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diff --git a/old/68875-0.txt b/old/68875-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5e22bbb..0000000 --- a/old/68875-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8751 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The lion's share, by Octave Thanet - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The lion's share - -Author: Octave Thanet - -Illustrator: Edmund Marion (E. M.) Ashe - -Release Date: August 30, 2022 [eBook #68875] - -Most recently updated: January 28, 2023 - -Language: English - -Produced by: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LION'S SHARE *** - - - - - -THE LION’S SHARE - -[Illustration: “Yes,” he said quietly, “you are right, it is blood.” -Page 99] - - - - - THE LION’S SHARE - - _By_ - OCTAVE THANET - - Author of - The Man of the Hour, Stories of a Western Town - The Missionary Sheriff - A Book of True Lovers, etc. - - With Illustrations by - E. M. ASHE - - INDIANAPOLIS - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - - - - - COPYRIGHT 1907 - THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY - - OCTOBER - - ROBERT DRUMMOND COMPANY, PRINTERS, NEW YORK - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I THE MAN WITH THE MOLES 1 - - II AUNT REBECCA 25 - - III THE TRAIN ROBBERS 46 - - IV THE VANISHING OF ARCHIE 70 - - V BLIND CLUES 83 - - VI THE VOICE IN THE TELEPHONE 100 - - VII THE HAUNTED HOUSE 118 - - VIII FACE TO FACE 138 - - IX THE AGENT OF THE FIRELESS STOVE 152 - - X THE SMOLDERING EMBERS 171 - - XI THE CHARM OF JADE 195 - - XII A BLOW 212 - - XIII WHOSE FEET WERE SHOD WITH SILENCE 245 - - XIV FROM MRS. MELVILLE’S POINT OF VIEW 254 - - XV “THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS” 265 - - XVI THE REAL EDWIN KEATCHAM 290 - - XVII IN WHICH THE PUZZLE FALLS INTO PLACE 321 - - XVIII CASA FUERTE 343 - - XIX EXTRACT FROM A LETTER 371 - - - - - _Serene, indifferent to fate, - Thou sittest by the Western gate, - Thou seest the white seas fold their tents, - Oh, warder of two continents. - Thou drawest all things small and great - To thee beside the Western gate._ - - - - -THE LION’S SHARE - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE MAN WITH THE MOLES - - -The first time that Colonel Rupert Winter saw Cary Mercer was under -circumstances calculated to fix the incident firmly in his memory. In -the year 1903, home from the Philippines on furlough, and preparing to -return to a task big enough to attract him in spite of its exile and -hardships, he had visited the son of a friend at Harvard. They were -walking through the corridors of one of the private dormitories where -the boy roomed. Rather grimly the soldier’s eyes were noting marble -wainscoting and tiled floors, and contrasting this academic environment -with his own at West Point. A caustic comment rose to his lips, but it -was not uttered, for he heard the sharp bark of a pistol, followed by a -thud, and a crackle as of breaking glass. - -“Do you fellows amuse yourselves shooting up the dormitory?” said he. -The boy halted; he had gone white. - -“It came from Mercer’s room!” he cried, and ran across the corridor to -a door with the usual labeling of two visiting cards. The door was not -locked. Entering, they passed into a vestibule, thence through another -door which stood open. For many a day after the colonel could see just -how the slender young figure looked, the shoulders in a huddle on the -study table, one arm swinging nerveless; beside him, on the floor, -a revolver and a broken glass bottle. The latter must have made the -crackling sound. Some dark red liquid, soaking the open sheets of a -newspaper, filled the room with the pungent odor of alcohol. Only the -top of the lad’s head showed--a curly, silky, dark brown head; but even -before the colonel lifted it he had seen a few thick drops matting the -brown curls. He laid the head back gently and his hand slipped to the -boy’s wrist. - -“No use, Ralph,” he said in the subdued tones that the voice takes -unconsciously in the presence of death. - -“And Endy was going to help him,” almost sobbed Ralph. “He told me he -would. Oh, _why_ couldn’t he have trusted his friends!” - -The colonel was looking at the newspaper--“Was it money?” said he; -for a glance at the dabbled sheet had brought him the headings of the -stock quotations: “Another Sharp Break in Stocks. New Low Records.” -It _had_ been money. Later, after what needed to be done was over, -after doctors and officers of the law were gone, Colonel Winter heard -the wretched story. A young, reckless, fatally attractive Southerner, -rich friends, college societies, joyous times; nothing really wicked -or vicious, only a surrender to youth and friendship and pleasure, and -then the day of reckoning--duns, college warnings, the menace of black -disgrace. The young fellow was an orphan, with no near kindred save -one brother much older than he. The brother was reputed to be rich, -according to Southern standards, and young Mercer, who had just come -into a modest patrimony of his own, invested in his brother’s ventures. -As to the character of these ventures, whether flimsy or substantial, -the colonel’s informants were absolutely ignorant. All they knew of the -elder Mercer was that he was often in New York and had “a lot to do -with Wall Street.” He wasn’t a broker; no, he was trying to raise money -to hang on to some big properties that he had; and the stocks seemed -to be going at remarkable rates just now, the bottom dropping out of -the market. If a certain stock of the Mercers’--they didn’t know the -name--could be kept above twenty-seven he would pull through. Colonel -Winter made no comment, but he