumbled as it came on.  It gained upon the fleeing girl.  They had
+planned to prolong the torture by giving her a hopeless lead.
+
+Dancing, gesticulating, shouting, the Indians watched the race.  Only
+one watcher was silent and motionless.  Hidden by the leaves he braced
+himself upon the tree limb.  For the first moments after the rock was
+released he had turned sick and dizzy.  Now, as they came near -- the
+thing relentless but inanimate pursuing the thing helpless, beautiful
+and most precious to him of all things in the world, not the quiver of
+a muscle hindered the desperate task that he had set himself.
+
+A moment later he was sobbing like a child as he half dragged, half
+carried Pauline to his waiting horse.  By the magic of luck, by the
+mystery of a protecting Fate, the lariat noose had fallen about her
+shoulders.  To the amazed and terrified Indians up the cliff she had
+soared suddenly, spirit-like, out of the trench and vanished in the
+foliage of the tree, while the boulder thundered on, cheated of its
+prey.
+
+But swiftly out of the woods upon the open plain below appeared a rider
+with a woman clasped before him on the saddle.
+
+The baffled Indians scurried for their horses.  They reached the
+valley.  They gained upon the burdened horseman and his tired horse.
+They fired as they rode, the bullets spitting venomously in the dust
+around Harry and Pauline.
+
+The pony stumbled.  Harry jerked it up and it struggled bravely on, but
+the cries behind sounded louder.
+
+The bullets hit nearer.
+
+Suddenly the firing increased.  There were more cries.  And Harry,
+reining the pony saw, galloping over the ridge to the westward, the
+full posse of Hal Haines.  They fired as they came.  They cut between
+him and the Indians.  He stopped the pony and lifted Pauline to the
+ground.
+
+"My precious one, God bless you and forgive us all," sobbed Mrs. Haines
+as Polly was caught in her mothering embrace.  "And you -- you had to
+come all the way from New York to save her," she added, turning to
+Harry.
+
+"Don't say anything about it, Mrs. Haines," he said in a stage
+whisper.  "I came out here to rest and avoid publicity."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+SOPHIE MCALLAN'S WEDDING
+
+A few days after their return from Montana Pauline sat reading by the
+library window.  They had come late to the country this Summer and the
+park of Castle Marvin had had time to leave and bloom into utter
+splendor.  It was like a flowery kingdom in the Land of Faery, and as
+her eyes were lifted listlessly now and then from the printed page,
+they roamed over the garden which lay like some vast and radiant
+Oriental rug in Nature's palace hall.  The distant forest was the
+palace wall, tapestried in green; its dome, a sky of tender blue; its
+lamp, the morning sun; its Prince, her Harry standing in the garden.
+
+"He should always stand in the garden," thought Pauline tenderly.  "The
+flowers are such a splendid foil for him."
+
+She shut her eyes in sheer satiety of beauty.  Not even the shabby man
+mopping his hot forehead as he came along the road, marred the
+picture.  She was a little surprised to see him, a moment later,
+talking in an easy way with Harry but there was no false pride in her
+lover -- brother and all men were his friends until they proved
+themselves his enemies.  All except Owen.
+
+The shabby man, holding his hat between his nervous hands, was
+evidently an applicant for work.  Harry pointed to the flower beds and
+the rose trees with a nod of inquiry.  The man assented vaguely.  And
+they came on up the path together, making their way towards the
+servants' quarters over the garage.  Harry paused at the window:
+
+"I have hired a new gardener, who does not know his own name," he said
+as they passed on.
+
+Pauline turned back to the pages of the Cosmopolitan.  A picture in an
+article on the motor races caught her eye and held it for some reason
+that she did not at first understand.  It was a picture of a man in
+auto-racer's costume, with a helmet tight upon his head and the keen
+features and daring eyes peculiar to those who live by peril.  She had
+started to read the caption when she was interrupted by Bemis bringing
+her letters.  With a little flutter of pleasure, womanlike, she began
+to read the letters from their postmarks before opening them.  She hit
+upon one that brought a little peal of laughter from her, and she
+opened it eagerly and read:
+
+"Walter and I want you and Harry to be with us at the wedding.  Don't
+faint.  We decided only yesterday, and it's going to be very quiet,
+with just the few people whom we can reach with informal notes like
+this.  You can motor over in an hour.  Tell Harry our lions arrived
+last Thursday from Germany, and after the wedding the keeper will
+exhibit them.  If Harry won't come to see me married, he'll come to see
+the lions.
+
+Yours in a flurry, Sophie McAllan."
+
+Pauline laughed again.  It was like her unconventional chum, Sophie, to
+arrange her wedding with the same startling haste that had marked all
+the breathless events of her life.  The lions she mentioned were
+typical of her original ideas.  She had suddenly announced to her
+parents one day that she was tired of domestic animals and was going to
+keep lions instead.  And her amused and amazed father had not only been
+forced to yield, but to keep his eye out all over Europe, Asia and
+Africa for new bargains in well bred lions ever since.
+
+It was also typical of Sophie that she had selected from among all the
+dashing wooers; at her heels, Walter Trumwell, simple and sedate, who
+was horrified by her pranks and shocked by her use of slang, but who
+adored her with the devotion of a frightened puppy.  Their engagement
+had been long announced.  It was only in its high-handed abruptness
+that the wedding was a surprise.
+
+Pauline dropped the letter on the table and hurried from the room to
+look for Harry.
+
+He had head her first call and was coming in from the garage.  Pausing
+at the door of the library, where he had last seen her, he narrowly
+avoided a collision with Owen, who was hurrying out.  The look of
+covert guilt on the secretary's face aroused his latent suspicion.  But
+Owen, quickly recovering himself, bowed, apologized and passed on.
+
+Harry stepped into the library.  He saw the open letter on the table,
+looked at the envelope and saw that, he was included in the address.
+He read the letter, and the old look of trouble came into his eyes as
+he turned to see if Owen were watching.
+
+As he stepped into the hall he saw the secretary leaving the house.  He
+stood in the doorway and watched Owen depart in his own machine, driven
+by his own chauffeur, a sullen young fellow whom the other employees
+held in aversion.
+
+"He's up to something.  I wonder what harm he could do at the McCallan
+wedding," muttered Harry, as he moved down the steps and out to where
+the new gardener was working.  The man had been greatly improved as to
+cleanliness and clothes, but there was still the strange distant look
+in his eyes as he got up from a flower bed to speak to Harry.
+
+Pauline, after circling the house in vain search of her brother, had
+returned to her unread letters and her magazine.
+
+As she lifted the latter from the table, the picture of the man in
+racing costume again struck her eye, and this time she read the
+caption:
+
+"Ralph Palmer, whose skull was fractured in the Vanderbilt Cup Race and
+who disappeared from a hospital six weeks ago."
+
+She studied the face again.  It seemed the living likeness of one whom
+she had seen dead.  Suddenly her thoughts crystallized and she sprang
+up.  She rushed again to the front door, carrying the magazine open and
+saw Harry and the gardener talking on the path.  She ran down to them.
+
+The gardener took off his hat, but Pauline looked at him with such
+piercing scrutiny that he hurried to resume his work.  Harry, after a
+brief affectionate greeting, turned to give some last instructions,
+and, behind his back, Pauline stole another look at the magazine.
+
+"It is; I am sure it is," she said half aloud.
+
+Harry turned quickly.  "What is, dear goddess of the garden?" he asked
+cheerily.
+
+Pauline closed the magazine abruptly.
+
+"Oh!  I -- I was dreaming," she answered, with a little nervous laugh.
+
+"You can't have a dream when you are one," he said, putting his arm
+about her waist as they moved back towards the house.
+
+"I have news," she exclaimed, remembering the wedding invitation.
+"Sophie McCallan is to be married tonight -- just like that -- without
+telling till the last minute."
+
+"I read the letter in the library."
+
+"Did you tell Farrell to have the car ready?"
+
+"I will, dearest.  But I am not sure that I can go."
+
+"But you must go."
+
+"I got a telegram this morning, and I must go into town."
+
+"To New York!  Oh, Hairy, I simply hate your old business.  Haven't we
+got enough money without trying to make all there is in the world?
+Aren't we..."
+
+"No, not to New York -- just into Westbury, Miss Firebrand.  I must use
+the wire direct to the office."
+
+"Absurd.  Why don't you telephone your message?"
+
+"Code messages, dear.  They can't be talked."
+
+"But you'll be back in time to go with me?"
+
+"I'll do my best.  I'm starting directly.  There's Farrell with the
+machine now."
+
+"But Farrell must get my car ready."
+
+"He will.  Farrell isn't going with me."
+
+Her threats and pretty pleadings followed him as he drove away.  But
+Harry did not drive towards Westbury farther than the first
+crossroads.  Instead, he swerved out across country towards Windywild,
+the great McCallan estate.  Only a vague purpose moved him.  His
+suspicions were groping.  But he was forming dimly in his mind a plan
+to keep Pauline away from the McCallan wedding.  Premonition whispered
+that even among the nuptial gayeties there might be danger.
+
+On the crest of Winton's Hill, from which the road slopes down to
+beautiful Windywild through parked forests, but from which the rambling
+white villa, with its barns and garage can be seen in striking
+bird's-eye view, Harry stopped his machine.
+
+To his far vision there was no unusual stir about the McCallan house,
+in spite of the wedding day.  Owen's car was not at the gate nor in the
+yard, and he certainly would not have sent it to the garage if he were
+making a business visit to the manager of the estate.
+
+With a hateful sense of spying on the innocent and the sincere dread of
+being met there by anyone -- even by Owen -- he was about to turn
+around, go back and agree to take Pauline to the wedding, when the
+movement of a figure through the distant garage yard made him stiffen
+to attention and strain his gaze.
+
+In an instant he had whipped his binoculars from under the seat of the
+runabout and was staring through them at the establishment below.  A
+few moments afterwards he carefully replaced the glasses, and drove
+away.
+
+Owen had left the Marvin place in haste, seemingly intent upon a direct
+and important errand, but if any one had seen where the car stopped an
+hour later, both the haste and the errand would still have been
+unexplained.
+
+They were in the loneliest stretch of woods a half mile beyond the
+McCallan house when Owen leaned forward and said to his driver: "You
+may stop here."
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the young man with a respect that he showed to no
+one else.  He drew the machine to the roadside and then asked: "Am I to
+go with you or stay here?"
+
+"Stay here," answered Owen.  "But don't sit there lolling in the seat.
+We have broken down -- you understand -- and you will keep us broken
+down and keep on mending the machine until I return."
+
+Owen, who was not averse to physical effort when his dearest object was
+at stake, walked the half mile to Windywild rapidly.  Unlike Harry's,
+Owen's plans were definite and fixed.
+
+He strode through the front gate but took his way immediately to the
+stable in front of which two grooms were currying a restless horse.
+
+"Hello, Simon," said Owen.  "My car has broken down up the road here. I
+wonder if you can help me out."
+
+"I guess so," said the groom, not very cheerfully.
+
+"We got plenty to do today as it is, Mr. Owen, with the weddin' party
+on an' them gol blamed lions to look after."
+
+"Who talka da lions?" cried a grim voice, and, turning, Owen pretended
+to see for the first time a short, heavy set man of the gypsy type,
+seated on a box at the stable door smoking a cigarette and evidently
+regarding all the world as the object of his personal hate.
+
+"Why, who is that man?" asked Owen of the groom in a tone of
+condescending interest.  "Where have I seen him before?"
+
+"If ye ever saw him before, ye wouldn't want to see him again,"
+declared the groom.  "He's Garcia, Miss Sophie's new lion tamer, but we
+ain't had time to tame him yet.  He's wild."
+
+The answer to this taunt was a rush from Garcia, who, uttering an
+unintelligible roar that might have done credit to one of his lions,
+sprang towards the groom.  The latter took quick refuge behind the
+horse.
+
+The man's fury made Owen step aside, too, but he looked on with an
+appreciative smile.  As Garcia came back, growling, to his seat on the
+box, the secretary stepped up to him and held out his hand.
+
+"Is it really you?" he said, the patronage in his voice offsetting the
+familiarity of his manner.
+
+"If it looka. like me, it is me," snarled the Gypsy.  "Him -- over
+there," he cried, pointing to the groom, "he donta looka like his own
+face if I get him."
+
+"Come, old friend," said Owen in a low voice.  "Don't you remember me?
+Don't you remember the Zoological Garden in Brussels and the lion that
+bent a cage so easily one day that it killed Herr Bruner, of Berlin."
+
+The last words spoken almost in a whisper, had an electrical effect
+upon the lion tamer.  He fairly writhed in his seat and cowered away
+from Owen as from one who held a knife over his head.
+
+It was at this moment that Harry, looking from the hill, put away his
+binoculars and turned his car around.
+
+"Come, let's see the lions, may I?" asked Owen, cheerily ignoring the
+man's terror, secretly enjoying it.
+
+Without a word Garcia led the way into the stables.
+
+The lions, six in number, were quartered in box stalls rebuilt with
+heavy steel bars.  They had been quiet, but the sight of a stranger set
+them wild and their roaring thundered through the building.
+
+Garcia led Owen to farthest cage and stopped abruptly.
+
+"You after me?" he inquired, his nerve partially recovered.
+
+"Yes, but to help you, not to harm you, old friend."
+
+"You lie, I theenk.  You tella the police of the leetle accident in
+Bresseli -- no?"
+
+"No, indeed; you are too useful a man to lose, Garcia.  Besides, I need
+you again."
+
+The gypsy held up his hands in refusal.  "No," he whispered.  "I hava
+one dead man's face here always."  He pointed to his eyes.  "I cry it
+away; I go all over da world.  I not forget.  He not forget.  He folla
+me."
+
+Owen laughed.  "Come, come," he said, "you are foolish.  You had
+nothing to do with that affair, except to loosen one little bar ever so
+little.  (Garcia groaned.)  And it would be just as easy to leave say a
+cage door open tonight while they're having the wedding."
+
+"You mean --?"
+
+"I mean only a little joke.  Nobody will be hurt, I feel sure.  Of
+course, if any one should be, you could not be blamed.  Come, I want a
+quick answer.  If you won't do it, of course -- you don't want anything
+said about Brussels, do you, old friend?"
+
+The man uttered another cry.
+
+Owen drew money from his pocket.  The man seized it greedily.  If he
+was to do the blackest of deeds, there was nothing in his conscience to
+prevent him from profiting.
+
+"Tonight -- during the wedding, remember," said Owen.  "I will give you
+the signal.  And, mind, you brute, if you don't do it, you know what
+I'll do to you."
+
+A few moments later he was out chatting cheerily with the grooms.  "I'm
+not going to ask you to help me with the car, Simon," he said.  "You're
+too crowded today, I see.  I'll send Farrell up to the Hodgins House
+and wait for him.  Good-day."
+
+He swung off down the road, greatly at peace with all the world.  He
+did not even rebuke his chauffeur when he caught him loafing on the
+grass.
+
+Harry and the household chauffeur, Farrell, were talking together
+outside the garage and Harry was handing a $10 bill to Farrell, who
+grinned broadly as he pocketed it.  Owen saw nothing in this to cause
+him apprehension.  Harry was always generous with the employees.  It
+was well for Owen's plan that he should go to the wedding in so
+pleasant a mood.
+
+Pauline looked up from her book as Harry entered the library.
+
+"I'm so happy," she cried.  "You are a darling boy to come home so
+soon."
+
+He accepted her rewarding kiss gratefully.
+
+"Yes, I think it's all right," he said, "though there are some serious
+matters in hand at the office."
+
+The butler appeared at the door.  "Farrell asks if he may have a word
+with you, Sir."
+
+"Farrell?  Why, yes; let him come here."
+
+The chauffeur, cap in hand, stepped into the room.
+
+"Guess I got to take the big car to New York, Sir.  I haven't got the
+parts to fix it, and I can't get them nowhere but in New York."
+
+"Very well; that's all right, Farrell."
+
+"But be back surely by four o'clock, Farrell," warned Pauline.  "You
+are the only driver I have."
+
+"Oh, I'll get back all right, Miss."
+
+But immediately after uttering these words in a tone of perfect
+respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that
+separate servitor and employer.  He caught the shimmer of a wink upon
+Harry's eye, and he had the audacity to return it.
+
+Three minutes afterwards Farrell did a stranger thing.  Going direct
+from the house to the telephone in the garage, he took up the receiver
+and called up the house.  Owen, passing by, stopped spellbound, at the
+door, to hear these mandatory words spoken by the chauffeur to Harry
+Marvin, whose answering voice could actually be heard by Owen through
+the open window of the library.
+
+"Mr. Marvin, you are needed at your office.  Come at once," phoned
+Farrell.
+
+He was grinning again as he came out of the garage, got into a machine
+and drove away.  Owen gazed after him with puzzled, lowering brows.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+PALMER COMES BACK
+
+Harry had just hung up the receiver of the telephone and had turned to
+Pauline with feigned disappointment.
+
+"My office is calling me," he said.  "I'm needed there at once.  I
+shan't be able to go to the wedding."