remembered that when he had studied -the morning’s stock-market pages for himself, he had noted “bad slump -in the Southern steels,” and “Tidewater on the toboggan slide; off -three to four points, declining from twenty-seven and a fraction to -twenty-three.” - -“Another victim of the Wall Street pirates,” was the colonel’s silent -judgment on the tragedy. “Lucky for her his mother’s dead.” - -The next morning he had returned and had gone to his young friend’s -rooms. - -The boy was still full of the horror of the day before. Mercer’s -brother was in Cambridge, he said--arrived that morning from New York. -“Endy is going to fetch him round to get him out of the reporters’ -way sometime this evening; maybe there’s something I can do”--this -in explanation of his declining to dine with the colonel. As the two -entered the rooms, Winter was a little in advance, and caught the first -glimpse of a man sitting in a big mission arm-chair, his head sunk on -his breast. So absorbed was this man in his own distempered musings -that the new-comers’ approach did not arouse him. He sat with knitted -brows and clenched hands, staring into vacancy; his rigid and pallid -features set in a ghastly intensity of thought. There was suffering in -the look; but there was more: the colonel, who had been living among -the serpent passions of the Orient, knew deadly anger when he saw it; -it was branded on the face before him. Involuntarily he fell back; he -felt as if he had blundered in on a naked soul. Noiselessly he slipped -out of the range of vision. He spoke loudly, halting to ask some -question about the rooms; this made a moment’s pause. - -It was sufficient; in the study they found a quiet, calm, although -rather haggard-looking man, who greeted Winter’s companion courteously, -with a Southern accent, and a very good manner. He was presented to the -colonel as Mr. Mercer. He would have excused himself, professing that -he was just going, but the colonel took the words out of his mouth: -“Ralph, here, has a cigar for me--that is all I came for; see you at -the Touraine, Ralph, to-morrow for luncheon, then.” He did not see -the man again; neither did he see Ralph, although he made good, so far -as in him lay, his fiction of an engagement at the Touraine. But Ralph -could not come; and Winter had lunched, instead, with an old friend -at his club, and had watched, through a stately Georgian window, the -shifting greenery of the Common in an east wind. - -All through the luncheon the soldier’s mind kept swerving from the talk -in hand to Cary Mercer’s face. Yet he never expected to see it again. -Three years later he did see it; and this second encounter, of which, -by the way, Mercer was unconscious, was the beginning of an absorbing -chapter in his life. A short space of time that chapter occupied; yet -into it crowded mystery, peril, a wonderful and awful spectacle, the -keenest happiness and the cruelest anxiety. Let his days be ever so -many, the series of events which followed Mercer’s reappearance will -not be blurred by succeeding experiences; their vivid and haunting -pictures will burn through commoner and later happenings as an electric -torch flares through layers of mist. - -Nothing, however, could promise adventure less than the dull and chilly -late March evening when the chapter began. Nor could any one be less -on the lookout for adventure, or even interest, than was Rupert Winter. -In truth, he was listless and depressed. - -When he alighted from his cab in the great court of the Rock Island -Station he found Haley, his old orderly, with a hand on the door-hasp. -Haley’s military stoicism of demeanor could not quite conceal a certain -agitation--at least not from the colonel’s shrewd eye, used to catch -the moods of his soldiers. He strangled a kind of sigh. “Doesn’t like -it much more than I,” thought Rupert Winter. “This is mighty kind of -you, Haley,” he said. - -“Yes, sor,” answered Haley, saluting. The colonel grinned feebly. -Haley, busy repelling a youthful porter, did not notice the grin; he -strode ahead with the colonel’s world-scarred hand-luggage, found an -empty settee beside one of the square-tiled columns of the waiting-room -and disposed his burden on the iron-railed seat next the corner one, -which he reserved for the colonel. - -“The train ain’t in yet, Colonel,” said he. “I’ll be telling you--” - -“No, Haley,” interrupted the colonel, whose lip twitched a little; and -he looked aside; “best say good-by now; don’t wait. The fact is, I’m -thinking of too many things you and I have gone through together.” He -held out his hand; Haley, with a stony expression, gazed past it and -saluted, while he repeated: “Yes, sor; I’ll be back to take the bags -whin the train’s made up.” Whereupon he wheeled and made off with speed. - -“Just the same damned obstinate way he’s always had,” chuckled the -colonel to himself. Nevertheless, something ached in his throat as he -frowned and winked. - -“Oh, get a brace on you, you played-out old sport!” he muttered. “The -game’s on the last four cards and you haven’t established your suit; -you’ll have to sit back and watch the other fellows play!” But his -dreary thoughts persisted. Rupert was a colonel in the regular army -of the United States. He had been brevetted a brigadier-general after -the Spanish War, and had commanded, not only a brigade, but a division -at one critical time in the Philippines; but for reasons probably -known to the little knot of politicians who “hung it up,” although -incomprehensible to most Americans, Congress had failed to pass the -bill giving the wearers of brevet titles the right to keep their -hard-won and empty honors; wherefore General Winter had declined to -Colonel Winter. - -He had more substantial troubles, including a wound which would -probably make him limp through life and possibly retire him from -service at fifty. It had given him a six months’ sick leave (which he -had not wanted), and after spending a month on the Atlantic coast, -he was going for the spring to the Pacific. Haley, whose own term of -service had expired, had not reënlisted, but had followed him, Mrs. -Haley and the baby uncomplainingly bringing up the rear. It was not -fair to Haley nor to Mrs. Haley, the colonel felt. He had told Haley -so; he had found a good situation for the man, and he had added the -deed for a little house in the suburbs of Chicago. - -If Haley wouldn’t reënlist--there never was a better soldier since he -had downed a foolish young hankering for wild times and whisky--if he -wouldn’t go back to the army, where he belonged, let him settle down, -take up the honest carpenter’s trade that he had abandoned, be a good -citizen and marry little Nora to some classmate in the high school, -who might make a fortune and build her a Colonial mansion, should the -Colonial still obtain in the twentieth century. - -The colonel had spread a grand prospect before Haley, who listened -unresponsively, a dumb pain in his wide blue Irish eyes. The colonel -hated it; but, somehow, he hated worse the limp look of Haley’s back as -he watched it dwindle down Michigan Avenue. - -However, Mrs. Haley had been more satisfactory, if none the less -bewildering. She seemed very grateful over the house and the three -hundred dollars for its furnishing. A birthday present, he had termed -it, with a flicker of humor because the day was his own birthday. His -fiftieth birthday it happened to be, and it occurred to him that a -man ought to do something a little notable on such an anniversary. -This rounding of the half-century had attributes apart; it was no mere -annual birthday; it marked the last vanishing flutter of the gilded -draperies of youth; the withering of the garlands; the fading tinkle -of the light music of hope. It should mark a man’s solid achievements. -Once, not so long ago, Winter had believed that his fiftieth birthday -would see wide and beneficent and far-reaching results in the province -where he ruled. That dream was shattered. He was generous of nature, -and he could have been content to behold another reap the fields which -he had sown and tilled; it was the harvest, whether his or another’s, -for which he worked; but his had been the bitter office to have to -stand aside, with no right to protest, and see his work go to waste -because his successor had a feeble brain and a pusillanimous caution in -place of his own dogged will. For all these reasons, as well as others, -the colonel found no zest in his fiftieth birthday; and his reverie -drifted dismally from one somber reflection to another until it brought -up at the latest wound to his heart--his favorite brother’s death. - -There had been three Winter brothers--Rupert, Melville and Thomas. -During the past year both Thomas Winter and his wife had died, leaving -one child, a boy of fourteen, named Archibald after his father’s uncle. -Rupert Winter and the boy’s great-aunt, the widow of the great-uncle -for whom he had been named, were appointed joint guardians of the young -Archie. To-night, in his jaded mood, he was assailed by reproaches -because he had not seen more of his ward. Why, he hadn’t so much as -looked the little chap up when he passed through Fairport--merely had -sent him a letter and some truck from the Philippines; nice guardian -_he_ was! By a natural enough transition, his thoughts swerved to his -own brief and not altogether happy married life. He thought of the -graves in Arizona where he had left his wife and his two children, -and his heart felt heavy. To escape musings which grew drearier every -second, he cast his eyes about the motley crowd shuffling over the -tiled floors or resting in the massive dark oaken seats. And it was -then that he saw Cary Mercer. At first he did not recognize the face. -He only gazed indifferently at two well-dressed men who sat some paces -away from him in the shadow of a great tiled column similar to his own. -There was this difference, it happened: the mission lantern with its -electric bulbs above the two men was flashing brightly, and by some -accident that above the colonel was dark. He could see the men, himself -in the shadow. - -The men were rather striking in appearance; they were evidently -gentlemen; the taller one was young, well set-up, clean-shaven and -quietly but most correctly dressed. His light brown hair showed a -slight curl in its closely clipped locks; his gray-blue eyes had long -lashes of brown darker than his hair; his teeth were very white, and -there was a dimple in his cheek, plain when he smiled. Had his nose -been straight he would have been as handsome as a Greek god, but -the nose was only an ordinary American nose, rather too broad at the -base; moreover, his jaw was a little too square for classic lines. -Nevertheless, he was good to look upon, as well as strong and clean -and wholesome, and when his gray-blue eyes strayed about the room the -dimple dented his cheek and his white teeth gleamed in a kind of merry -good-nature pleasant to see. But it was the other man who held the -colonel’s eye. This man was double the young man’s age, or near that; -he was shorter, although still of fair stature, and slim of build. His -face was oval in contour and delicate of feature. Although he wore no -glasses, his brow had the far pucker of a near-sighted man. There was -a mole on his cheek-bone and another just below his ear. Both were -small, rather