+
+The sight of the happiness fading from her flowerlike face filled him
+with shame.  It was the first time in his life that he had lied to her
+and he was half sorry now that he had done so.  But he must go through
+with it now, and if there was apology in the kisses he pressed on her
+reproachful eyes it was not confessed.
+
+"I am going to the wedding just the same," declared Pauline.
+
+"Of course, you are," he agreed heartily.  "Farrell will be back with
+the car by five o'clock."
+
+"But who will chaperon me?" she objected, woman-like, to her own
+decision.  "It would look absurd to take Margaret, and Owen isn't
+invited."
+
+"You will not need a chaperon going over -- provided Farrell gets
+back," he said as he took his hat from the table.
+
+"You mean you don't believe Farrell will get back!" she exclaimed.
+"You are treating me like a child.  You don't want me to go to the
+wedding just because you can't go."
+
+"Now, don't, don't," he pleaded, as she started to leave the room.  "I
+don't mean anything of the kind.  I mean Farrell is the only man who
+can drive the large car or the roadster safely.  There is no reason in
+the world why he shouldn't get back."
+
+"And how am I to come home?" she demanded, turning again toward him.
+
+"I will call for you in the runabout on my way from New York.  Perhaps
+even I shall be able to arrive in time to greet the happy pair," he
+added cheerfully.  "You'll make my excuses."
+
+Owen, who was listening at the door, had just time, to glide away
+before Harry hurried out.
+
+The young master of the house had driven far toward the station before
+the secretary returned to the library.
+
+This time he entered and pretended to be hunting for a magazine.
+Pauline's disconsolate face gave him the excuse he desired.
+
+"Why, Miss Marvin, has anything happened?" he asked in a tone of
+concern.
+
+"Oh, everything has gone wrong," she cried, almost in tears.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Harry is called to the city just when we are invited to Sophie
+McCallan's wedding, and Farrell has taken the limousine for some silly
+repairs.  They'll not get back; I know they'll not.  They never do."
+
+"But, Miss Marvin?"
+
+"Oh, don't try to apologize for him.  He cares more for his old
+business than he does for me.  He makes automobiles himself, and yet I
+can't have enough for my own personal use.  I'm sorry I forgave him,"
+she flared.
+
+"You are right, Miss Marvin; it is an outrage."
+
+She looked at Owen in astonishment.  It was the first time she had ever
+heard him venture a critical word against Harry.
+
+"I think it is your fault," she declared.  "You are the one who should
+see that I have cars and drivers -- everything I want."
+
+"But you know the machines have not come from the town house, Miss
+Marvin.  They will be here tomorrow."
+
+"Well, Owen, it isn't for you to say that what my brother does is an
+outrage.  He does everything for the best."
+
+"Miss Marvin, Harry is lying to you," he said quietly.  "He and your
+chauffeur have formed a plot against you.  Your car will not be back
+this afternoon at all."
+
+She sprang to her feet, furious.
+
+"Owen, be still!  How do you dare to say such things?"
+
+Raymond Owen had found his great moment,  His enemy had set his own
+trap and Owen would see that he should not escape easily.  The
+opportunity to break forever the bond of faith and affection between
+Harry and Pauline had come.  His voice rose as he poured out his
+revelations and denunciations.
+
+Pauline was leaving the room, when he thrust himself before her.
+
+"You must hear me.  I know what I say is true.  It hurts me as deeply
+as it will hurt you, but you must hear it.  I believe I have discovered
+-- by the merest accident -- the cause of all your perils.  The plots
+against you have been arranged at home."
+
+"You are mad.  I will not listen to you.  Let me pass."
+
+"Not until you have heard," he declared firmly.
+
+"I was passing the door of the garage only a few moments ago," he went
+on in a rapid whisper.  "I saw Farrell at the telephone.  He called the
+private house number -- the number of this phone on the table.  You and
+Mr. Marvin were sitting here.  I was so surprised that I stopped and
+listened to Farrell's words.  I could see Mr. Marvin listening at the
+phone here.  Farrell said: 'Mr.  Marvin, you are needed at your
+office.  Come at once.'  Then he hung up the receiver and came out,
+laughing.  He got into the limousine and drove off towards the city.
+If he could drive the limousine to the city, could he not drive it to
+the McCallan's for you?"
+
+Pauline put her hands to her ears with a protesting cry.
+
+"It isn't true," she whispered.  "It is only a scheme of Farrell's to
+get an afternoon off."
+
+"It is a scheme of Harry's to keep you from the wedding -- for what
+purpose only he knows.  It is one of many schemes that have held your
+life in constant peril.  I saw their plan arranged.  I saw your brother
+hand money to Farrell at the door of the garage and they parted,
+laughing."
+
+Pauline's mind whirled.  "I won't believe it!  I can't;  I can't!" she
+cried.  Doubt and fear and fury mingled in her breast.  Weeping
+tumultuously, she rushed past Owen and up to her own room.
+
+Two hours later, the struggle over, she called Margaret, who bathed her
+hot temples and dressed her for the wedding.
+
+Harry Marvin, in town, tried his best to make good use of the time he
+had stolen.  But the thought of his well-meant chicanery was heavy on
+his mind and it was not unmixed with apprehension.  After all, Pauline
+might find a way to go to the wedding.  Might he not, instead of having
+averted a danger, simply have absented himself from the scene of danger
+when he was most needed?  His nervousness increased.  He found himself
+incapable of work, and at three o'clock, to the surprise of his clerks,
+who had thought his unexpected visit must mean an important conference
+of directors, he called a taxicab and started for Westbury.  But he had
+no intention of going to Castle Marvin unless it was necessary.  He
+meant to telephone from Westbury and learn whether or not Pauline had
+gone to the wedding.  If she had not, he would remain away until late.
+
+A few minutes before four o'clock, Farrell, with his pretty wife whom
+he had called to share his plot and his holiday, drove up to a rural
+telegraph office.  They were both laughing as Farrell handed this
+message to the operator:
+
+Miss Pauline Marvin, Castle Marvin, Westbury.  Blow-out. Can't get back
+this evening.  George Farre
+
+"You -- don't want to say what kind of a blow-out it is, do you?"
+grinned the operator, glancing out of the window at the spic and span
+machine.
+
+"If you don't see everything you look at, you'll save your eyesight,"
+replied Farrell cheerfully.
+
+At the next town he telephoned to the Marvin office in New York.  He
+came out of the booth with a worried look.
+
+"The boss has left in a taxi for home," he said.  "Wonder what that
+means.  Guess we better sort of travel along towards Westbury.  He
+might need me."
+
+They changed their course and had driven for some time at an easy rate
+through the smiling country when the sound of a machine coming up
+speedily behind caused Farrell to look around.  The passenger in the
+open cab waved his hand and Farrell, saluting, slowed down.  The cars
+stopped, side by side.  Harry raised his hat to the young woman.
+
+"You're not going home, are you, Farrell?" he said.
+
+"I heard you'd left the office and I thought something might have
+happened, and I'd be near enough so you could get me quick."
+
+"Nothing has happened.  I'll get along nicely with this cab.  You'd
+better keep a good distance and not come home until tomorrow morning."
+
+"Very well, sir.  That suits us fine." Farrell grinned.
+
+The taxi started on and Farrell turned off at the next crossroad.
+
+"He's a great boss, but a queer one," he said to his wife.  "It's a
+queer family all around.  I wonder what's being cooked up now."
+
+As the time of Farrell's expected return drew near Pauline's despair
+and anger increased with every moment.  When four o'clock struck she
+arose and walked nervously out to the garage to ask if any word had
+been received from Farrell.  She found Owen there.
+
+As she turned toward him, after her futile questioning, Pauline's grief
+suddenly mounted to anger.
+
+"It is after four, and Farrell has not returned," she exclaimed.
+
+She had come out to the yard in the exquisite white gown that she was
+to wear to the wedding, a flashing jewel at her white throat, her hair
+done regally high.  Now, in her anger, she was a picture of fury made
+beautiful.
+
+Her outburst was interrupted by a messenger boy with a telegram.  She
+opened the message with nervous fingers.
+
+"Blow out.  Can't get back this evening," she read.
+
+She tore the message into pieces, dropped them and, stamped upon them
+with her white slippers.
+
+"It's true, it's true!" she cried, turning desperately to Owen.
+
+"I am terribly, hopelessly sorry -- but I knew that it was true," he
+said solemnly.
+
+At this moment along the drive came the new gardener wheeling a barrow
+of fresh mold, his rake and hoe lying across it.  "Palmer!" Pauline
+cried.
+
+The man let fall the barrow as if he had been cut with a whip lash.  He
+looked up and for an instant his dazed eyes seemed to brighten.  Then
+he picked up the barrow as if no one had spoken and went on.
+
+Pauline followed him.
+
+"Bring out the roadster," she called over her shoulder, and, as she
+stopped beside the gardener.  The garage men, bewildered, but used to
+the kindly vagaries of their pretty employer, sent the machine down
+driveway.
+
+"Can you drive an automobile, Palmer?" asked Pauline.
+
+This time the man's eyes did not brighten.  He looked at her
+respectfully, but dully.  She drew him to the car and repeated the
+question.  He only grinned foolishly and kept on shaking his head.
+
+"Wait," she said, and, running back to the house, reappeared directly
+wearing her hat and flowing white wrap.  "Come, Palmer, you must drive
+me to the wedding," she declared.
+
+She made him get into the car and take the wheel.  As she got in beside
+him, his hands fumbled aimlessly with the lever.
+
+"Palmer!  Palmer!" she dinned his forgotten name into his ears.  "Don't
+you remember the race, the road, the flying cars, the speed, the
+speed!  Don't you remember the man who was in the lead -- the man the
+crowd cheered for?  That was you, Palmer, the greatest of all the
+drivers."
+
+She leaned forward in the seat, arms outstretched as if holding a
+tugging wheel, eyes set straight ahead, slippered feet threading
+imaginary levers, graceful body swerving.
+
+He watched her, frowning.  A vague purpose seemed to animate the hand
+groping with the levers.
+
+"Wake up, Palmer!  It's time for the race -- the Vanderbilt Cup.  Kirby
+and Michaels have started.  There's Wharton coming to the line.  Don't
+you see the crowds?  Can't you hear them cheering?  Palmer!  Palmer! *
+* * Yes, we're coming! * * * Palmer is coming back. * * * "Way there!"
+
+He found the self-starter; the engine sounded.  He found the clutch and
+gears.  His eyes were shut.  The car started slowly and he opened his
+eyes.  Pauline sank back in the seat, laughing and clapping her hands,
+half hysterically.
+
+"Bravo, Palmer!" she exulted.
+
+The astonished workmen saw them glide through the outer gate.  Raymond
+Owen from his window saw them and rubbed his hands pleasantly.  Fate
+indeed seemed to be favoring his deadly work today!
+
+The car swung into the highway.
+
+"Drive faster," commanded Pauline.
+
+The listless hands hardened on the wheel.  She saw him bend over and
+fix his vision on the road.  She thrilled at the miracle she had
+wrought.
+
+More speed, and the wind blew her cape from her shoulders; the dust
+beat in her face.  She merely tightened her veil and sat silent.
+
+"Take the first turn to the right," she called in his ear as they
+neared the crossroad.  He did not slacken the speed.
+
+"It's a sharp turn; slow a little," she cautioned.  He did not seem to
+hear her.
+
+She placed her hand sharply on his arm.  He drove past the crossroad,
+the speed to the last notch.
+
+Pauline tried to stand up in the seat and seize the wheel.  He thrust
+her back with one hand, not even looking at her.  He was leaning far
+over the wheel now, his eyes blazing.  She could see the beat of blood
+in his temple.
+
+"Stop!  Stop!  You are on the wrong road.  You will kill us both!" she
+screamed in his deaf ears.  She tried again to wrest the wheel from
+him, but this time he held her fast after he had flung her back.  She
+had raised up a Frankenstein for her own destruction.  She was being
+driven by a madman.
+
+As they took the curve outside Westbury village another car filled with
+men and women fairly grazed them.  The women screamed and the men
+shouted wildly after them.  But they flashed on.
+
+Down the hill at Gangley's Mills the pace grew even greater.  From the
+west prong of the road fork at the bottom a taxicab shot into view.
+There was a shout of warning, a rattle and creak as the taxi swerved,
+safe by inches.
+
+On the skirts of Clayville a group of farmers and a constable were
+arguing a roadside dispute.  Pauline could see dim figures leap into
+the road waving arms; she could hear them shouting.  The figures jumped
+to either side as Palmer drove through the group.
+
+They sprang back into the road, cursing and shaking their fists, only
+to be routed anew by the rush of the taxicab following.
+
+The roadster straightened out on the ledge of Scrogg Hill.  In spite of
+the curve and the precipice Palmer held his speed.  His daring, his
+utter mastery, stirred a kind of admiration in Pauline and the death
+she saw looming stirred anew her courage.  She wrenched her arm free
+from his grip.  She stood up and swung her weight against the man,
+rasping for the wheel.  The car swerved toward the cliff, but he jerked
+it back, striking at her brutally with his free hand.  She fell in the
+seat, but returned, desperate, to the encounter.  She caught the
+wheel.  She tried to command it, but his strength drew the other way.
+The machine shot toward the abyss.  There was a crackle as the wooden
+guide fence splintered under the wheels. There was a crash!
+
+Harry, leaning from the taxicab behind, uttered a groan.  The roadster
+had gone over the cliff.
+
+Fifty feet down the rock-gnarled hillside they took Pauline from the
+clutch of the dead driver.  His fall had broken hers and it was only
+from fear that she had fainted.  Harry, pressing the taxi driver's
+flask to her lips, saw her eyes open and his cry was like a prayer of
+thanksgiving.
+
+When Harry lifted Pauline to carry her to the taxicab, to his abasement
+he felt her hands press him away.  He thought she had not yet
+recovered, that she believed herself still in the grasp of the madman.
+He set her on her feet and looked at her questioningly.
+
+Without a word she turned from him and started up the road.
+
+"Pauline!" he cried.  "What do you mean?  Don't you know me?  It's
+Harry."
+
+She kept on without turning.  He caught her by the arm.  "Don't you
+know me, your brother?" he pleaded.
+
+She turned, tremblingly.  "You are not my brother," she blazed.  "And I
+did not know you until today."
+
+"You are hurt and ill, dearest.  Come, let me take you home."
+
+She walked on up the road.
+
+"But where are you going?" he demanded.
+
+"I am going to the wedding.  You tried to keep me away by your base
+trick but you can't do it."
+
+Now he understood.  "I know; I know," he groaned.  "It was the meanest
+and most useless thing.  But I did not think it was safe for you to go
+to the wedding.  I am sorry to the bottom of my heart."
+
+"Goodbye," she said coldly, walking on.
+
+"But you can't go like that," he exclaimed, pointing to her torn and
+draggled clothes, her unfastened hair.
+
+"It is better to go to friends whom I can trust," she said coldly, and
+moved on.
+
+As gently as he could he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the
+taxicab.  Placing her in the seat he followed, and as the machine
+started began to pour out his repentance.  She would not even answer,
+but sat with averted face, weeping and trembling.
+
+At last she became quiet.  He drew her tattered wrap closer about her
+shoulders and put his arm around her so that her head rested against
+his breast.  A moment later, looking down, he was surprised to see that
+she was smiling like a tired child.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A HOT YOUNG COMET
+
+"That's right; praise her; pet her; make her think she's great, so
+she'll do it all over again."
+
+Harry turned away wrathfully from the joyous greetings of Lucille and
+Chauncey Hamlin to Pauline.
+
+"Harry is quite right," said Lucille.  "I ought to snub you entirely.
+It is disgraceful, it's wicked to be as brave as you are, Polly."
+
+"Oh, I say, Lucy," pleaded her brother.  "You'll have Miss Pauline all
+upset."
+
+"She likes it," snapped Harry.  "She's been upset out of everything
+from a balloon to a house afire, and now she's looking for new
+capsizable craft."
+
+"Polly!  You wouldn't try it again!  You don't want any more thrills
+after this?" Lucille's astonishment was sincere.
+
+Pauline cast a serpentine glance at Harry.  "Am I to live quietly at
+home with a creature like him?" she inquired.
+
+"Why don't you have me beheaded, 0 Great White Queen?"
+
+"The braves are reserved for torture.  Where are you people going so
+bright and early?" she added turning to Chauncey.
+
+"Going to take you for a little morning spin.  Car's perfectly safe."
+
+"Yes, do come along, Polly," urged Lucille.
+
+"What!  In a safe car?  Never!" exclaimed Harry.  "It isn't done, you
+know - not in this family.  Now, if you had a hot restless young comet
+hitched at the door, Chauncey."
+
+Pauline laughed merrily.  "No, I couldn't go this morning even behind a
+restless young comet."  She glanced mischievously at Harry.  "Duty
+before pleasure; have important business on hand.  No, I can't tell
+even you, Lucille -- you're not to be trusted.  You'd be sure to tell
+Harry."
+
+As the Hamlins drove off, Harry turned anxiously.
+
+"You've not forgotten your promise?  There is to be a long rest from
+wildness, isn't there -- no more adventures?"