than large, and in no sense disfiguring; but the colonel -noted them absently, being in the habit of photographing a man in a -glance. The face had beauty, distinction even, yet about it hung some -association, sinister as a poison label. - -“Now, where,” said the colonel to himself, “_where_ have I seen that -man?” Almost instantly the clue came to him. “By Jove, it’s the -brother!” he exclaimed. Three years ago, and he had almost forgotten; -but here was Cary Mercer--the name came to him after a little -groping--here he was again; but who was the pleasant youngster with -him? And what were they discussing with so little apparent and so much -real earnestness? - -One of the colonel’s physical gifts was an extraordinary acuteness of -hearing. It passed the mark of a faculty and became a marvel. Part -of this uncanny power was really due, not to hearing alone, but to -an alliance with another sense, because Winter had learned the lip -language in his youth; he heard with his eyes as well as his ears. This -combination had made an unintentional and embarrassed eavesdropper out -of an honest gentleman a number of times. To set off such evil tricks -it had saved his life once on the plains and had rescued his whole -command another time in the Philippines. While he studied the two faces -a sentence from the younger man gripped his attention. It was: “I don’t -mind the risk, but I hate taking such an old woman’s money.” - -“She has a heap,” answered the other man carelessly; “besides--” He -added something with averted head and in too low a voice to reach the -listener unassisted. But it was convincing, evidently, since the young -man’s face grew both grave and stern. He nodded, muttering: “Oh, I -understand; I wasn’t backing water; I know we have lost the right to -be squeamish. But I say, old chap, how long since Mrs. Winter has seen -you? Would she recognize you?” - -The colonel, who had been about to abandon his espionage as unbecoming -a soldier and a gentleman, stowed away all his scruples at the mention -of the name. He pricked up his ears and sharpened his eyes, but was -careful lest they should catch his glance. The next sentence, owing to -the speaker’s position, was inaudible and invisible; but he clearly -caught the young man’s response: - -“You’re sure they’ll be on this train?” - -And he saw the interlocutor’s head nod. - -“The boy’s with them?” - -An inaudible reply, but another nod. - -“And you’re sure of Miss Smith?” - -This time the other’s profile was toward the listener, who heard the -reply, “Plumb sure. I wish I were as sure of some other things. Have we -settled everything? It is better not to be seen together.” - -“Yes, I think you’ve put me wise on the main points. By the way, what -_is_ the penalty for kidnapping?” - -Again an averted head and hiatus, followed by the younger man’s -sparkling smile and exclamation: “Wow! Riskier than foot-ball--and even -more fun!” Something further he added, but his arms hid his mouth as he -thrust them into his greatcoat, preparing to move away. He went alone; -and the other, after a moment’s gloomy meditation, gathered up coat and -bag and followed. During that moment of arrested decision, however, his -features had dropped into sinister lines which the colonel remembered. - -“Dangerous customer, or I miss my guess,” mused the soldier, who knew -the passions of men. “I wonder--they couldn’t mean my Aunt Rebecca? -She’s old; she has millions of money--but she’s not on this train. -And there’s no Miss Smith in our deck. I’m so used to plotting I go -off on fake hikes! Probably I’m getting old and dotty. Mercer, poor -fellow, may have his brain turned and be an anarchist or a bomb-thrower -or a dirty kidnapper for revenge; but that boy’s a decent chap; I’ve -licked too many second lieutenants into shape not to know something of -youngsters.” - -[Illustration: “By the way what _is_ the penalty for kidnapping?” Page -16] - -He pushed the idea away; or, rather, his own problems pushed it out of -his mind, which went back to his ward and his single living brother. -Melville had no children, only his wife’s daughters, who were both -married--Melville having married a widow with a family, an estate and -a mind of her own. Melville was a professor in a state university, a -mild, learned man whom nature intended for science but whom his wife -was determined to make into the president of the university. - -“Even money which will win,” chuckled Rupert Winter to himself. -“Millicent hasn’t much tact; but she has the perseverance of the -saints. _She_ married Mel; he doesn’t know, but she surely did. And she -bosses him now. Well, I suppose Mel likes to be bossed; he never had -any strenuous opinions except about the canals of Mars--_Valgame dios_!” - -With a gasp the colonel sprang to his feet. There before him, in the -flesh, was his sister-in-law. Her stately figure, her Roman profile, -her gracefully gesticulating hand, which indicated the colonel’s -position to her heavily laden attendant, a lad in blue--these he knew -by heart just as he knew that her toilet for the journey would be in -the latest mode, and that she would have the latest fashion of gait and -mien. Millicent studied such things. - -She waved her luggage into place--an excellent place--in the same -breath dismissing the porter and instructing him when he must return. -Then, but not until then, did she turn graciously to her brother-in-law. - -“I hoped that I should find you, Bertie,” she said in a voice of such -creamy richness that it was hard to credit the speaker with only three -short trips to England. “Melville said you were to take this train; -and I was _so_ delighted, _so_ relieved! I am in a most harassing -predicament, my dear Bertie.” - -“That’s bad,” murmured the colonel with sympathetic solicitude: “what’s -the trouble? Couldn’t you get a section?” - -“I have my reservations, but I don’t know whether I shall go to-night.” - -“Maybe I’m stupid, Millicent, but I confess I don’t know what you mean.” - -“Really, there’s no reason why you should, Bertie. That’s why I was so -anxious to see you--in time, so that I might explain to you--might put -you on your guard.” - -“Yes?” the colonel submitted; he never hurried a woman. - -“I’m going to visit dear Amy--you remember she was married two years -ago and lives in Pasadena; she has a dear little baby and the loveliest -home! It’s charming. And she was so delighted with your wedding gift, -it was _so_ original. Amy never did care for costly things; these -simple, unique gifts always pleased her. Of course, my main object -is to see the dear child, but I shall not go to-night _unless_ Aunt -Rebecca Winter is on the train. If for any reason she waits over until -to-morrow I shall wait also.” - -“Ah,” sighed the colonel very softly, not stirring a muscle of his -politely attentive face; “and does Aunt Rebecca expect to go on the -train?” - -“They told me at the Pullman office that she had the drawing-room, the -state-room and two sections. Of course, she has her maid with her and -Archie--” - -“Does _he_ go, too?” the colonel asked, his eyes narrowing a little. - -“Yes, she’s taking him to California; he doesn’t seem well enough, she -thinks, to go to school, so he is to have a tutor out there. I’m a -little afraid Aunt Rebecca mollycoddles the boy.” - -“Aunt Rebecca never struck me as a molly-coddler. I always considered -her a tolerably cynical old Spartan. But do you mean there is any doubt -of their going? Awfully good of you to wait to see if they don’t go, -but I’m sure Aunt Rebecca wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your section--” - -Mrs. Melville lifted a shapely hand in a Delsartian gesture of arrest; -her smiling words were the last the colonel had expected. “Hush, dear -Bertie; Aunt Rebecca doesn’t _know_ I am going. I don’t want her to -know until we are on the train.” - -“Oh, I see, a surprise?” But he did _not_ see; and, with a quiet -intentness, he watched the color raddle Mrs. Melville’s smooth cheeks. - -“Hardly,” returned the lady. “The truth is, Bertie, Melville and I -are worried about Aunt Rebecca. She, we fear, has fallen under the -influence of a most plausible adventuress; I suppose you have heard of -her companion, Miss Smith?” - -“Can’t say I have exactly,” said the colonel placidly, but his eyes -narrowed again. “Who is the lady?” - -“I thought--I am _sure_ Melville must have written you. But-- Oh, -yes, he wrote yesterday to Boston. Well, Bertie, Miss Smith is a -Southerner; she says she is a South Carolinian, but Aunt Rebecca picked -her up in Washington, where she was with a kind of cousin of ours who -was half crazy. Miss Smith took care of her and she died”--she fixed a -darkling eye on the soldier--“she _died_ and she left Miss Smith money.” - -“Much?” - -“A few thousands. That is how Aunt Rebecca met her, and she pulled the -wool over auntie’s eyes, and they came back together. She’s awfully -clever.” - -“Young? Pretty?” - -“Oh, dear, no. And she’s nearer forty than thirty. Just the designing -age for a woman when she’s still wanting to marry some one but -beginning to be afraid that she can’t. Then such creatures always try -to get _money_. If they can’t marry it, and there’s no man to set -their caps for, they try to wheedle it out of some poor fool woman!” -Millicent was in earnest, there was no doubt of that; the sure sign was -her unconscious return to the direct expressions of her early life in -the Middle West. - -“And you think Miss Smith is trying to influence Aunt Rebecca?” - -“Of course she is; and Aunt Rebecca is eighty, Rupert. And often while -people of her age show no other sign of weakening intellect, they are -not well regulated in their affections; they take fancies to people -and get doting and clinging. She is getting to depend on Miss Smith. -Really, that woman has more influence with her than all the rest of -us together. She won’t hear a word against her. Why! when I tried to -suggest how little we knew about Miss Smith and that it would be better -not to trust her _too_ entirely, she positively _resented_ it. Of -course I used tact, too. I was so hurt, so surprised!” Mrs. Millicent -was plainly aggrieved. - -The colonel, who had his own opinion of the tact of his brother’s wife, -was not so surprised; but he made an inarticulate sound which might -pass for sympathy. - -“We’ve been worried a good deal,” pursued Mrs. Melville, “about the way -Aunt Rebecca has acted. She wouldn’t stay in Fairport, where we could -have some influence over her. She was always going south or going to -the sea-shore or going _somewhere_. Sometimes I suspect Miss Smith made -her, to keep her away from _us_, you know.” - -“Well, as long as I have known Aunt Rebecca--anyhow, ever since Uncle -Archibald died--she has been restless and flying about.” - -“Not as she is now. And then she only had her maid--” - -“Oh, yes, Randall; she’s faithful as they make ’em. What does _she_ say -about Miss Smith?” - -“Bertie, she’s won over Randall. Randall swears by her. Oh, she’s -_deep_!” - -“Seems to be. But--excuse me--what’s your game, Millicent? How do you -mean to protect our aged kinswoman and, incidentally, of course, the -Winter fortune?” - -“I shall watch, Bertie; I shall be on my guard every waking hour. That -deluded old woman is in more danger, perhaps, than you dream.” - -“As how?” - -“Miss Smith”--her voice sank portentously--“_was a