+
+"Yes -- a rest from wild ones.  I am going to have a tame adventure
+now."
+
+"Polly, Polly!  What do you mean?"
+
+"This," she answered, taking the morning paper from the table.
+Unfolding it, she showed him a headline:
+
+     GREAT LORDNOR STABLES
+	   TO BE AUCTIONED
+
+World-Famous Horses of Late Millionaire Sportsman Under Hammer.
+
+"Well?" questioned Harry.
+
+"Don't you see?" she tantalized him.
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"I am going to buy Firefly and ride him in the steeplechase handicap."
+
+Harry's smile was almost despairing, but he answered quickly.  "Oh, I
+see.  You'll have me ride him and break my precious neck. I thought for
+a second you meant to ride yourself."
+
+"That's just what I do mean.  It will be gorgeously exciting -- and
+perfectly safe."
+
+"Safe?"
+
+"Well, of course, I might be killed by a fall or something."
+
+He laughed in spite of himself.  "I shall not permit it," he said.
+
+"You will not permit it?" she beamed.  "Then I'll ask my guardian.  I
+may ride Firefly in the steeplechase if I choose, mayn't I, Owen?" she
+asked brightly.
+
+Pauline could never bear malice; already she had forgiven Owen, as well
+as Harry.
+
+The secretary had just entered and was watching the two with a
+questioning eye.
+
+"If we own Firefly, you may," he smiled back at her.
+
+"I told you," she triumphed over Harry.
+
+"But we don't own him," said Owen, puzzled.
+
+"We shall this afternoon.  The Lordnor stables are being sold.  Please
+give me a great deal of money so that I can't be outbid."
+
+"Does Miss Pauline really mean this?" asked the secretary.
+
+"She does," Harry answered in a tone of disgust at what he thought now
+was only Owen's weakness.  There seemed no chance of a plot against
+Pauline in this original scheme of her own.
+
+"She rides wonderfully.  I do not see why she should not," Owen
+condescended.
+
+"You don't seem to see much of anything," declared Harry.
+
+"But you'll take me to the auction?" coaxed Pauline.
+
+"I'll have to -- or you'll spend the whole estate on a Shetland pony."
+
+Owen sauntered from the room, laughing.  Bareheaded he walked quite
+across the garden and down into the wood-copse by the path gate.
+
+A gypsy was leaning upon the gate and gazing nervously up and down the
+road.  He turned at the sound of Owen's footsteps, and the eyes of the
+young chief, Michel Mario, gazed apprehensively into the smiling eyes
+of the secretary.
+
+"How are you, Balthazar?" greeted Owen.
+
+"Don't use that name to me," pleaded the gypsy.  "You have work for
+me?  I have come all the way back from Port Vincent to see you."
+
+"It was kind of you," said Owen with the faintest tinge of sarcasm.
+"Yes, I have important work for you.  Have you ever doctored a horse,
+Balthazar?"
+
+"Many times -- but not with my beauty medicine," grinned the chief.
+
+"I mean with a hypodermic needle. I mean a race horse-so that he might
+possibly fall in a race."
+
+"And injure the rider?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"It is very easy -- but very dangerous.  I should want --"
+
+"I know; I know," exclaimed Owen petulantly.  "Here is the money."
+
+Balthazar gloated over the yellow bills.
+
+"And here is the weapon."
+
+The Gypsy took the needle from the hand of the secretary and thrust it
+quickly into the inside pocket of his blouse.  "Thank you, master.  I
+will do what you say," said the Gypsy, making a move to go.
+
+"Not quite so fast," commanded Owen.  "You do not know the place or the
+time."
+
+"The Jericho track next Saturday," answered the Gypsy promptly.  "What
+is the horse?"
+
+"Firefly.  It will be bought at the Jericho stables this afternoon.
+You will be there to see it and to remember it.  Goodbye now."
+
+"Goodbye master -- and many thanks."
+
+Michael Caliban, wealthiest of sportsmen, attended the auction of the
+Lordnor stables, and seemed bent on adding the entire string of
+splendid horses to his own far-famed monarchs of the track.
+
+The only time during the afternoon that he met with defeat was when the
+famous steeplechaser Firefly was brought out.
+
+"Five hundred dollars," said Caliban curtly.
+
+"Six hundred," said the musical voice of a girl and the crowd turned to
+look.
+
+Caliban smiled condescendingly.  "A thousand," he said.
+
+"There, you see you can't do it.  The horse isn't worth any more,"
+cautioned Harry.
+
+"Fifteen hundred dollars," cried Pauline.
+
+"Does she mean that, or is this only a joke?" demanded Caliban, turning
+to the auctioneer.
+
+"The lady's word is good enough for me.  Going at fifteen hundred --
+going, going --"
+
+"Two thousand dollars.  I guess that'll stop any jokes around here,"
+grinned Caliban.
+
+"Three thousand," said Pauline so quickly that even Harry gasped, cut
+short in mid-protest.
+
+Caliban turned away and strode disgustedly out of the crowd amid hoots
+of laughter.
+
+"He is worth it; why he is worth any price," cried Pauline as the
+smiling groom led Firefly up to her.
+
+The magnificent animal thrust its nose instantly between her
+outstretched arms, and as she patted him delightedly the crowd rippled
+with spontaneous applause.
+
+Harry joined her on the way to see Firefly put in his stall.  He gave
+the caretaker instructions, and laughingly dragged Pauline away from
+her new pet.
+
+As they entered their machine, Raymond Owen came from behind the
+stable.
+
+Engrossed in the business complications growing out of the European
+conflict, Harry had quite forgotten Firefly and the steeplechase when
+the day of the great Jericho handicap arrived.
+
+He was in the library reading a letter when there burst upon his sight
+through the open doorway a vision that took his breath away.
+
+Pauline, in full jockey uniform, white and blue and yellow, was
+pirouetting on her gleaming black boots before him.
+
+"Polly!" he cried, unable to grasp the meaning of the prank.  "Have you
+cut off your hair?" he added in alarm.
+
+"No; here it is," she laughed, snapping off her visored cap and
+revealing masses of hair.
+
+"Oh, don't do it," he begged.  "Look!  Here's a letter from the
+McCallans asking us to their house party in the Adirondacks.  We're
+expected tomorrow.  Let's go there instead."
+
+He handed her the letter.  Without glancing at it she flicked it into
+the air with her riding crop and danced out of her room..
+
+"So I surrender again," he murmured, laughing in spite of himself.
+
+Riding out toward the starting line, Pauline swerved her course a
+little to avoid the gaze of the gentlemen riders who eyed her
+curiously.  She heard a call from an automobile beside the track and
+rode, over to where Harry and Owen were seated in the car.
+
+Their lifted hats as, she bent to shake hands with them caused the
+crowd to stare in astonishment.  Pauline, blushing furiously, sped
+Firefly to the line.
+
+"That horse works queer," commented Harry, as she rode away.
+
+"Do you think so?" asked Owen.
+
+"Yes, it's on edge, but its legs are shaky.  I wonder..."
+
+But the riders were ready.  The signal sounded.  The crowd's cheer rose
+in the names of their various favorites.  Field-glasses were
+unbuckled.
+
+"By jolly, Firefly took the first jump in the lead," cried Harry, a
+thrill of admiration lightening the worry in his heart.
+
+"He's all right," said Owen.
+
+Over the wide green the horses began to string out, with Firefly
+ahead.
+
+"She's going to win it; I believe she is," exclaimed Harry excitedly as
+he and Owen stood in the automobile.  "No -- no; he wobbled at the
+fourth jump.  He's losing ground."
+
+But Firefly seemed uddenly to grip his strength as one horse passed
+him.  He pulled himself together under Pauline's urging.  He regained
+the lead.
+
+They came down splendidly toward the homestretch.  The bodies of the
+powerful beasts rose one by one over the last hedge.
+
+"They're over!  They've won -- or, heaven help her!  They're down!"
+
+Leading at the last jump, the drugged heart of the great horse had
+conquered his courage.  As he stumbled heavily, Pauline shot over his
+head and lay helpless in the path of the other riders.
+
+Harry, dashing madly toward the track, but hopelessly far from her, had
+to turn away his head as the crashing hoofs passed her.  When he looked
+again, attendants were carrying her swiftly to the clubhouse.  He sped
+toward it, Owen following.
+
+Harry tore his way through the excited crowd to the side of Pauline.  A
+doctor was administering restoratives.  Pauline opened her eyes and
+looked about her bewildered.  She saw Harry's anxious face and smiled
+penitently.
+
+"I've -- learned a lesson this time," she whispered.
+
+"It is nothing serious -- her shoulder bruised a little," said the
+doctor.
+
+"Thank Heaven!"  breathed Raymond Owen with well feigned emotion.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OWEN OFFERS A REWARD
+
+Cries of delight coming, in the voice of Pauline, from the direction
+of  the garage made Harry lay down his newspaper and go forth to
+investigate.
+
+As he approached he saw Bemis and Lucille's coachman lifting a crate
+from a carriage.  From within the crate came the whimpering barks of an
+imprisoned bull terrier.
+
+"Oh, isn't he dear?" cried Pauline turning to Harry.
+
+"I don't know, I haven't yet made his acquaintance.  Where did he come
+from?"
+
+"Lucille sent him to me.  Johnson just brought him over.  Hurry, Bemis,
+and let him out.  The poor darling!"
+
+"Is that what is called puppy love?" inquired Harry.
+
+"Hush," commanded Pauline.  "And Bemis, run and tell Martha to cook
+something for him -- a beefsteak and potatoes "
+
+"And oysters on the half shell," suggested Harry.
+
+"Love me," announced Pauline sternly, "love my dog."
+
+The coachman had ripped of the last top bar of the crate and a splendid
+terrier sprang out with a suddenness that made Pauline retreat a
+little.  But, as if he had been trained to his part, he bent his head,
+and, with wagging tail, approached her.  In an instant she was kneeling
+beside him rewarding his homage with enthusiastic pats and fantastic
+encomiums.
+
+"Why, he likes me already -- isn't he charming?" she demanded.
+
+Harry threw up his hands - "And this for a dog -- a new dog -- possibly
+a mad dog!"
+
+"You are a brute."
+
+The dog was making rapid acquaintance with his new home, investigating
+the garage and, more profoundly, the kitchen, door.
+
+"Here, Cyrus, come Cyrus," called Pauline, and started towards the
+house.  Owen, in his motorcycle togs, was lighting a cigar on the
+veranda when they came up the steps.  Without even pretending to enter
+into Pauline's enthusiasm over the terrier, he excused himself and
+walked off briskly in the direction of the garage.  A few minutes later
+they saw him on the motorcycle speeding down the drive.
+
+"I wonder what the impressive business is today," remarked Harry
+sarcastically.
+
+"Let poor Owen alone.  He is good and kind even if he doesn't care for
+Cyrus."
+
+"Look here!  Why don't you ever say any of these nice things to me --
+the things, you say to dogs -- and secretaries?"
+
+"Because I've promised to marry you -- some day -- and it is fatal to
+let a husband -- even a futurity husband -- know that you admire him."
+
+"Well, as long as you do, it is all right."
+
+A half mile down the main road to Westbury a runabout was drawn up, and
+a converted gypsy was alternately pretending to repair an imaginary
+break and relieving his nerve-strain by pacing the road.  Balthazar's
+fantastic garments had given way to a plain sack suit and motor duster,
+but the profit of his employment by Raymond Owen was worth the
+discomfort of becoming "civilized."
+
+The muttering of a distant motor made him fall to his knees and, wrench
+in hand, wiggle hastily under the machine.
+
+To all appearance he was bitterly pre-occupied with the woes of a
+stalled tourist when a motorcycle chugged to a stop beside the runabout
+and Owen called him.
+
+"I thought you had failed of our appointment, master," he said eagerly
+as he crawled out.  "I have waited for more than half an hour."
+
+"It is sad that you should be inconvenienced, old friend," answered
+Owen.
+
+"I have done what you commanded me, master," Balthazar said with an
+ingratiating smile.  I have found them."
+
+"Found whom?"
+
+"The friends I spoke about at our last meeting -- the little band that
+earns money by -- making it."
+
+"Oh, yes -- your counterfeiters.  Are they to be trusted?"
+
+"Master, all guilty men are to be trusted.  There is always protection
+in knowing the sins of others."
+
+"Sometimes, Balthazar, I almost suspect you of possessing a brain.
+But, remember, I have told you that I shall soon be through -- unless
+you accomplish something."
+
+"Master, it is because I dare not risk your freedom -- your life.  For
+myself I care nothing.  I live to serve you, who have been my
+benefactor."
+
+"You lie, of course," remarked Owen casually.  "But what of the new
+plan?"
+
+"They are in Bantersville, only twelve miles from Castle Marvin.  A
+house that has been long occupied and with no houses near."
+
+"And they are still manufacturing coins there?"
+
+"Yes; but they are becoming frightened.  Two of the distributors have
+been arrested.  They would be glad of a safer, a swifter method of
+making money."
+
+"Come along, then."
+
+Owen mounted the motorcycle while Balthazar sprang to the seat and
+started the runabout.  They sped briskly over the roads, turning at
+last into an old weed- grown wagon path fringed copse-like by the
+branches of ever-hanging trees.  The machine swished through the
+barrier leaves and came out upon a small clearing where there stood a
+gaunt house, evidently long deserted.
+
+Balthazar drove on along the road for almost a quarter of a mile before
+he stopped the machine, Owen following without question.  They left the
+runabout and the motorcycle and walked back to the house.
+
+"It is an excellent location," commented Owen, as Balthazar lead the
+way into a basement entrance.  "Who did you say was the man in charge
+of the -- concern?"
+
+"Rupert Wallace.  He is a world-traveler like yourself, though no match
+for you in mind, master."
+
+Balthazar, as he spoke, was rapping lightly on a wall, which had no
+sign of a door.  It was pitch dark where they stood.  But suddenly with
+hardly a sound, two sliding doors opened to the Gypsy's signal and a
+faint light from a gas jet on the wall gleamed on an inner passage.
+Balthazar, closely followed by Owen, walked quickly down the secret
+hall, and, without signal this time, another set of silent doors opened
+upon a brightly lighted room.
+
+A crabbed, withered woman admitted them.
+
+The room was overheated because of the presence of a gas forge on which
+a cauldron of metal was being melted.  On one side there was a stamping
+press, and on the other a set of molds.
+
+Wallace noted Owen's curiosity, and stepping to the table in the middle
+of the room, picked up a handful of half-dollar pieces.
+
+"You are interested in our work -- the work of supplying the poor with
+sufficient funds to meet the increased cost of living," he said,
+smiling.  "These are some of our product.  We are proud of them.  The
+weight is exactly that of the true fifty-cent piece.  And only one man
+in fifty could tell the difference in the ring of the metal."
+
+Owen looked at the coins in sincere admiration.
+
+"It is very remarkable," he said.  "But Balthazar tells me -"
+
+"I know.  You have a little business of secrecy for myself and my
+friends.  You may speak here in perfect safety, Mr. Owen.  Gossip is
+not a fault -- or a possibility -- of our profession."
+
+"I do not believe there is anything to say but what Balthazar has
+already told you, except -"
+
+Owen hesitated.
+
+"Except what, master?  Is there a change in the plan?" asked
+Balthazar.
+
+"I think there might be.  Something occurred today that might give us a
+favorable lead.  Miss Pauline received as a gift a terrier dog.  I
+believe it could be made use of."
+
+"In what way?" asked the counterfeiter.
+
+"By stealing it and bringing it here."
+
+"I don't understand -- ah, yes; indeed I do."
+
+"Excellent, master," exclaimed Balthazar.  "It could be done today.
+Can I have two of your men, Rupert?"
+
+"Yes; take Gaston and Firenzi.  They are always to be trusted."
+
+At his words two men, stepped forward.  One of them had been working at
+the metal pots.  But in response to a hurried word from Rupert he
+quickly threw off his cap and apron, and caught up a hat and coat.
+
+Rupert Wallace stepped to the side of the room where a pair of upright
+levers stood out of the floor like the levers of an automobile.
+
+He pulled the one nearest him and the sliding doors parted softly.
+Owen and Balthazar, with their new escort, stepped through.  For a
+moment, Wallace waited.  Then he drew back the other lever, and the
+departing guests found as they reached the end of the secret passage,
+that their path opened, almost magically before them, in the hushed
+unfolding of the second door.
+
+"Goodbye, Cyrus," said, Harry as Pauline strolling down the garden with
+him, tossed to her new pet a dainty from the box of bon-bons she
+carried.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.
+
+"That the oysters on the half shell would be better for his health."
+
+"I didn't give him oysters on the half shell."
+
+"No; but you gave him everything else in the house.  He is stuffed like
+the fatted calf -- or like the prodigal son -- I don't care which --"
+
+"If he likes candy he shall have candy," declared Pauline, sitting down
+on an arbor bench and extending another sugar-plum to the dog.
+
+The gratitude of Cyrus was expressed in a leap  to the side of his
+mistress.  As Harry sat down, he discovered that Cyrus had occupied the
+favored place beside Pauline.  Next instant there was a yowl of dismay
+and the adored gift of Lucille fell several feet away from the bench.
+
+"Harry!  I think that is dreadful!" exclaimed Pauline, springing to her
+feet.
+
+"I do, too," he answered.  "That was why I threw it off the bench."
+
+"To treat a poor innocent dumb creature like that!"
+
+"Polly!  You don't mean it, do you?  You think I hurt him?"
+
+"You've-hurt-his-feelings."
+
+"That doesn't matter, but if I've hurt yours -- it does.  I apologize."
+
+"You are always joking.  You don't understand how sweet and dear
+animals are.  You will probably treat me the same way after we are
+married."
+
+She ran to the spot where the wary Cyrus was munching the last piece of
+candy.  But he accepted her caresses without enthusiasm, keeping a
+careful eye on Harry.
+
+She called to the dog and walked briskly toward the house.
+
+But Cyrus did not follow.  The box of candy was still on the garden
+bench, and Cyrus was not immune to temptation.
+
+Owen followed on his motorcycle the runabout in which Balthazar and the
+two chosen members of Rupert Wallace's band made their swift journey
+toward Castle Marvin.
+
+A quarter of a mile from the grounds Owen drew alongside.
+
+"This would be a good place to stop.  The car can be hidden in the
+lane."
+
+"Yes; master," said Balthazar.
+
+He wheeled the machine upon a narrow roadway into the cover of the
+woods, and, with his companions, got out.  Owen rode on ahead and was
+waiting for them as they neared the little foot path gate to the Marvin
+grounds.
+
+"Look through the hedge there," he directed.
+
+Balthazar crawled on his hands and knees to the box wall that
+surrounded the grounds.  He thrust his shoulders through the bush and
+gazed for a moment at the dog devouring Pauline's bon-bons on the
+bench.
+
+"I should say it would be well to act now -- instantly, master," he
+cried, returning.
+
+"Go on.  I will be at the house, and will try to hold them back if
+there is any noise."
+
+As Owen began to wheel his cycle up the drive to Castle Marvin,
+Balthazar and his two aides wriggled through the hedge-row, crossed a
+strip of sward and reached the bench.  Balthazar caught the dog's head
+in his powerful hands.  There was not a sound.  The animal's muzzle was
+shut fast and in a minute it had been tied, leg and body.  They ran to
+the gate, to the runabout, and were away.
+
+"Why Harry, I can't find him anywhere.  What could have happened to
+him?" cried Pauline, rushing into the library.
+
+"Owen lost?  Thank Heaven!" he exclaimed fervently.
+
+"No; Cyrus.  Harry it's your fault.  He was angry because you pushed
+him off the bench and he ran away."
+
+"Polly," he said, wheeling in his chair, "I am not worried.  I decline
+to be worried.  And I am going away from here."
+
+"Not before you help me find Cyrus."
+
+"Yes -- long before."
+
+She turned and whisked crossly out of the room.
+
+Harry picked up his hat and coat, and in a few minutes was being driven
+away by Farrell on an urgent call to town.
+
+Pauline stood on the veranda and watched his departure with silent
+wrath.
+
+"I wonder if he is really cruel -- or  -- if he is just a man and
+doesn't know any better," she pondered audibly.
+
+Then, as she saw Owen approaching from the side path, "Oh, Owen, won't
+you help me?  I've lost Cyrus!"
+
+"Cyrus?  Am I sure whom you mean?  Ah, yes; the new member of our
+family circle."
+
+"Yes; he's gone."
+
+"The only thing to do, I should say, is to advertise.  I will call up
+the newspapers immediately, Miss Pauline."
+
+"You are dear!  I must have him back.  Think what Lucille would say if
+I lost him on the first day!"
+
+"I'll offer a generous reward and he'll soon be back."
+
+"Thank you, Owen."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+CYRUS MAKES A REPUTATION
+
+The proceedings behind the hidden doors in the cellar of the ruined
+house between Bathwater and Castle Marvin were not interrupted by so
+small a matter as the kidnapping of an heiress -- a kidnapping that had
+progressed no further as yet than the capture of a dog.
+
+As Owen stepped into the den the next forenoon he saw the bull terrier
+tied to the wall.
+
+"I see we have the main ingredient of the repast in hand."
+
+"The main ingredient and the most dangerous," said Wallace.  "He has
+done nothing but howl and. bark.  May we kill him?"
+
+"Not yet," answered Owen.  "It is possible that she might demand sight
+of him before entering the house, or some nonsense of that sort.  I
+would let him howl a little longer."
+
+"Very well," laughed Wallace.  "What orders have you for us today,
+sir?"
+
+The other counterfeiters kept steadily on at their work over the
+melting pots, the molds and stamping machines.  The old woman was
+stacking half-dollar pieces at the table.
+
+"Why do you have the woman here?" demanded Owen suddenly.
+
+"To prevent starvation," answered Wallace.  "Carrie is not only our
+purchasing agent, but our excellent cook."
+
+The hag looked up for a moment with a cackle of appreciation; then bent
+again to her work.
+
+"Can she write?" asked Owen.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, she can help us.  Here is an advertisement which appears
+in the morning papers."
+
+He presented a newspaper clipping to Wallace, which read:
+
+LOST -- A fine white bull terrier.  Finder will receive liberal reward
+if dog is returned to Pauline Marvin.  Castle Marvin, N. Y.
+
+"What do you want Carrie to do?"
+
+"Answer the advertisement.  Just call her over here."
+
+The hag laid down the coins and moved laboriously to the, table.
+Wallace produced from a drawer a pen, paper and ink, and told the woman
+to take his chair.  Owen dictated:
+
+"Miss Pauline Marvin:
+
+A dog came to my house yesterday which I think is the one you advertise
+for.  I am an old, crippled woman and it's hard for me to get out.
+Can't you come and see if it is your dog?
+
+Mary Sheila, 233 Myrtle Avenue."
+
+The old woman wrote slowly in a shaking hand, and Owen waited patiently
+while she addressed an envelope.  Then he placed the letter in the
+envelope, sealed it, and took his leave.
+
+"And no sign of Cyrus?" inquired Harry cheerily as he entered the
+library, where Pauline sat disconsolate.
+
+She did not even answer and she was still gazing dejectedly out of the
+window when Bemis brought in the mail.  Two of the letters she laid
+aside, unread; the third, she opened: "A dog came to my house yesterday
+--"  Her face lighted with hope and happiness; she read no further.
+
+"Oh, isn't Owen -- splendid," she breathed.  "He knew just what to
+do."  And with the letter in her hand she ran out to the veranda.
+
+"Harry! Harry!" she called across the garden.  There was no answer.
+
+"Run up to Mr. Marvin's room and see if he is there, Margaret.  Bemis,
+go out and see if he is at the garage."
+
+"No, Miss Marvin," said Bemis.  "He has gone into Westbury."
+
+Pauline stood silent for a moment.
+
+"Well, then I must go myself," she said with quick decision.
+
+She sped upstairs and within a few minutes was, out at the garage in
+her motoring dress.  A mechanic was working over her racing car in
+front of the garage, the racing car that was just recovering from
+recent calamity in the international race.
+
+"Is it all fixed, Employ?  Can I drive it today?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"Why - yes, ma'am -- you could," said the mechanic.  "But I haven't got
+it polished up yet."
+
+"That doesn't matter in the least.  I want to use it to day -- now."
+
+She sprang lightly to the seat of the lithe racer and in a moment was
+away down the drive.
+
+NO. 233 Myrtle avenue was an address a little difficult to find.
+Myrtle avenue was well outside the new town and Pauline had made
+several inquiries before an elderly man, whom she found in the
+telegraph office, volunteered directions.
+
+She thanked him, and drove back for two miles before she found the turn
+he had indicated.
+
+The appearance of the place was unprepossessing enough to dampen even
+the ambitious courage of Pauline.  But the sight of woman on the porch
+training a vine over the front door, allayed her fears.
+
+"You are Mrs. Sheila -- you sent me a message that you had found my
+dog?" she asked, approaching.
+
+For a moment the confusion that the woman had meant to simulate was
+sincere.  She had expected to see no such vision as that of Pauline on
+the blackened steps of the coiners' den.
+
+"A dog?" she quavered vaguely.  Then, "Oh, yes, my -- dear little lady
+-- the pretty white dog.  He came to us yesterday.  My son he brought
+me the newspaper, and -"
+
+"Oh, you are just a dear," cried Pauline.  "May I see him now?  I am so
+fond of him!"
+
+"Yes, my little lady.  Will you come in?"
+
+Pauline followed her into the basement.  She stepped back with a tremor
+of suspicion as the woman rapped three times upon the folding doors,
+and they opened silently on their oiled rails.  But she was inside the
+narrow passage, and the light that gleamed through the second pair of
+doors allayed her anxiety.  With a bow and the wave of a directing
+hand, the old woman waited for Pauline to enter.
+
+In a breath she was seized from both sides.  Strong cruel hands held
+her, while Wallace smothered her cries with a tight-drawn bandage.
+
+She had hardly had time to see the little terrier tugging at his chain
+in the corner of the room, but his wild barking was all she knew of
+possible assistance in the plight in which she found herself.
+
+They laid her on the floor.  She heard a voice that seemed strangely
+familiar giving abrupt orders.  Pauline sought in vain to place the
+memory of the voice of Balthazar, the Gypsy.
+
+Suddenly she heard cries.  The barking of the dog had stopped and there
+was the thud of heavy foot steps on the stone floor of the cellar.
+
+"Catch him!  Shoot if you have to," came the command in the
+mysteriously familiar voice.  She felt that  her captors were no longer
+near.  There was a beat of rushing foot-steps on the floor.
+
+It was several minutes before she heard voices again.
+
+"The cur hasn't been there long enough to know her.  It won't make any
+difference," said Wallace, coming through the open doors.  "But I'm
+sorry it got away."
+
+"Where is Miss Pauline?" asked Harry, as he entered the house on his
+return from Westbury.
+
+"She has found her dog, sir," answered Margaret, smiling.  "She went to
+get him -- with the racing car."
+
+His brow darkened.  "The advertisement was answered, you mean,
+Margaret?"
+
+"I think so, sir."
+
+An hour later he walked into the garden and sat down on the rustic
+bench where he and Pauline had quarreled.  He had just taken up his
+newspaper when he was startled by the spring of a small warm body
+fairly into his face.  Lowering the torn paper, he saw Pauline's dog
+cavorting around the bench in circles of excitement.
+
+The animal rushed towards him again, but did not leap this time.  It
+came very near and, with braced feet, began to bark wildly.
+
+Harry stood up.  The dog, with another volley of barks, started towards
+the gate.  Harry followed instinctively.  The terrier dashed ahead of
+him, reached the, gate, returned, renewed the appealing barks, and
+again led the way.
+
+In another minute Harry was following the urgent little guide.  He was
+thoroughly stirred now.  As the dog returned to him the second time,
+with its appealing yelps, he quickened his speed.
+
+After traversing five miles of dust-laden road they reached a certain
+house on the thoroughfare, which still carried the dignity of  "Myrtle
+avenue."
+
+The dog rushed up the steps.  Harry, following closely, was surprised
+to find the door was ajar.  He entered and found himself in the cellar
+passageway.
+
+A sound outside made him grasp the broken rope on the collar of the
+dog.  It was an automobile wheezing to a stop and it was followed by
+the sound of voices.  The outer door opened.  Harry drew the dog aside
+into the darkness and held its muzzle tight.
+
+Four men entered.  One rapped on the wall and the panels opened
+softly.  The man went in.
+
+Harry's hand had fallen on a slim stick as he stooped in the darkness,
+and he slipped the stick into the aperture between the folding doors.
+He carried the dog to the outer door and thrust it through.  Then he
+came back.
+
+"Who is the woman?" asked a gruff voice.
+
+"She does not concern you.  Have you distributed all of the coins?"
+
+"All but $5,000.  She's a peach, ain't she?"
+
+The door crashed at their heels.  Harry was in the room.  He had
+gripped Wallace by the throat before the man could stir.  The others
+backed toward their hidden weapons.  Shots blazed in the room but the
+smoke was protection for Harry, swinging wildly at whomsoever he saw.
+
+"You're there, Polly?"
+
+"Yes," she gasped, tugging at her bonds in desperation.  She was almost
+free.
+
+Harry had Wallace at his feet and Wallace's gun was in his hand.  He
+blazed blindly through room.  A shriek told of one man gone.
+
+Pauline felt strong hands grasp her.  She was   whisked through the
+door; through the outer door and away, into the fresh air, and into the
+waiting automobile.  She felt Harry's hot breath on her fore head as
+they sped in flight.
+
+There was clamor behind them for a moment car was starting.  Then came
+only the thrash of footsteps through the grassy road as the coiners
+rushed to their own machine.
+
+One stern command reached the ears of Pauline and Harry as they sped
+on:
+
+"It's your lives or theirs.  Get them or kill yourselves."
+
+"It's no use, Polly.  Come," cried Harry, after a time.
+
+His voice sounded grim, peremptory.  The machine with a sudden swerve
+had gone almost off the road with an exploded tire.  It was only
+Harry's powerful hand that had saved them from wreck.
+
+But as he helped Pauline out and led her on a run into the forest he
+heard the sound of the pursuing machine coming to a stop and the tumult
+of voices behind them.  He knew that one peril had only been supplanted
+by another.
+
+"Where -- Where are we going, Harry?"
+
+"The Gorman camp -- if we can make it; if we can reach the river."
+
+"There's the old quarry," she exclaimed as they came out on the crest
+of a blast-gnarled cliff overlooking a stream.  "I know their camp is
+near the quarry."
+
+"But on the other side of the river.  Don't talk; run," he pleaded,
+leading her down a footpath that traced a winding way over the face of
+the cliff into the quarry.
+
+In the shelter of the rocks there stood two small buildings about five
+hundred yards apart.  One was the old tool house of the deserted
+quarry.  The other was a hunter's hut, evidently newly built.
+
+A commanding cry came from the top of the cliff.
+
+"Halt or we fire!"
+
+They ran on.  A shot echoed and a bullet flattened itself against the
+stone base of the quarry not two yards from Pauline.
+
+"In here -- quick," said Harry, dragging her to the hunter's lodge and
+thrusting her through the open door.  There was another shot and the
+thud of another bullet as he slammed the door.
+
+It looks like a fight now, Polly," he said, as he' moved quickly around
+the hut.  "And thank Heaven -- here's something to fight with."
+
+From a rack in the wall he lifted down a Winchester rifle and a belt of
+cartridges.  "Get into the corner and lie down," he ordered.
+
+"No, give me the revolver," cried Pauline.
+
+She did not wait for his protest, but drew from hilt coat pocket the
+pistol he had wrested from Wallace.
+
+For an instant he looked at her with mingled admiration, love and
+fear.  He opened the little window of the hut, aimed and fired three
+shots at the group of six men who were running down the cliff path.
+
+"Into the tool house," ordered Balthazar, stopping only for a glance at
+one of his fellows who had fallen.  The five gained the workmen's hut
+and burst the door open.  Immediately from the air hole and the wide
+chinks in the sagging walls came a blaze of shots.
+
+A small white dog ran down the path into the quarry, but no one saw
+it.
+
+Balthazar was searching the tool-house.  "Ha!" he exclaimed suddenly.
+"That is what we want!"  He lifted from the floor a box of blasting
+powder.  But the next instant he dropped it and sprawled, cursing,
+beside the half-spilled contents.  Another man, shot through the body,
+had fallen over his leader.
+
+Balthazar quickly recovered himself.  He whisked about the hut and
+found a coil of fuse.  The shots were still dinning in his ears while
+he fashioned, with the powder and the box and the fuse, a bomb powerful
+enough to have shattered tons of imbedded stone.
+
+"Stop shooting," he commanded.  "Here's a better way!"
+
+As he suddenly threw open the door and dashed out, he nearly fell over
+the dog whining in terror.  But Balthazar kept on.  In a better
+business - -with a heart in him -- he would have been counted among the
+bravest of men.  Running a swaying, zigzag course, in the very face of
+the fire of Harry and Pauline, he reached the hunter's hut and dropped
+the bomb beside it.
+
+He did not try to return.  With the long fuse in his hand he moved into
+shelter behind the hut, struck a match, lighted the fuse, and fled
+toward the river.
+
+After him ran the small white dog.
+
+Balthazar turned and uttered a scream of rage.  He dashed at the
+animal, which dodged and passed him.  In its teeth it held the bomb he
+had just laid at the risk of his life.  The fuse was sputtering behind
+as the dog fled.
+
+Balthazar pursued desperately.  The path to the river led through a
+narrow defile of rock.  But the beast was not trapped at the water's
+edge as the Gypsy had expected.  It took to the water with a wide
+plunge.
+
+Balthazar turned away, cursing.  He rushed back to the huts.  The guns
+and pistols were silent.  He picked up from the side of the path a huge
+piece of wood.  As he neared his companions, he shouted:
+
+"come out!  Rush them, You cowards!  Follow me!"