trained nurse_.” - -“What harm does that do--unless you think she would know too much about -poisons?” The colonel laughed. - -“It’s no laughing matter, Bertie. Rebecca is so rich and this other -woman is so poor, and, in my estimation, so ambitious. I make no -insinuations, I only say she needs watching.” - -“You may be right about that,” said the colonel thoughtfully. “There -is Haley and the boy for your bags!” - -The boy picked up the big dress-suit case, the smaller dress-suit -case and the hat case, he grabbed the bundle of cloaks, the case of -umbrellas, and the lizard-skin bag. Dubiously he eyed the colonel’s -luggage, as he tried to disengage a finger. - -“Niver moind, young feller,” called Haley, peremptorily whisking away -the nearest piece, “I’ll help you a bit with yours, instead; you’ve a -load, sure!” - -Mrs. Melville explained in an undertone: “I take all the hand-luggage I -possibly can; the over-weight charges are wicked!” - -“Haley, they won’t let you inside without a ticket,” objected the -colonel. But Haley, unheeding, strode on ahead of the staggering youth. - -“I have an English bath-tub, locked, of course, and packed with things, -but he has put _that_ in the car,” said Mrs. Melville. - -“Certainly,” said the colonel absently; he was thinking: Mrs. Winter, -the boy, Miss Smith--how ridiculously complete! Decidedly _something_ -will bear watching. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -AUNT REBECCA - - -No sooner was Mrs. Melville ushered into her section than the colonel -went through the train. He was not so suspicious as he told himself -he might have been, with such a dovetailing of circumstances into his -accidentally captured information; he couldn’t yet read villainy on -that college lad’s frank face. But no reason, therefore, to neglect -precautions. “Hope the best of men and prepare for the worst,” was the -old campaigner’s motto. - -A walk through the cars showed him no signs of the two men. It was a -tolerably complete inspection, too. There was only one drawing-room or -state-room of which he did not manage to get a glimpse--the closed room -being the property of a very great financial magnate, whose private car -was waiting for him in Denver. His door was fast, and the click of the -type-writer announced the tireless industry of our rulers. - -But if he did not find the college boy or the man with the moles he -did get a surprise for his walk; namely, the sight of the family of -Haley, and Haley himself beside their trig, battered luggage, in a -section of the car next his own. Mrs. Haley turned a guilty red, while -Haley essayed a stolid demeanor. - -“What does this mean?” demanded the colonel. - -“Haley felt he would _have_ to go with you, Colonel,” replied Mrs. -Haley, who had timid, wide, blue eyes and the voice of a bird, but a -courage under her panic, as birds have, too, when their nests are in -peril. “We’ve rinted the house to a good man with grown-up children, -and Haley can get a job if you won’t want him.” - -“Yis, sor,” mumbled Haley. He was standing at attention, as was his -wife, the toddling Nora being held in the posture of respect on the -plush seat. - -“And I suppose you took the furniture money to buy tickets?” - -“Yis, sor.” - -“And you’re bound to go with me?” - -“Yis, sor,” said Haley. - -“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sergeant,” said the colonel; but -he was glad at the heart of him for this mutinous loyalty. - -“Yis, sor,” said Haley. - -“Well, since you are here, I engage you from to-day, you understand.” - -“Yis, sor,” said Haley. Mrs. Haley whimpered a blessing; but the only -change in the soldier was that his military stolidity became natural -and real instead of forced. - -“Sit down on this seat over here with me and I’ll tell you what I want. -You fraud, letting me say good-by to you--” - -“I didn’t want to take the liberty, sor, but you _made_ me shake hands. -I was afraid you’d catch on, sor. ’Tis a weight off me moind, sor.” - -“I dare say. You always have your way with me, you old mule. Now -listen; I want you to be on the watch for two men”--thereupon the -colonel described his men, laying special stress on the moles on the -face of one, and the other’s dimple. - -Having set Haley his tasks, he went back to his car in better spirits. - -By this time the train was moving. He had seen his kinswoman and her -party enter; and he found the object of Mrs. Melville’s darksome -warnings sitting with a slender lad in the main body of the car. Aunt -Rebecca was in the drawing-room, her maid with her. Mrs. Melville, who -had already revealed her presence, sat across the aisle. She presented -the colonel at once. - -Miss Smith did not look formidable; she looked “nice,” thought -the colonel. She was of medium height; she was obviously plump, -although well proportioned; her presence had an effect of radiant -cleanliness, her eyes were so luminous and her teeth so fine and her -white shirt-waist so immaculate. There was about her a certain soft -illumination of cheerfulness, and at the same time a restful repose; -she moved in a leisurely fashion and she sat perfectly still. “I never -saw any one who looked less of an adventuress,” Winter was thinking, as -he bowed. Then swiftly his glance went to the lad, a pale young fellow -with hazel eyes and a long slim hand which felt cold. - -The boy made a little inarticulate sound in his throat and blushed -when Colonel Winter addressed him. But he looked the brighter for the -blush. It was not a plain face; rather an interesting one in spite of -its listlessness and its sickly pallor; its oval was purely cut, the -delicate mouth was closed firmly enough, and the hazel eyes with their -long lashes would be beautiful were they not so veiled. - -“He has the Winter mouth, at least,” noted the colonel. He felt a -novel throb at his heart. Had his own boy lived, the baby that died -when it was born, he would be only a year older than Archie. At least, -this boy was of his own blood. Without father or mother, but _not_ -alone in the world; and, if any danger menaced, not without defenders. -The depression which had enveloped him lifted as mist before the sun, -burned away by the mere thought of possible difficulties. “We will -see if any one swindles you out of your share,” said Rupert Winter, -compressing the Winter mouth more firmly, “or if those gentlemanly -kidnappers mean you.” - -His ebbing suspicion of the boy’s companion revived; he would be on his -guard, all right. - -“Aunt Rebecca wants to see you,” Mrs. Melville suggested. “She is in -the drawing-room with her solitaire.” - -“Still playing Penelope’s Web?” - -“Oh, she always comes back to it. But she plays bridge, too; Rupert, I -hear your game is a wonder. Archie’s been learning, so he could play -with you.” - -“Good for Archie!”--he shot a glance and a smile at the lad’s reddening -face--“we’ll have a game.” - -“Lord, I wish he didn’t look quite so ladylike,” he was grumbling -within, as he dutifully made his way to his aunt’s presence. - -The electric lights flooded the flimsy railway table on which were -spread rows of small-sized cards. An elderly lady of quality was musing -over the pasteboard rows. A lady of quality--that was distinctly the -phrase to catch one’s fancy at the first glimpse of Mrs. Winter. Not -an aged lady, either, for even at eighty that elegantly moulded, -slim figure, that abundance of silvery hair--parted in the middle -and growing thickly on each side in nature’s own fashion, which art -can not counterfeit, as well as softly puffed and massed above--that -exquisitely colored and textured skin, strangely smooth for her years, -with tiny wrinkles of humor, to be sure, about the eyes, but with -cheeks and skin unmarred; that fine, firmly carved profile, those black -eyebrows and lashes and still brilliant dark eyes; most of all that -erect, alert, dainty carriage, gave no impression of age; but they all, -and their accessories of toilet and manner, and a little prim touch of -an older, more reticent day in both dress and bearing, recalled the -last century phrase. - -A soft gray bunch of chinchilla fur lay where she had slipped it on -her soft gray skirts; one hand rested in the fur--her left hand--and on -the third finger were the only rings which she wore, a band of gold, -worn by sixty years, and a wonderful ruby, wherein (at least such was -Rupert’s phantasy) a writhing flame was held captive by its guard of -diamond icicles. The same rings admired by her nephew ever since he was -a cadet--just the same smiling, inscrutable, high-bred, unchanging old -dame! - -“Good evening, Aunt Rebecca; not a day older!” said the colonel. - -“Good evening, Bertie,” returned the lady, extending a hand over the -cards; “excuse my not rising to greet you; I might joggle the cards. Of -course I’m not a day older; I don’t dare to grow older at my age! Sit -down. I’m extremely glad to see you; I’ve a heap to talk to you about. -Do you mind if I run this game through first?” - -The colonel didn’t mind. He raised the proffered hand to his lips; such -homage seemed quite the most natural act in the world with Mrs. Winter. -And he unobtrusively edged his own lean and wiry person into the vacant -seat opposite her. - -“How far are you going?” said she, after a few moves of the cards. - -“My ticket says Los Angeles; but it had to say something, so I chose -Los Angeles for luck; I’m an irresponsible tramp now, you know; and I -may drop off almost anywhere. You are for southern California, aren’t -you?” - -“Eventually; but we shall stop at San Francisco for two or three weeks.” - -“Do you mind if I stop off with you? I want to get acquainted with my -ward,” said the colonel. - -“That’s a good idea, Bertie.” - -“He seems rather out of sorts; you aren’t worried about--well, -tuberculosis or that sort of thing?” - -“I am worried about just that sort of thing; although the doctor says -nothing organic at all is the matter with him; but he is too melancholy -for a boy; he needs rousing; losing his father and mother in one year, -you know, and he was devoted to them. I can’t quite make him out, -Bertie; he hasn’t the Winter temperament. I suppose he has a legal -right to his mother’s nature; but it is very annoying. It makes him so -much harder to understand--not that she wasn’t a good woman who made -Tom happy; but she wasn’t a Winter. However, Janet has brightened him -up considerably--you’ve seen Janet--Miss Smith? What do you think of -her?” - -Winter said honestly that she was very nice-looking and that she looked -right capable; he fell into the idiom of his youth sometimes when with -a Southerner. - -“She is,” said Aunt Rebecca. - -“Where did you find her?” asked the colonel carelessly, inspecting the -cards. - -Aunt Rebecca smiled. “I thought Millicent would have given you all -the particulars. She was nurse, secretary, companion and diet cook to -Cousin Angela Nelson; when _she_ died I got her. Lucky for me.” - -“So I should judge,” commented the colonel politely. - -“I presume Millicent has told you that she is an adventuress and after -my money and a heap more stuff. If she hasn’t she will. Get a notion -once in Millicent’s head and a surgical operation is necessary to -dislodge it! Janet is the only mortal person who could live with poor -Cousin Angela, who had enough real diseases to kill her and enough -imaginary ones to kill anybody who lived with