+
+Harry fired his last two shots and two men fell.  Pauline had long ago
+emptied the revolver.
+
+Three men came on.  There was a crash as the log in Balthazar's mighty
+hands beat down the door and he staggered through.
+
+But Harry was upon him.  He hurled the Gypsy across the room.  He
+charged at the others and one went down.
+
+Through the door came four men.
+
+"It's Harry.  Help him!" cried Pauline.
+
+Balthazar charged straight at the newcomers but he did not attempt to
+fight.  He was out through the door and away to the river before they
+could intercept him.  Within a few moments his companions lay bound on
+the hut floor.
+
+"But how did you find out?  How did you know we needed you?" asked
+Pauline afterward of young Richard Gorman, whose camping party had been
+the rescuers.
+
+"That's the girl who told us," he said, pointing to a dejected little
+bull terrier that stood, quaking with excitement, a few feet away.
+
+"Cyrus!" cried Pauline, running and clutching the little terrier in her
+arms.
+
+"Yes, he brought us the dead bomb and we knew something was up."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE GUEST OF HONOR
+
+"Well, prove it," said Harry.  "Show me that you mean it!"
+
+"Why, Harry, what a woman says she, always means."
+
+"Always means not to do."
+
+"But, Harry, really I'm going to be good this time," pleaded Pauline.
+
+They were emerging from the gate of the Marvin mansion to the avenue,
+and as Harry turned to Pauline with a skeptical reply on his lips, the
+approach of a young man of military bearing stopped him.
+
+"By Jove, isn't that -- who the deuce is it?  Why, Benny Summers!"
+
+The young man was hurrying by without recognition, when Harry called
+sharply:  "Hello, Ben!"
+
+"Harry -- Harry Marvin!  By the coin of Croesus, is it really you?"
+
+"No," said Harry, grasping his hand, "not the 'you' you used to know.
+I've been driven into premature old age by caring for a militant
+sister.  Polly, this is Ensign Summers of the navy.  Please promise me
+that you won't get him into danger, because he used to be a friend of
+mine.  He has never done anything more dangerous than run a submarine
+and shoot torpedoes out of it in a field of mines."
+
+"A submarine?  Torpedoes?" cried Pauline.  "Isn't that beautiful."
+
+"But, Benny, how are you?  What have you been doing?  I haven't seen
+you in a thousand years."
+
+"I'm still at it.  And I've got it, Harry.  I give you my word, I
+have."
+
+"Got what?"
+
+"The torpedo -- I mean THE torpedo, in capital letters and italics with
+a line under the word.  I've invented one that would blow -- well --
+I've got it."
+
+"Congratulations, felicitations, laudatory, remarks, and enthusiasm,"
+cried Harry.  "Without having slightest idea what a torpedo is, I
+rejoice with you.  Come on back to the house, and tell us about it"
+
+"I'm sorry, I can't, Harry, now.  I'm engaged for a conference with the
+Naval Board, and I'm late already.  But will you and Miss Marvin come
+to luncheon with me tomorrow?
+
+"Why not you with us, we saw you first?"
+
+Summers laughed.  "Well, for this reason, I want you to meet Mlle. de
+Longeon, who will preside at this particular luncheon, and who is -"
+
+The flush that came suddenly to the cheeks of the young officer brought
+involuntary laughter from Harry and Pauline.
+
+"I take that as an acceptance -- the Kerrimore, East Fifty-sixth
+street," he called, sharing in their laughter as he fled.
+
+But at the gate of the Marvin house he came upon Raymond Owen.  There
+was a hasty clasp of hands and "You're to come, too," cried Summers,
+continuing his flight.
+
+"Where am I to come?" asked Owen, as he approached Harry and Pauline.
+
+"To luncheon with Ensign Summers tomorrow.  Isn't he dear?  I love men
+who blush.  They seem so innocent."
+
+"The Fates defend us!" implored Harry.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Ensign Summers had gained a position beyond his rank in the navy.  A
+natural bent toward science and a patriotic bent toward the use of
+science as a means of national defense had inspired him to experiments
+which had resulted in success amazing even to himself.  He had been
+allowed -- during the year preceding the meeting with Harry and Pauline
+-- a leave of absence.  In that time he had visited Italy, France,
+England and Germany, and had studied under naval experts.  He had come
+back home with his own little idea undiminished in its importance to
+his own mind, and he had proceeded with youthful enthusiasm and
+effrontery to prove its importance to the highest of his commanders.
+
+The tests now about to be made -- tests of a new torpedo gun and new
+torpedo -- had been ordered by the mightiest in the land.  Triumphant
+in his discovery and wealthy in his own right, Summers was the happiest
+of men.  It was in Paris that he had met Mlle. del Longeon.
+Exquisitely beautiful, of the alluring and languorous type, quick of
+wit, tactful, and with great charm of manner, she had completely
+fascinated the young officer.  He had vowed his adoration of her almost
+before he knew her.  His avowals had been repulsed with just that
+margin of insincerity that would double his ardor.
+
+It had required many letters to induce Mlle. de Longeon to leave her
+beloved Paris and visit friends in America.  Summers knew she was not a
+Frenchwoman, but he was totally in the dark as to what was her
+nationality.  Summers didn't care.  He was madly mad in love with her,
+and there was no other thing to consider.
+
+It was for this reason that Mlle. de Longeon was the guest of honor at
+the little luncheon in his rooms, to which he had invited Harry and
+Pauline.  The affair was quite informal.  There were a number of navy
+men present, a few young married people.  The atmosphere of the
+gathering was "sublimely innocuous," as Mlle. de Longeon remarked to
+Summers in the hall after the guests had departed.
+
+But Mlle. de Longeon had met one guest who did not impress her as
+innocuous -- or sublime -- Raymond Owen.  Pauline had presented the
+secretary on his arrival, and Owen had immediately devoted himself to
+her.  Not long after luncheon was served the voice of Mlle. de Longeon
+rose suddenly above the general talk.
+
+"But, Mr. Summers, you have not told us yet of your new invention.
+When shall the plans be ready?  When shall you rise to the realization
+of your true success?"
+
+Summers beamed his happiness in the face of the brazen compliment, like
+the good and silly boy he was.
+
+"I'm supposed to keep this secret," he answered, "but I can trust every
+one here, I know.  The plans are going to be sent out day after
+tomorrow."
+
+"You mean you will have them completed -- all those intricate plans?"
+queried Mlle. de Longeon in a tone of breathless admiration.
+
+"I'll work all tonight and most of tomorrow; but, of course, it's only
+a case of putting into words ideas that have already been put into
+solid metal.  My gun and torpedo are ready for work.  It isn't so very
+difficult, and it's -- well, it's a lot of fun."
+
+"And great honor," paid the woman he loved.
+
+For a moment their eyes met, but only for a moment.  The next, Catin,
+the valet, who was taking charge of the luncheon, under pretense of
+anticipating a waiter moved quickly to fill her wine glass.  Even the
+subtle eye of Owen was not sharp enough to see Mlle. de Longeon pass
+him a crushed slip of paper, and she had been too long trained to
+concealment of even the simplest emotions to betray uneasiness now.
+
+Nevertheless, there was the possibility of surprising Mlle. de Longeon,
+and that possibility was realized as she glanced at Raymond Owen.  His
+set, tense face reflected for the moment all his hatred of Harry and
+Pauline, who were talking blithely with Ensign Summers, another naval
+officer and two of the wives of the civilian visitors.  She turned to
+him with a suddenness that would have seemed abrupt in the manner of
+one less beautiful.
+
+"Mr. Owen, do come to see me," she said.  "I am sure -- at least I
+think I am sure -- that we have many matters of mutual interest."
+
+In her softly modulated tones, the invitation had no significance
+beyond the literal meaning of the words.
+
+"It will be an honor," he answered.
+
+"Tomorrow evening, then?"
+
+"Delighted.  And, later, the Naval Ball?"
+
+"No, I'm afraid the Ensign will not permit any one else to take me to
+the ball; but we shall meet there, afterward."
+
+In a New York street, among the lower there was at that time a foreign
+agency that was not a consulate, but was visited by diplomats of the
+highest rank in a certain nation, the name of which, or the mystery of
+whose suspicions, need not be touched upon.
+
+There was no regular staff at the agency.  The rooms were maintained
+under the name of a certain foreign gentleman -- or, rather, under the
+name that he chose to assume.  There were two servants, but they saw
+little of the master of the house.  He was seldom at home, but when he
+was, he had many visitors.
+
+An hour after the luncheon in the rooms of Ensign Summers, the master
+of the mysterious dwelling was at home.  And he had four guests.  It
+would have, greatly surprised Ensign Summers had he known that one of
+the diplomat's guests was his own man servant, Catin.
+
+"It is the worst duty I have ever had to perform,"  the diplomat said
+solemnly.  "It means, almost certainly, your death.  But it is death
+for your country.  It is the command of your country.  The submarine
+must be destroyed and the plans - - we shall get the plans through
+another agent."
+
+"I am not afraid to die," said Catin.
+
+"Then here is the model of a submarine -- not of the one you will
+enter, of course, but it will give you an idea.  I have marked the
+place where you will secrete the explosive until the proper moment.  I
+have also indicated the position for you to take in order to have some
+faint chance of reaching the surface and being saved."
+
+One of the other men stepped forward and handed Catin a small square
+box.  "This is the explosive.  You know how to handle it."
+
+With a military salute, Catin turned and left the place.  Within half
+an hour he was carefully brushing Ensign Summers' clothes, as Summers
+came in.
+
+"Would it be too much to ask, sir, inquired the perfect valet, "that I
+might accompany you in the submarine?  I am afraid you will be very
+uncomfortable without me."
+
+Summers laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"It's impossible, Catin.  This boat is a government secret in itself,
+and my new torpedo makes it a double secret.  No one but a picked crew
+will be allowed on it, except --"
+
+"'Except, sir?"
+
+"Well, I admit I could command it.  But it would be very unwise, Catin,
+and, I assure you, I shall get along all right."
+
+Mlle. de Longeon's apartment was characteristic of the lady herself.
+The artist would have found it a little too luxurious for good taste --
+a little over-toned in the richness of draperies, the heavy scent of
+flowers, the subtleties of half-screened divans -- there was something
+more than feminine -- something feline.  To Raymond Owen, however, it
+was ideal.  The dimmed ruby lights, the suggestive shadows of the
+tapestries, were in tune with the surreptitious mind of the secretary.
+But there remained for him a picture that he admired more -- Mlle. de
+Longeon coming through the portieres with a cry of pleasure.
+
+"I am so glad you came -- and so sorry I must send you away quickly,"
+exclaimed Mlle. de Longeon.  "The little ensign has telephoned that he
+is coming early to take me for a drive before the ball."
+
+"I can come again -- if I may have the honor," said Owen, rising
+quickly.
+
+"Oh, there is time for a word," she said, smiling.
+
+"There was something you wished to say to me, was there not?  Something
+you did not care to say at the luncheon yesterday?"
+
+"Yes.  Why do you hate Miss Marvin?"
+
+Owen was silent for a moment.  "Why do you hate the little ensign, as
+you call another?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that we can be of service to one another, in all likelihood,
+and that, therefore, we should be frank friends.  You wish to have
+Pauline Marvin out of the way, do you not? "
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+"People engaged in similar business find out many things.  Now I --"
+
+"Wish to be rid of Ensign Summers."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"You are an international agent?"
+
+"Yes.  And I offer you my aid and the aid of the powerful men I control
+in return for your aid to me and them.  Is it a bargain?"
+
+They were seated on one of the curtained divans, a low-turned light
+above them.  She leaned forward.  Her long, delicate hand touched his.
+A splendid jewel at her throat heightened the magic of her beauty.
+
+"Because it is my business to hate him -- and make love to him at the
+same time.  Come, Mr. Owen, let us be frank."
+
+For the first time in his life Owen felt himself mastered by the sheer
+fascination of a woman.  "What am I to do?" he said breathlessly.
+
+"I will tell you tonight at the ball.  Now you must run away."
+
+He arose instantly, but as she stood beside him, be turned, caught her
+in his arms and kissed her passionately.
+
+She protested with a little cry and a struggle not too violent to
+damage her coiffure.  He drew back from her.  There was something of
+astonishment in his eyes -- astonishment at himself.
+
+"You are the only woman in the world who ever made me do that," he
+gasped.
+
+"Go, go," she pleaded.
+
+"But you are angry?  You break our agreement?"
+
+"No, but I am overcome.  I shall meet you tonight."
+
+He caught her hand to his lips, and hurried from the house.
+
+It was more than an hour after he observed her arrival at the Naval
+Ball before Owen had the privilege of a greeting from Mlle. de Longeon,
+and then it was only a smile as she passed him on the arm of a
+distinguished looking foreign diplomat.
+
+Owen saw that she spoke a quiet word to her escort, who turned and
+looked at Owen.  She beamed brightly at Owen, who smiled back at her,
+and moved slowly toward the door of the conservatory into which she and
+the diplomat had disappeared.  He was surprised, a moment later, to see
+Pauline rush by him, with a little laugh.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" Owen called.
+
+"Nothing you can help.  Stay right where you are," she cried.
+
+Owen laughed his understanding and moved over to where Harry and
+Lucille were talking with Ensign Summers.
+
+Meanwhile, Pauline, in the darkest recess of the conservatory was
+pinning together a broken garter.  As she started back to the ballroom
+she was surprised to hear voices near her.
+
+There was something about their foreign accent that roused the
+ever-venturous, ever-curious interest of Pauline.  She crept along a
+row of palms and peered through an aperture.  Mlle. de Longeon and the
+diplomat were talking together as they paced the aisle of palms on the
+other side.  Pauline crept nearer.
+
+Presently the voice of the diplomat became distinguishable.
+
+"It is all arranged.  The thing is to be done in Submarine B-2
+tomorrow.  All you have now to do is --"
+
+Pauline could not catch the final words.
+
+The two moved back to the ballroom.  She followed close behind, a
+little suspicious, but with the thrill of a new plan gripping her.
+
+She saw Ensign Summers step forward early to greet Mile. de Longeon.
+Another dance was beginning.
+
+"This one is Mr. Owen's," said Mile. de Longeon, as she moved away on
+the arm of the secretary.
+
+"Have you anything to tell me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.  Induce her to make Summers take her down in his submarine
+tomorrow, and she will never trouble you again."
+
+As the dance ended, Pauline and Harry, Summers and Lucille, joined
+them.
+
+"Mr. Summers, I have a great request to make," declared Pauline.
+
+"I grant it before you breathe a word," he answered.
+
+"I want you to take me along on your submarine trip tomorrow."
+
+"Polly, have you gone crazy all over again?" cried Harry.
+
+"I don't believe it would be --" began Summers.
+
+"It must be," she commanded.
+
+"Well, I promised too soon, but I'll keep my word."
+
+Owen and Mile. de Longeon had stepped aside.
+
+"What does it mean?" gasped the secretary.  "She is doing the very
+thing we want her to do."
+
+"Sometimes Fate aids the worthy," said Mile. de Longeon softly.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SUBMARINE B-2
+
+At the dock of the navy yard a submarine lay ready for departure.
+
+There was nothing about its appearance to indicate that its mission was
+of more than ordinary importance.  But it was an unusual thing to see a
+woman aboard, and the curiosity of the crew was matched by that of the
+young officers who had come down to see Summers off on his voyage of
+many chances.
+
+The officers got little reward for their considerate interest.  Ensign
+Summers was engaged.  He was explaining to Pauline, as they stood on
+the deck of the war-craft, the entire history of submarines from the
+time of Caesar, or Washington, or somebody to the present day, and
+Pauline was listening with that childlike simplicity which women use
+for the purpose of making men look foolish.
+
+"By Jove!  I thought he was tied,  heart and hope, to the lovely
+foreigner," exclaimed one of the shoreward observers.
+
+"So he is," said another.  "But Mlle. de Longeon isn't interested in
+his daily toil.  Do you know who the young lady up there is?"
+
+"No.  She must have got a dispensation from the secretary himself to go
+on this trip."
+
+"So she did -- easy as snapping your thumb.  She's Miss Pauline Marvin,
+daughter of the richest man that has died in twenty years."
+
+The boat gong sounded the signal of departure.
+
+Summers, with a hasty apology, left Pauline and stepped forward.  The
+engines began to rumble.  The deadly and delicate craft -- masterpiece
+of modern naval achievement -- drew slowly from the pier.
+
+There was a shout.
+
+Summers, delivering rapid orders on deck, turned with an expression of
+annoyance to see his faithful man servant, Catin, out of breath and
+excited, rushing toward the boat.
+
+Summers ordered the vessel stopped.  It had moved not more than
+stepping distance from the pier and in a moment Catin was beside his
+master on the deck.
+
+"She told me it must --" he paused, gasping for breath.
+
+"Who told you what?" demanded Summers.
+
+"Mlle. de Longeon.  I am sure it is a message of importance.  She told
+me I must give it to you before you risked your life on the voyage."
+
+"Mlle. de Longeon!" He caught the letter from Catin's hand.
+
+"My Hero -- I cannot keep the secret any longer, cannot wait to tell
+you that it is you I love.  Estelle de Longeon."
+
+Summers walked slowly, dizzily up the deck was in an ecstasy.  He was
+oblivious to all the world - even to Pauline, who stood questioning an
+officer at the rail.  The fact that his servant, Catin, slipped
+silently down the hatchway to the main compartment, and thence on to
+the pump room at the vessel's bottom, would hardly have interested him
+--- even if he had known it.
+
+"Shall we put off, sir?"
+
+The second officer saluted.
+
+The Ensign came to himself instantly.  "Yes, of course.  I put back
+only for an important message," he said.  "My man got off, did he?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"All right. Go ahead."
+
+Catin, with that rare fortune which sometimes favors the wicked, had
+chosen precisely the right moment for his ruse.  The crew of the
+submarine were all on deck save those in the engine room, and his quick
+passage to the vitals of the vessel was unseen.
+
+Once in the pump room, he hastily drew from under his coat the bomb
+placed in his hands at the conference of diplomats, wound its
+clock-work spring and laid it beside the pumps.
+
+There was a strange look on the man's face as he did this -- a look at
+once proud and pitiful.  Catin had not sense of treachery or shame.
+The deed in itself did not lack the dignity of courage, for, with the
+others, he was planned his own death.  And while the others were to die
+suddenly, ignorant of their peril, Catin was to die in deliberate
+knowledge of it.
+
+On deck Pauline was eagerly questioning an under officer about the
+torpedoes, when Summers came up.
+
+"You'll have to come down and see for yourself," he said, overhearing
+her.
+
+"First I'll show you the pump room -- the most important part of us,"
+he was saying as Catin, in the boat's bottom, first caught the sound of
+nearing voices.
+
+Catin leaped up the steps from the pump room.  He was in the nick of
+time.  A large locker in the main compartment gave him refuge just as
+Pauline and Summers reached the room.
+
+"The pumps are our life-savers," said Summers, as he directed Pauline
+down the second ladder.  "If they go wrong when we're under water we
+can't come up."
+
+"And what do you do then?" asked Pauline innocently.
+
+"Oh, just-stay down."
+
+Catin waited breathless in his hiding place until they returned.  "By
+heaven, they didn't find it!" he breathed eagerly.
+
+Pauline and Ensign Summers stood at the rail watching the foamy rush of
+a fast motor boat, when a hail sounded across the water.
+
+A man was standing up in the motor boat and calling through a
+megaphone.
+
+Summers raised his glasses.  "Do you know who that is?" he asked
+laughingly.
+
+"Of course not.  What does he want?"
+
+"It's Harry, and I suspect he wants to take you away from us."
+
+Pauline uttered an exclamation of annoyance.
+
+"Isn't he silly!" she cried, "One would think I was, a baby, the way he
+watches me."
+
+Soon the voice of Harry could be plainly distinguished.
+
+"Clear your ship; I am going to sink you," he called.
+
+"Cargo too precious this trip; don't do it," answered Summers.
+
+"Let me take the megaphone," demanded Pauline.
+
+"What do you mean by following us?" she cried.
+
+"I don't trust that sardine can, and I want a regular boat on hand when
+you are wrecked."
+
+"I am very angry with you. It looks as if -"
+
+Her words were drowned in Summers' laughter.
+
+"Never mind.  I know a way we can escape from him," he said.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, sink the boat."
+
+"That will be splendid."
+
+He stepped aside and gave a terse order.  Delightedly, Pauline watched
+the brief, machine-like movements of the crew trimming the deck.
+Summers escorted her back to the conning tower.  They descended.
+Within a few moments the wonderful craft was buried under the waves.
+
+"There he is -- looking for us," laughed Summers, as he made room for
+Pauline at the periscope.
+
+Amazed, fascinated, she gazed from what seemed the bottom of the sea
+out upon the rolling surface of the waves.  Harry's motorboat was near
+and he was standing in the bow, scanning the water with binoculars.
+
+"And he can't see us?" asked Pauline.
+
+"Oh, yes, he'll pick up out periscope after a while.   Shall we fire
+the torpedo at him?"
+
+"Yes, please," said Pauline.
+
+Summers' laugh was cut short.  As if someone had taken his jest in
+earnest and really fired a projectile, the crash of an explosion came
+from the bottom of the boat.
+
+"Stay here --" ordered Summers with a set face as he joined the rush of
+seamen into the pump room.
+
+But Pauline followed.
+
+An officer, with blanched face but steady voice, came up to Summers.
+
+"What was it, Grimes?"
+
+"It seems to have been a bomb, sir.  There was no powder down there."
+
+The face of the Ensign darkened with suspicion and alarm.
+
+"A bomb?  So they were going after us -- the enemy!  We'd better get
+right up and back to port, Grimes."
+
+"I have to report, sir -- the pumps are disabled."
+
+Summers turned with a look of pity toward Pauline, who stood at his
+elbow.
+
+"And we can't get up again?" she questioned.
+
+"There is one chance, but --"  He stopped openly and listened.  "Open
+that locker," he commanded.
+
+A seaman pulled back the door of the locker and disclosed the cringing
+form and defiant face of Catin.
+
+"Catin!  You!"
+
+The man stepped forward with a smile of triumph.
+
+"You set off the bomb?  You wanted to kill me?"
+
+"I did my duty.  I obeyed my orders as you obey your orders.  I had no
+enmity for you.  I am, in fact, sorry that you were fool enough not to
+see that I was a little more than a valet."
+
+"You are a spy, Catin?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  And I have done my work, and I am willing to die with the
+rest of you."
+
+Pauline drew back, shuddering.  She touched Summers' arm.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Summers, I believe -"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"I believe I know of the plot.  I was in the conservatory at the naval
+ball.  A man and a woman --"
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"Mlle. de Longeon and her diplomatic friend -- you remember."
+
+"Yes -- well?"
+
+"They talked together in whispers.  The man said 'The thing will be
+done on Submarine B-2 tomorrow.'"
+
+A look of agony that the fear of death could not have caused came into
+the face of the young Ensign.
+
+"Mlle. de Longeon?  No!"
+
+"Yes!  Mlle. de Longeon," sneered Catin stepping nearer.  "Mlle. de
+Longeon is the principal proof of my statement that you are a fool.
+Mlle. de Longeon recommended me to you as a capable valet, did she
+not?  Mlle. de Longeon frequently was your guest.  Now Mlle. de Longeon
+has the plans of your submarine and your torpedo -- plans which I took
+the liberty of removing from the little cupboard over the desk in your
+workroom."
+
+Summers sprang forward but he recovered himself.
+
+"I should have told you," wailed Pauline.
+
+"How should you have known?" said Summers.  In a moment he had lost his
+life work and his love.  Suddenly he straightened himself.  The soldier
+in him mastered the man.
+
+"There is still a chance -- one little chance," he said.
+
+"To get out?" cried Pauline.
+
+"Yes -- through the torpedo tube."
+
+She shuddered.
+
+"I am going to make you do it," he said, "because it is the only
+chance.  The men will follow you.  Harry's boat will be near."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I do not matter any more.  Come."
+
+A gunner opened the great tube as Summers led Pauline into the torpedo
+room.  Obediently she entered the strange passageway of peril and of
+hope.
+
+"Goodbye," he said, "and good luck."
+
+"Goodbye," she answered.  "You are a brave man.  You are as brave --
+you are as fine -- as Harry."
+
+From the end of the torpedo tube a woman's form shot to the surface of
+the water.  Choking, dazed, but courageous, Pauline tried to turn on
+her back and gain breath.  But they were well out to seat and the waves
+were crushing.
+
+"What is that?" asked Harry, pointing and passing his glasses to the
+boatman.
+
+The man looked and without a word swung the craft about and put the
+engine at top speed.  And in a few moments Harry's strong arms drew her
+from the water.
+
+"My darling, what has happened? " he gasped.
+
+"Don't think of me -- think of them!" she begged, weakly.  "They were
+trapped -- down there.  There was a bomb -- a plot -- the machinery is
+ruined.  Harry, help them!"
+
+The boatman who overheard Pauline's first cry of appeal, now came
+forward respectfully.  "There's a revenue cutter -- the Iroquois --
+coming out," he said, significantly.
+
+Harry looked.  "Splendid!" he cried.  "Can we signal her?"
+
+"No, but we can catch her?"
+
+Shouts from a speeding motorboat brought the Government vessel to a
+stop.  Officers came to the rail and helped Harry and Pauline to the
+deck.
+
+"Ensign Summers and his crew are sunk in their submarine.  The pumps
+are gone.  There was a bomb explosion.  Can you get help?"
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"You can pick up their buoy with a glass -- there."
+
+The chief officer looked through his glass.  "Yes," he said.  "You'll
+come abroad, or keep your own boat?"
+
+"We've got another piece of work to do -- if we can leave our friends
+to your guarding," said Harry.
+
+"Well have the wrecking tugs and divers in twenty minutes."
+
+Harry and Pauline climbed back to the motorboat and sped up the bay.
+
+"What did you mean another piece of work?" asked Pauline as she clung
+to his arm.
+
+"My car is at the Navy Yard pier," was his only answer.
+
+She still clung to him in tremulous uncertainty as the motor sped them
+up through Broadway, into Fifth avenue, and on to the door of Mlle. de
+Longeon's hotel.
+
+She and the diplomatic grandee who had held the confidential conference
+with her in the conservatory at the naval ball were together in her
+suite.
+
+"And you have the plans actually in your possession?" he said.
+
+"Yes.  It has been a tedious process.  It was easy to make him fall in
+love, but he is so fearfully scrupulous about his work.  It took even
+his valet three months to locate the secret hiding place of the
+papers."
+
+"A little more caution mingled with his scruples and he would not now
+be dead at the bottom of the bay."
+
+"Oh, this is the day, is it?" asked Mlle. de Longeon, wearily.  "After
+all, it is rather cruel to Catin."
+
+"To die for his country?"
+
+"Nonsense!  He dies because he knows he would be killed in a crueler
+way if he refused to obey you."
+
+The diplomat smiled.  "Will you give me the plans?"
+
+"Yes -- why, Marie, what is it?"
+
+A maid had entered with cards.  "I am not at home today."
+
+Mlle. de Longeon moved to her writing desk, removed from it a packet of
+papers, and, with a little courtesy gave it into the eager hands of the
+diplomat.
+
+"It has been a splendid achievement, Mademoiselle," he said,
+enthusiastically.  "I shall see that -- what?  Who is this?" he
+exclaimed, as Harry and Pauline burst into the room.
+
+"Marie, Marie, I told you that I was at home to no one!" screamed Mlle.
+de Longeon.
+
+"How dare you intrude in these apartments?" demanded the diplomat.
+
+"I dare, because I want those papers," declared Harry.
+
+The packet was still in the diplomat's hands.  He tried to thrust it
+into his pocket, but Harry was upon him.  They clinched, broke from
+each other's grasp and struggled furiously.
+
+As the last resource the diplomat drew the packet from his breast and
+flung it across the room toward Mlle. de Longeon.  She pounced upon
+it.  But Pauline was beside her.  Stronger both in body and in spirit
+than the adventuress, she grasped her wrists, and in the luxurious,
+soft-curtained room there raged two battles.
+
+But the struggles did not last long.  Harry hurled his antagonist, an
+exhausted wreck, to the floor, and sprang to the side of Pauline.
+Throwing off Mlle. de Longeon's grasp, be picked up the packet from the
+floor, and with Pauline ran from the room.
+
+A revenue cutter was landing a group of faint and silent men, at the
+pier of the Navy Yard when an automobile flashed in.
+
+"Hurrah!  They did it!  You're safe!" cried Pauline, rushing past Harry
+to greet Ensign Summers.
+
+The officer took her extended hands gratefully, but there was no light
+in his eyes as he answered.
+
+"Safe -- and dishonored," he said.  "I am only glad for my men."
+
+"Why dishonored?" asked Harry.
+
+"Don't you understand?"
+
+"The man," said Pauline, curiously, "the man who placed the bomb?
+Where is he?"
+
+"Dead," said Summers.  "He broke the tube after you were released and
+then attacked me with a knife.  I had to kill him."
+
+"Good for you!" broke in Harry.  "But what's all the gloom talk for?
+This stuff about dishonor?  You've proved yourself a hero, man."
+
+"I have lost the most important documents of the Navy Department --
+through a silly entanglement with a woman."
+
+"No, you haven't.  We went and got them for you," said Harry,
+presenting the packet of plans.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A PAPER CHASE
+
+In Balthazar's band, which had failed so often do away with Pauline
+Marvin, there was, nevertheless, one man who had attracted the
+particular interest Raymond Owen -- Louis Wrentz.  Physically and
+mentally brutal, he had always been one to oppose Balthazar's delays.
+
+Six months before Owen would have shuddered at the thought of employing
+this ruffian.  Then his great aim was to be rid of Pauline by the most
+indirect and secret means.
+
+But Pauline's hair-breadth escape a few weeks before from Mlle de.
+Longeon's cleverly planned plot, the almost incredible rescue of the
+submarine and recovery of Ensign Summers' torpedo boat plans, as well
+as the fact that the year of adventure was rapidly drawing to a close
+and that Harry's growing hostility and the increasing danger of
+exposure at the hands of some one of his aides, made the secretary
+willing to take every chance, made it imperative that he should have a
+lieutenant who could be trusted to strike boldly.  Owen sent for
+Wrentz.
+
+The man appeared in the guise of a servant seeking employment, and was
+brought up to Owen's private sitting-room.
+
+"Wrentz, I want you to take charge of my work hereafter," said the
+secretary.
+
+"You mean the work of  --"
+
+Owen raised his hand in caution.  "The work of conducting a certain
+person to a far country."
+
+"But Balthazar?" questioned Wrentz.
+
+"I am through with Balthazar.  He's done nothing but procrastinate.
+All his plans have failed because it was to his profit that they should
+fail."
+
+"I'll do the work quickly.  What's your present plan?"
+
+"A very simple one, but one that must be very shrewdly handled.  It
+will mean that you and some of your friends will have to make a trip to
+Philadelphia.  Where shall I be able to call you within a day or two?"
+
+"At Stroob's lodging house, in Avenue B."
+
+"Very well.  Be prepared to act on short notice."
+
+"I'll stick close to the place, sir."
+
+"And, Wrentz, understand that you are also to act firmly.  No
+Balthazar, tactics.  I'm through being tricked."
+
+"I'm sure I never failed you, sir," said Wrentz, with an aggrieved
+air.
+
+Owen smiled.  "True, but temptation occasionally leads even the most
+honest of men astray," he said, sarcastically.
+
+While this last plot was being hatched Pauline and Harry were playing
+chess in the library.  As she checkmated him for the third time he
+arose in mock disgust.
+
+"They say chess is a perfect mental test.  I wonder who is the brains
+of this family now?" she taunted.
+
+"There's a difference between brains and hare-brains.  You know, I lost
+because I had that Chicago thing on my mind."
+
+"Oh, isn't that settled yet?"
+
+"No; I'm expecting to be called up any minute with a message that will
+send me out there."
+
+"Oh, Harry!  That's terrible!  When you go to Chicago you never get
+back for a whole week."
+
+"If you like me so much, why don't you marry me and go with me on all
+my trips?"
+
+"Conceited!" she began, but her face fell again as the telephone bell
+sounded.  Harry answered it, and after a few rapid questions turned to
+Pauline.
+
+"That's what it is," he said; "I go tomorrow.  I must see Owen," and
+rang the bell.
+
+"Owen," Pauline exclaimed upon his entrance, Harry must go to Chicago
+tomorrow.  Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"I am very sorry.  But I hope it will not be for long."
+
+"No," said Harry, curtly.  "Look over these papers."
+
+An hour later Owen drew from his typewriter this letter:
+
+"Miss Pauline Marvin,
+
+Carson & Brown,
+	Publishers, 9 Weston Place,
+	Philadelphia.
+
+New York.
+
+Dear Madam:
+
+After reading your marine story, published in the Cosmopolitan
+Magazine, we have decided you are just the person to write a new serial
+we have in mind.
+
+Would you be interested to call on us at your earliest opportunity?
+
+Yours very truly,
+	J. R. Carson."
+
+Owen sealed, addressed and, stamped the letter and enclosed it in a
+larger envelope, which he addressed to a friend in Philadelphia, with
+instructions to post the enclosure in that city.
+
+He did not trust the mailing of the double letter to a servant, but,
+putting on his motor togs, prepared to ride to Westbury
+
+"Well, he's got a reprieve; he's going to stay with us one more day,"
+Pauline cried, happily, as she met Owen in the hall.
+
+For the flash of an instant something twinged at the cold heart of the
+secretary.  The bright beauty of Pauline, her happiness, her love for
+her foster brother, struck home the first realization of something
+missing -- and never to be achieved -- in his grim existence.  Perhaps
+for the moment Raymond Owen had a dim understanding of the value of
+innocence.
+
+The next afternoon Pauline stood on the veranda bidding Harry goodbye.
+
+"I hate to go, Polly, but I must," he said.  "I hate to leave you with
+that- secretary."
+
+"Harry, please don't start again on that.  You know I don't agree with
+you, and -- and I don't want to quarrel with you when you're going
+away."
+
+"Very well," he said, embracing her, "but don't get into any of your
+scrapes while I am away.  Remember, it's a long way to Chicago."
+
+"And Tipperary," she laughed.  "Goodbye, darling boy, and run home the
+minute you can."
+
+"I will. Goodbye."
+
+Pauline had turned dejectedly back toward the house when the sound of
+steps on the walk drew her attention.  It was the postman.
+
+"I'll take them," she said, extending her hand.
+
+She ran over the envelopes swiftly until she came to one which bore the
+corner mark of a publishing concern in Philadelphia.  She had never
+heard of the firm of Carson & Brown, but, to her enthusiasm of young
+authorship, the very name "publisher" was magical.  She opened the
+letter hastily and read.
+
+For a moment she stood spellbound with happiness.  The realization of
+her dreams was at hand.  Publishers were calling for her work instead
+of sending it back when she sent it to them.
+
+With a glad cry, and waving the treasured letter, she rushed out into
+the garden to Owen.
+
+"It's happened!" she sang, gaily.  "I am discovered."
+
+"You are what, Miss Pauline?"
+
+"Don't you understand?  Can't you see?"
+
+"Not exactly, while you slant that letter above your head like a
+reprieve for a doomed man."
+
+"Well, read it."  She leaned breathlessly over his shoulder as he read
+the familiar lines.
+
+"Miss Pauline, it is splendid!" he exclaimed.  "I was always sure you
+would be successful with your writing."
+
+"Yes, you encouraged me to get new experiences, while Harry always
+opposed me," she said.  "But, oh, I wish Harry was here to see this."
+
+"Shall you go to Philadelphia?" inquired Owen
+
+"Indeed - shall and instantly."
+
+"Is it so urgent as that."
+
+"Of course.  They might change their minds any moment and get some one
+else to write the story.  Will you see what train I can take this
+evening, Owen, while I run and pack a few things?"
+
+"With pleasure -- but don't you think some one ought to accompany you?"
+
+"To Philadelphia?   Nonsense.  It's just like crossing the street.
+Please, Owen, don't you begin to worry about every little thing I do."
+
+"Very well," he laughed.  As soon as she was gone he selected a time
+table, and scanned the train list.  Then he took up the telephone and
+called a number.
+
+"Hello, Wrentz?"
+
+"This is Owen.  It worked.  Be at the Pennsylvania station with your
+men tonight.  And, Wrentz, if the plan I gave you fails, I leave it to
+you to invent a new one.  You understand?  What?  No.  I don't want any
+return this time."
+
+Before Owen had helped Pauline into her car and bidden her goodbye,
+Wrentz and his men were on watch in the railroad station.
+
+"Goodbye and good luck."
+
+Pauline was standing in the aisle, the porter stowing her baggage into
+her drawing room, when the men entered the car.  She noted them with
+curiosity.  There was nothing very sinister about them, but they seemed
+obviously out of place, but the next moment she had forgotten about
+them, and for the twentieth time, was reading her own story in the
+Cosmopolitan.  For now, in the light of the magic it had wrought, she
+was bent on studying every word -- to absorb the power of her own
+genius, so to speak -- in order that "her publishers" should not be
+disappointed in the forthcoming novel.
+
+When Pauline got off the train at Philadelphia she did not notice that
+one of the four men who had aroused her curiosity walked behind her as
+she left, or that he was joined by the three others in the taxicab
+which followed hers.
+
+When she left the cab at one of the fashionable hotels, Wrentz alone
+followed her.
+
+He was at Pauline's elbow when she registered.  As she followed the
+bell boy through the lobby, he stepped to the desk, and, noting the
+number of Pauline's room -- NO. 22 -- he signed his name under hers
+with a flourish.
+
+"By the way," he said easily to the clerk, "is that pet room of' mine
+vacant - the one I had last year?"
+
+The clerk smiled.  "I'll see," he said.  "I had forgotten it was your
+pet room.  I can't remember everybody."
+
+"Oh, I was just here for a few days," said Wrentz.
+
+"I remember you."
+
+"Yes, sir; 24 is yours," said the clerk.  "Front."
+
+Wrentz stood at the cigar counter to make a purchase.  He did not wish
+to follow Pauline so closely that she might know he had taken the room
+next to hers.
+
+In spite of her excitement, Pauline slept soundly that night.  The next
+morning she had breakfast in her own room and at ten o'clock was ready
+to go to "Carson & Brown's."  She was considerably provoked by the
+ignorance of the hotel clerk, who not only did not know the publishing
+house of Carson & Brown, but could not even direct her to Weston
+place.  He called the head porter and taxicab manager.  The latter had
+an idea.
+
+"I don't think it's Weston Place, but there's a Weston Street down in
+-- well, it's not a very good section of the city, Miss.  I wouldn't
+want to --"
+
+"Never mind.  In New York some of our best publishing houses are
+perfect barns.  You may call a taxicab."
+
+"Yes, Miss."
+
+"Publishing house in Weston Street-whew!  But she doesn't look crazy,"
+he instructed one of his chauffeurs.  "I don't know what the game is,
+but it's a good job."
+
+Pauline's spirits revived as the cab whisked her through the big
+business streets, newly a-bustle with their morning life.  She had a
+sense of pity for the workers hastening to their uninspiring toil.  How
+few of them had ever received even a letter from a publisher!  How few
+had known the thrill of successful authorship!
+
+A few moments after Pauline's departure Louis Wrentz and his companions
+set to work.
+
+Two of the men left the room and sauntered to opposite ends of the hall
+where they lingered on watch. Wrentz and the other man stepped out
+briskly and each with a  screwdriver in his hand began unfastening the
+number-plates over the doors of rooms 22 and 24.
+
+A low cough sounded down the corridor and they quickly desisted from
+their task and retired to their room while a maid passed by.
+
+In a moment they were out again.  Wrentz passed the number plate of 24
+to his assistant, who handed back the plate Of 22.  The numbers were
+refastened on the wrong doors.  The watchers were called back.
+
+"Now," said Wrentz, "it is only a matter of waiting."
+
+Pauline's cab passed out of the central city into the region of
+factories.
+
+"This looks like the section where the print shops are in New York,"
+she said confidently to herself.
+
+But the driver kept on into streets of dingy, ancient houses -- streets
+crowded with unkempt children and lined with push-carts.
+
+"Are you sure you got the right address of them publishers, Miss?" he
+asked after awhile.  "The next street is Weston and it don't look very
+promisin'."
+
+She drew the letter from her handbag and showed it to him.
+
+"Well, that's the queerest thing I know," he said, astonished by the
+letterhead.  "I've been drivin' cabs -- horse and taxi -- for twenty
+years, and I never heard of no such people or no such place."
+
+"Well, at least go around the corner and see.  Perhaps it is a new firm
+that isn't listed as yet," said Pauline.
+
+The driver swung the cab into a street even more bleak and bedraggled
+than the one they had just traversed.  He stopped and got out.  Pauline
+followed him.  A blear-eyed man, slouching on a stoop, looked up in
+faint curiosity as she addressed him.
+
+"There ain't no No. 9 Weston Street," he answered.
+
+"It usta be over there, but it's burnt down."
+
+Pauline's face fell.  "Well, this is certainly stupid," she exclaimed.
+"Of course it isn't Weston Street; it's Weston Place, as the letter
+says."
+
+"But my 'City Guide' ain't got no such place in it, miss," answered the
+chauffeur.
+
+"Well, I'll go back to, the hotel," she said dejectedly.
+
+She was on the verge of tears as she left the elevator and started for
+her room.  She had looked through all the directories and street guides
+and knew at last that she had been the victim of a cruel hoax.  All her
+joy and pride of yesterday had turned to humiliation and grief.  She
+wanted to be alone -- and have a good cry.
+
+She was puzzled for a moment as she drew her key from her handbag and
+glanced at the numbers on the doors.  She had been almost sure that No.
+22 was the left- hand door, but she had been in such excitement that
+she could not trust any of her impressions.  She started to place the
+key in the lock of the right-hand door.
+
+Like a flash it opened inward and two pairs of hands gripped her.  Her
+cry was stifled by a hand over her mouth.  She was dragged into the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE MUMMYS LAST WARNING
+
+Pauline had barely time to recognize in her new captors the four
+strange men who had attracted her attention on the train, before a
+bandage was drawn over her eyes, another over her mouth, and cruel,
+heavy hands began to bind her limbs.
+
+As she listened to the rough voices of the men, the mystery of the
+"Carson & Brown" letter was entirely cleared away.
+
+"That was easy," commented Wrentz.
+
+"Easier than the rest of the work will be," said one.
+
+"Shall we leave her on the floor," boss asked another.
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Then I'll put a pillow under her head."
+
+"Pillow?  Why a pillow?  Since when did you become tender-hearted,
+Rocco?"
+
+Rocco scowled, but he made no reply.
+
+"You don't need any pillows or Pullman cars on the way to heaven," said
+Wrentz with a snarling laugh.
+
+The laugh was checked abruptly by a rap on the door.  For an instant
+the ruffians looked at each other in alarm.  There was no telling
+whether to open that door would be to face the drawn revolvers of
+detectives or only the expectant eyes of a bellboy.
+
+There was nothing to do but to answer, however.  Wrentz moved to the
+door.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked.
+
+"Your trunk, sir."
+
+"You are the porter?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, you can leave the trunk at the door.  I am too busy to be
+interrupted just now.  But here -"
+
+Wrentz opened the door an inch and passed a dollar bill to the porter.
+"I am going to need you again in a few hours," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir; thank you, sir."
+
+Move the girl over behind the bed -- out of range there," commanded
+Wrentz.  Two men seized Pauline and dragged her across the room where
+she could not be seen through the door, which Wrentz now opened wide.
+
+In the corridor outside stood a large trunk.  Wrentz and one of the men
+lifted it and carried it into the room.
+
+"Your baggage is light," said the man.
+
+"It will be heavier in a little while.  Open it."
+
+They obeyed.
+
+"Do you think it is large enough?" asked Wrentz.
+
+"Large enough for what -- the girl?" demanded Rocco, who had been
+sulking since his rebuke.
+
+"You are shrewd, Rocco.  You have guessed rightly I suppose you'll want
+to put a pillow in it."
+
+"Yes,. I would," said Rocco, who was the youngest of the band, "or else
+I would kill her first.  What is the use of torture?"
+
+Wrentz's dark fact grew even blacker as he eyed the young man.
+
+"If you were a grown man, Rocco," he said, "instead of a soft-hearted
+boy, you would know that there is one form of murder that is always
+found out -- the trunk murder.  And I want to say this to you," he
+added with growing heat, "that if I hear one more word of rebellion
+from you this prisoner will be alive some hours after you have
+departed.  Now, then, into the trunk with her."
+
+Rocco sullenly helped the others in the grim task.  The trunk, large as
+it was, was not deep enough to permit Pauline a sitting posture, nor
+long enough to prevent the painful cramping of her limbs.  But she was
+deadened to physical pain.  With the words of her doom still ringing in
+her ears -- the calm discussion of her death -- her terror was her
+torture.  The choking gag, the cutting bonds, the stifling trunk -- in
+which the knife of Wrentz had cut but a few air holes -- these were as
+nothing to the agony of her spirit -- the agony of a lingering journey
+toward a certain but mysterious end.
+
+Pauline had been a prisoner before, had been through many and desperate
+dangers, but her heart had never failed her utterly until she felt the
+pressure of the trunk lid on her bent shoulders and heard the clamping
+of the locks that bound her in.
+
+She could still hear the voices.
+
+"I'll go down and settle my bill and send up that porter," Wrentz was
+saying.  "Don't let him help with the trunk, except to run the
+elevator.  You're sure your car is at the side entrance -- not out in
+front?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I will meet you there."
+
+Pauline had been so carefully bound that she could not stir in the
+trunk.  As she felt it lifted and carried rapidly through the corridor
+to the hotel elevator she strained with all her might to make a noise
+-- to beat with hands or feet or even with her head, the sides of the
+receptacle.  But it was no use.  She was carried through the hotel and
+out to the side entrance without attracting attention.
+
+She felt the trunk lifted over the men's heads, and the whirring of an
+automobile told her that she was being placed in the machine.
+
+"Well, you didn't care much for your pet room this time, Mr. Wrentz,"
+smiled the clerk as Wrentz asked for his bill.
+
+"Indeed I did, but a message has called me back to New York."
+
+He paid his bill and hurried out to the big car in the back of which
+Pauline's trunk had been placed.  Springing to the wheel, he ordered
+his followers in, and they drove away.
+
+Once on suburban roads, Wrentz, either fearful of pursuit or drunk with
+success, began speeding.
+
+Along the railroad tracks the noise of their speed drew a tumult of
+wild sounds from a string of gaily painted cars on the siding.  The
+snarls and howls of beasts were mingled with the angry cries of men who
+seemed to be at work on the other side of the cars.
+
+To Pauline the noises came faintly, but with a horrid and unearthly
+note.  She, who had been the victim of so many cruet and fantastic
+plots, knew not what new danger the roaring of the beasts threatened.
+
+In a moment, though, her mind was set at rest on this point.  For
+Rocco, the young bandit, turning to the man next him, asked: "What does
+it mean?  What are they doing?"
+
+"It is a circus train," answered the man.  "They are loading the beasts
+into the cars."
+
+Pauline felt the machine swerve sharply and evidently take to a
+by-road, for she could hear the swish of leaves on overhanging branches
+as they brushed through.
+
+"This place will do," she heard Wrentz say.  "Now, be quick about it."
+
+"It has come," breathed Pauline to herself.  "This is the place where I
+am to die."
+
+Through her mind, in piteous pageant, flashed thoughts of home, of
+Harry, of even Raymond Owen.  There was a great loneliness in the hour
+of doom.  But it would be over quickly.  She shut her eyes tight and
+clenched her tied hands as the trunk was taken from the machine and
+placed upon the ground.
+
+"Open it," commanded Wrentz.  "I don't want her to die in there."
+
+The men quickly unclamped the locks and lifted Pauline out.
+
+"Take off the ropes and the bandages," ordered Wrentz.
+
+"Take them off?  Why, she'll scream," exclaimed one.
+
+"If she does you may choke her to death in the car," replied Wrentz.
+
+"Why not here?" asked the oldest of the men.  "Didn't Mr. --"
+
+"Hush your mouth!  You confounded rascal!" Wrentz screamed.  "Are you
+going to mention that name here?"
+
+"What harm -- as long as she is to die?  Dead women tell no more tales
+than dead men."
+
+"I will name all names that are to be spoken," declared Wrentz.
+
+"Well, he of the name that is unspoken -- at least he did say that we
+must have no delays.  We want to earn our money as well as you, Louis
+-- remember that."
+
+"Come, come," he said.  "This is no way to be arguing among friends.
+You'll get your money all right; but there is one thing to remember-you
+ain't get it except through me.  So let me handle the matter.  Put the
+girl in the car."
+
+Pauline, although her bonds had been cut away, was unable to rise to
+her feet.  They lifted her to her feet.  She took a step or two, while
+they watched her curiously.  Quickly strength and self-control came
+back to her.  With a sudden spring, she struck at Wrentz with her fist,
+and as he drew back, astonished she darted across the roadway toward
+the wood.
+
+It was but a futile, maneuver.  She had gone but a few paces when she
+was gripped from behind and snatched back.
+
+"You see, Louis -- I told you she would do something of the kind," said
+the old bandit.
+
+"And I told you it would do no harm.  Place her in the car between you
+and Rocco.  If she screams or makes a move to get away you may do as
+you wish, but not until then."
+
+Pauline still struggled feebly as she was lifted into the machine.
+Wrentz kicked the empty trunk to the side of the byroad and took the
+wheel again.  He drove back to the main drive that skirted the
+railroad.
+
+Distant as they were by now, the clamor of the caged beasts in the
+circus train could still be heard.  To Pauline the creatures seemed
+less wild and cruel than these, her human captors.
+
+Wrentz put on even greater speed than he had ventured before.  Two
+policemen, Burgess and Blount, of the Motorcycle Squad, were standing
+by their wheels in the roadway when the sound of the car's rush reached
+their ears from half a mile away.
+
+"By George, that fellow's coming some," exclaimed Blount.
+
+"And looks as if he wasn't going to stop," said the other.  "Halt!
+Halt, there!" he commanded, as the machine flashed up in a mantle of
+dust.
+
+"They are coming, Louis," said one of the men.
+
+"I know they are.  But there is no machine made that can catch this
+one.  Have your guns ready, though.  In case they begin to fire, pick
+them off."
+
+Pauline shuddered at the matter-of-fact way in which Rocco and the man
+on the other side drew their heavy pistols from their hip pockets and
+rested them on their knees.
+
+"Do you see the girl in that car?" yelled Burgess to his companion over
+the din of their streaking machines.
+
+"Yes.  We want that party for more than speeding, I guess," answered
+Blount.  They bent low over their handle-bars and raced on.
+
+"If he takes the 'S' curve like that we've got him -- dead or alive,"
+said Burgess.
+
+"And it looks as if he would.  By George, he is!"
+
+Wrentz's car had shot suddenly out of sight around a twist in the
+road.  Wrentz was an able driver, and, even at its terrific speed, the
+machine took the first turn gracefully.  But Wrentz had not counted on
+a second shorter turn to the opposite direction.  And he worked the
+wheel madly for a second swerve; the huge car skidded, spun round, and,
+reeling on two wheels for an instant, turned over in the ditch.
+
+It was several moments before Pauline opened her eyes.  She shut them
+quickly and staggered to her feet shuddering -- she had been lying
+across Rocco's dead body which had broken her fall and saved her life.
+
+Two other men lay motionless in the road.  But from under the
+overturned car there came a sound, and Pauline realized, with quick
+alarm, that Wrentz was still alive.  She ran across the road and into
+the parked woods that hid the railroad from the drive.
+
+Wrentz struggled out from beneath the car.  His eyes swept swiftly from
+the bodies of his dead comrades to the form of Pauline just vanishing
+in the thicket.  He was bruised and bleeding, but with the instinct of
+a beast of prey he followed his quarry.
+
+"Dead or alive was right," said Burgess, jumping from his wheel and
+examining the bodies in the road.   "I wonder what that fellow was up
+to.  And where is the girl?"
+
+"I saw her and one of the men make into the park there," said Blount.
+"You take charge here and I'll go after them."
+
+As he moved into the thicket in the direction Pauline had taken young
+Blount's attention was attracted by a new commotion.  The park was on
+the crest of a steep cliff overlooking the railroad tracks and from the
+tracks came a riot of voices.  Blount forced his way through the wood
+to a viewpoint from the cliff.  Below him a score of men were moving
+rapidly along the tracks in wide, open order, evidently bent on some
+sort of a hunt.
+
+"The circus men," said Blount to himself.  "An animal must have got
+out.  This is certainly some day for business."
+
+He turned back to the work in hand.
+
+Pauline, spurred by terror as she realized that Wrentz was again upon
+her trail, had sped like a wild thing through the park paths.  She
+could hear the heavy footsteps of her pursuer close behind.  She could
+hear also a shouting from afar off.  She made toward the shouting --
+the sound of any voice but the voices of the inhuman men who had
+planned her death was welcome to her ears.
+
+She came out upon the cliff where it sloped steeply to the railroad
+yards, but not too steeply to prevent her descending.  From her
+position, the lines of freight cars cut off from her vision the strange
+group of hunters who were shouting.  Running, stumbling, creeping,
+clutching at small bushes, she scrambled down the cliff.
+
+"Stop and come back!" she heard a menacing voice behind her.  She sped
+on the faster.
+
+A line of high bushes fringed the bottom of the cliff.  Between the
+bushes and the first rails ran a ditch.  Sheltered from all view from
+above, Pauline dragged herself along this ditch, seeking a hiding
+place.  She knew her strength was almost gone.  She was in terror of
+fainting.  If she could hide somewhere and rest --
+
+A single empty freight car stood on the outer track a hundred yards
+away.  Its open door offered the only means of concealment that she
+had.  She believed that the bushes were high enough still to shield her
+while she climbed into the car.
+
+In this she was wrong.  Wrentz, watching from above -- for he was
+afraid of the voices on the tracks, below and had not followed Pauline
+-- watched with pleasure as she crawled to the side of the car, and,
+after two failures, managed to drag herself through the high door.  She
+sank exhausted.  Gradually, however, her strength returned.  Her mind
+recovered from the dazing experiences of the last few hours.  She began
+to gain courage and to plan her further flight.
+
+As she moved toward., the car door to reconnoiter, the sense of an
+invisible presence suddenly possessed her.  Instinctively she turned.
+
+One glance behind her and every fiber of her body seemed to turn to
+stone.  Fear she had known, but never terror such as this.  She stood
+paralyzed, unable to close her eyes, unable to move.  For there beside
+her, towering above her in horrible strength, with wildly grinning face
+and cruelly outreaching claws, stood the thing that gave explanation to
+the hunt outside and the shouting.  Pauline was in the clutches of a
+gorilla.  She fainted as she felt herself gripped in the hairy arms.
+
+Wrentz was gloating as he stood on watch over Pauline's hiding place.
+In a little while the men, would be out of the railroad yard and he
+would go down and finish the work.  But his rejoicings were turned into
+amazement by the sight which now presented itself at the door of the
+car.
+
+
+With Pauline, carried over one arm as if she had been a wisp of straw,
+the gorilla was crawling down to the trackside.  Wrentz saw it crawl
+along the ditch and heard the crunch of broken bushes as the huge
+creature clambered up the cliff.
+
+Wondering, scarcely able to believe his eyes, Wrentz followed at a safe
+distance.
+
+Young Policeman Blount, searching for the fugitive chauffeur of the
+wrecked automobile and the mysterious young woman who had escaped from
+it, paused at the sound of heavy foot-falls.  A low, guttural, snarling
+sound -- a sound hardly human -- accompanied the footsteps.  He had
+reached the bottom of the cliff a half mile from where Pauline had
+found her perilous shelter.  Peering up through the bushes, his
+astonishment and horror were a match for the astonishment and joy of
+Wrentz.  The gorilla, with Pauline still clutched in the mighty paw,
+had reached almost the top of the cliff at its steepest point.
+
+Blount blew his whistle, blast after blast.  He started up the cliff,
+but came back at the sound of hurrying footsteps and calls; the hunters
+from the railroad yards had heard the signal.
+
+"Hello!  Have you seen anything of the gorilla?" yelled the first man
+to come up.
+
+Blount pointed up the cliff side to where the hideous beast was just
+dragging Pauline over the topmost ledge.
+
+The men stood spell-bound with pity.
+
+"A girl!" gasped one of them.  "She's as good as dead, if she isn't
+dead now.  He just killed our foreman back in the yards."
+
+"No, thank heaven!" cried Blount, "she's not dead.  Look!"
+
+At the top of the cliff they saw Pauline's form suddenly quicken into
+life.  The gorilla had released its hold upon her to make sure of its
+footing on the perilous ledge.  Now she stood, a frail, pitiful,
+hopeless thing, fighting -- actually assailing the beast, more mighty
+than a dozen men.
+
+Their hearts sick within them they watched the brief struggle.  Wrentz,
+too, watched it, from his hiding place on the top of the cliff.  But
+his heart was not sick.  In a moment, he was sure, his work would be
+accomplished for him, and his employer would be rid of Pauline Marvin
+in a way that could reflect no blame on any one.
+
+Blount started up the cliff.  He took it for granted that the others
+would follow, but looking down after gaining half the distance, he saw
+the circus men still huddled together in fascinated awe.
+
+"Look!  Look!" they called to him.  "He's taking her up the tree."
+
+Blount looked and saw the gorilla climbing ponderously the trunk of a
+large tree, the branches of which overhung the precipice.  Blount
+climbed on frantically.  He stopped again.  The gorilla was crawling
+out upon one of the overhanging branches!  The strange beast-brain had
+conceived a death for Pauline more terrible than any Raymond Owen bad
+ever plotted.  Wrentz himself might have envied the gorilla.
+
+Blount drew his revolver.  He was not more than a hundred feet below
+them now.  "It's the chance of hitting her against the chance of saving
+her," he muttered.  He fired.  With a snarl of pain the gorilla turned
+and bit savagely at its shoulder.  Blount rushed on.  He stopped again
+and fired.  He was at the verge of the cliff.  He could blaze away now
+with no danger of hitting Pauline, for he was a sure marksman.
+
+With a great throb of joy in his heart the gallant young fellow saw the
+beast turn, and, leaving Pauline with her arms around the limb, her
+eyes shut against the dizzy depths below, move back and scramble down.
+
+Blount was on the cliff-top as the gorilla reached the ground.  The
+beast charged.  Blount fired again.  Again the gorilla, snarling, bit
+at its wounded side, but it came an as if a dozen lives vitalized the
+gross body.
+
+Blount backed away from the cliff, but the monster was upon him.  It
+clutched him, hurled him to ground, dragged him back to the dizzy
+verge.
+
+Slowly Blount was pressed over the precipice.  The watchers below saw
+him in his last struggle writhe in the deathly grasp, twist his
+revolver and fire three shots into the heart of the gorilla.
+
+Down the long fall to the jagged rocks went the beast.
+
+Pauline was bending over the bleeding, battered form of the young
+officer when the circus crew reached them.
+
+"Oh, you are brave, brave!" she cried.
+
+He opened his eyes and grinned merrily.  "If I'm brave, I'd like to
+know what you are."
+
+"Oh, I'm not brave,  I'm nothing but a selfish little pig," cried
+Pauline.  "I've treated the dearest fellow in the world shamefully.
+He's forgiven me over and over, but he won't forgive me this time."
+
+"He'll forgive you anything, Mim," Blount assured her, "for the sake of
+getting you safe back.  But I shouldn't like to be the man who got you
+into this, when he hears of it."
+
+"The man's fe enough," said Burgess, who had just up in time to hear
+Blount's last words.
+
+"No, he didn't escape that way," as Blount uttered an ejaculation of
+disgust.  "He ran full tilt into me and when I tried to arrest him he
+drew his revolver on me.  By good luck I got him first -- yes, Jo, he's
+dead."
+
+"Dead," repeated Pauline in a low tone.  "How horrible to go out of
+life a moment after you had tried to commit murder."
+
+"It's not his first," Burgess said coolly.  "We've been after him and
+his gang these six months.  It was Wrentz, Jo, and I made a haul of
+papers that'll get somebody into trouble."
+
+"Oh, don't hurt the young one," cried Pauline.  "He tried to help me."
+
+"Rocco?  He was dead when they picked him up.  And, now, Miss Marvin,
+hadn't I better get you a taxi?"
+
+"Yes, thank you, but," with irrepressible curiosity, "how did you know
+me?"
+
+Burgess smiled.  "How did I know you?  I beg your pardon, Miss, but for
+nearly a year your picture's been in every paper, more or less, in the
+United States.  You're a big head-liner -- it's an honor to meet you,
+face to face.  But it's Blount has all the luck.  He's saved you --
+hell be a head-liner himself tomorrow."
+
+The hot color rushed over Pauline's face.  "A headliner " -- so that
+was what she meant to the public, to the man on the street.
+
+"Please, Please, don't let this get into the Papers," she begged.
+"I'll do anything in the world for you if you'll just keep it out of
+the papers."
+
+"Will you tell us about those other adventures?"
+
+Burgess asked eagerly.  "It's a sure thing that somebody's been pulling
+the wires, making you walk the tight rope, and. somebody that knows
+everything you do.  Any man on the force who could spot him would be
+made."
+
+"No, no," Pauline insisted, an uneasy remembrance of Harry's suspicions
+lending emphasis to her denial.  "Some of those things were done before
+anybody out of the house could know."
+
+"Just as I said," Burgess agreed triumphantly.
+
+"It's somebody in the house.  Why he knew about your bull terrier, and
+the papers had it had just been, given you the day before -- darned
+clever little dog to give your folks the clue."
+
+"Cyrus?" Pauline's face broke into smiles and dimples.  "He's the
+cleverest, dearest, most beautiful dog in the world."
+
+"Fine dog, yes Miss, if he's like the picture the reporters got."
+
+Pauline's face clouded -- for the moment she had forgotten the horrors
+of publicity.
+
+"You won't put this in the papers?" she pleaded.
+
+"He shan't," Blount raised himself weakly on his elbow.  "If the
+reporters haven't got it already, we'll keep you out of it anyhow,
+Miss."
+
+"Keep a scoop like this out of the papers?" Burgess laughed aloud.
+"You're talking through your hat, Blount, it can't be done."
+
+In one terrible flash Pauline saw her name in capitals, her photograph
+almost life-size, photographs of her trunk, the gorilla, Blount, in
+"head-liners, too, and Harry, furious, too far away for moral suasion;
+stern, cold, unforgiving, worse still, disgusted.  She realized as she
+had never realized before that Harry was what counted most, Harry was
+the one thing she could not live without.  To the terrors of these
+hours was added the terror of losing him.
+
+She burst into wild sobs.
+
+"I want Harry, I don't want anything in the world but Harry!  Oh, take
+me home, please take me home!"
+
+Burgess got a taxi and went with her to the hotel, where She was put to
+bed, a doctor sent for, and where at last she fell asleep.
+
+But it was not until noon the next day that she was able to take the
+train for New York.  And then began, two hours and a half that Pauline
+remembered to the last hour of her life.  Her photograph stared at her
+from the front page of every daily paper -- even the glasses and thick
+veil she wore to conceal her identity could not soften the conspicuous
+pictures.  Newsboys called her name, and the gorilla story, Wrentz, and
+Blount's names, together -- every passenger in the car, it seemed to
+her, men, women, and children, were discussing her.  There were silly
+jokes, contemptuous criticism, half-laughing suggestions that there was
+something "queer about Miss Marvin." just behind her, she heard one
+woman say to another, "But, then, my dear, what could you expect of any
+girl whose mother was an Egyptian" as if this equaled breaking the
+whole Decalogue.
+
+Though she had wired Owen, the motor did not meet her, and feeling more
+than ever forlorn and forsaken, Pauline got into a taxi.  Never had the
+old place looked so beautiful as today when she felt that it could
+never be her home again -- she must tell Harry that her mother was an
+Egyptian and then even if he could forgive her this last adventure he
+would never marry her.  Oh, how could she have been so silly, so
+conceited, so cruel to Harry!  And what a fool she had been to go in
+search of experience in order to write.  If she couldn't write with all
+this beauty spread out before her, if she couldn't write by living a
+real, human, everyday life, the sort of life that brings you close to
+normal people, how could she ever hope to write by living on excitement
+- on abnormal excitement and with abnormal people and situations?
+
+She paid the driver and was walking slowly up the steps of the veranda,
+when, suddenly, she halted as if she had been struck.  What was that?
+It couldn't be -- yes, it was -- funeral streamers hanging from the
+door-knob!
+
+With a scream that rang through the closed door, Pauline fainted.  When
+she recovered consciousness she was in the library.  Bemis and Margaret
+were bending over her, and strong, tender arms were around her.
+
+"Harry," she murmured instinctively.
+
+"Don't try to talk, my darling, drink this.  You go," to Bemis and
+Margaret.
+
+"Oh, Harry, I thought you were dead."
+
+"I'm very much alive," Harry said with a tremulous laugh.
+
+"But Harry, what does all that black on the mean?"
+
+"It means," said Harry, savagely, "that though the mills of the gods
+grind slowly they grind surely -- Owen's dead."
+
+"Owen!"  Her eyes large with terror, Blount's words ringing in her ears
+- "I shouldn't like to be the an at the bottom of this when Mr. Marvin
+hears of it.  "'Owen," she repeated in a breathless whisper.
+ "Harry, you didn't kill him?"
+
+"He didn't give me the chance.  He was dead when I got here -- overdose
+of morphine Dr. Stevens said.  Seems he was a drug fiend."
+
+"Why that was the reason," Pauline said, her filling with tears.  "He
+was crazy, he didn't know what he was doing.  Poor Owen, poor Owen" -
+then turned hastily to safer topics.  "But I thought you went to
+Chicago for a week."
+
+"I did, but, you'll laugh, Pauline -- I know it sounds fool -- the
+Mummy came to me just as she came to me in Montana.  I took the first
+train home.  I knew you were in danger -- I knew it was a warning.
+I'll ever trust, you out of my sight again - you've got to marry me
+now."
+
+Pauline shrank back from his kisses.  "No, no, Harry I can't -- I won't
+-- there was a woman on the train said my mother was an Egyptian."
+
+Harry broke into a peal of laughter and caught her in his arms.
+
+"Is that the only reason you won't?"
+
+"Harry, is it true?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care - what difference does it make who your
+mother was?  You are you, that's all I care for."  His voice shook.  "I
+love you so, Pauline, that I can't stand this life any longer - another
+adventure --"
+
+Pauline silenced him with a kiss.
+
+"I'm all through with adventures," she declared.  "Harry I'm going to
+--"
+
+"Marry me?  Polly do you mean it?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  Oh, my dearest, I've been a selfish, silly, conceited
+little pig, but I'm cured, I'm cured at, last."
+
+As he clasped her in his arms, the shutter swung violently to, and the
+case containing the Mummy fell with a clatter to the floor.  Harry ran
+and lifted it as tenderly as if it had been a little child.
+
+"I suppose we can hardly keep her here," he said regretfully, "but
+we'll give, no, I can't give her up entirely, we'll lend her to the
+Metropolitan Art Museum where she'll receive due honor.  She's been a
+faithful friend to us, Polly."
+
+"And here's another," exclaimed Pauline, as Cyrus ran frantically into
+the room, and leaping upon the couch with ecstatic barks of welcome,
+threatened again to take the place that belonged by right to Harry.
+But this time Harry joined in Pauline's caresses.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PERILS OF PAULINE ***
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