her! Janet made her -comfortable, would not stand everything on earth from her--though she -did stand a heap--and really cared for her. When she died Cousin Angela -left her some money; not very much, but a few thousands. She would -have left her more, but Janet wouldn’t let her. She left some to some -old servants, who surely deserved it for living with _her_, some to -charities and the rest to her sisters, who hadn’t put a foot inside the -house for fifteen years, but naturally resented her not giving them -everything. I reckon they filled Millicent up with their notions.” She -pushed the outspread cards together. - -“You had several moves left,” said the colonel. - -“Four. But then, I was finished. Bertie, you play bridge, of course; -and I used to hear of your whist triumphs; how did you happen to take -to whist?” - -“To fill up the time, I reckon. I began it years ago. Now a soldier’s -life is a great deal more varied, because a man will be shifted around -and get a show of the different kinds of service. And there are the -exams, and the Philippines--oh, plenty of diversions. But in the old -days a man in the line was billed for an awfully stupid time. I didn’t -care to take to drink; and I couldn’t read as you do if I’d had books, -which I hadn’t, so I took to playing cards. I played skat and poker -and whist, and of late years I’ve played bridge. Millicent plays?” - -“Millicent is a celebrated player. She was a great duplicate-whist -player, you know. To see Millicent in her glory, one should play -duplicate with her. I’m only a chump player; my sole object is to win -tricks.” - -“What else should it be?” - -Aunt Rebecca smiled upon him. “To give information to your partner. -The main object of the celebrated American-leads system is signaling -information to your partner. Incidentally, one tells the adversaries, -as well as one’s partner, which, however, doesn’t count really as much -as you might think; for most people don’t notice what their partners -play _very_ much, and don’t notice what their adversaries play at -all. Millicent is always so busy indicating things to her partner and -watching for his signals and his indications that you can run a cross -ruff in on her without her suspecting. She asked me once if she didn’t -play an intelligible game, and I told her she did; a babe in arms could -understand it. She didn’t seem quite pleased.” - -“How about Archie? Can he play a good game?” - -“Very fair for a boy of fourteen; he was fond of whist until his -troubles came,” said Mrs. Winter, with a faint clouding of her keen -gaze. “Since then he hasn’t taken much interest in anything. Janet has -brightened him up more than any one; and when he heard you were coming -that did rouse him. You are one of his heroes. He’s that sort of a -boy,” she added, with a tinge of impatience in her soft Southern voice. -As if to divert her thoughts, she began deftly moving the cards before -her. Her hands showed the blue veins more prominently than they show in -young hands. This was their only surrender to time; they were shapely -and white, and the slim fingers were as straight as when the beaux of -Fairfax County would have ridden all day for a chance to kiss them. - -The colonel watched the great ruby wink and glow. The ruby was a part -of his memories of his aunt; she had always worn it. He remembered -it, when she used to come and visit him at the hotel at West Point, -dazzling impartially officers, professors, cadets and hotel waiters. -Was that almost forty years ago? Well, thirty-four, anyhow! She had -been very good, very generous to all the young Winters, then. Indeed, -although she never quite forgave him for not marrying the wife of -her selecting, she had always been kind and generous to Rupert; yet, -somehow, while he had admired and found a humorous joy in his Aunt -Rebecca, he wondered if he had ever loved her. She was both beautiful -and brilliant when she was young, a Southern belle, a Northern society -leader; her life was full of conquests; her footsteps, which had -wandered over the world, had left a phosphorescent wake of admiration. -She had always been a personage. She was a power in Washington after -the war; they had found her uniquely delightful in royal courts long -before Americans were the fashion; she had been of importance in New -York, and they had loved her epigrams in Boston; now, in her old age, -she held a veritable little court of her own in the provincial Western -city which had been her husband’s home. He went to Congress from -Fairport; he had made a fortune there, and when he died, many years -ago, in Egypt, back to his Western home, with dogged determination and -lavish expenditures of both money and wit, his widow had brought him to -rest. The most intense and solemn experience of a woman she had missed, -for no children had come to them, but her husband had been her lover -so long as he lived, and she had loved him. She had known great men; -she had lived through wonderful events; and often her hand had been on -those secret levers which move vast forces. She had been in tragedies, -if an inviolable coolness of head, perhaps of heart, had shielded -her from being of them. The husband of her youth, the nearest of her -blood, the friends of her middle life--all had gone into the dark; yet -here she sat, with her smooth skin and her still lustrous eyes and her -fragrant hands, keenly smiling over her solitaire. The colonel wondered -if he could ever reconcile himself with such philosophy to his own -narrowed and emptied life; she was older than he, yet she could still -find a zest in existence. All the great passions gone; all the big -interests; and still her clever mind was working, happy, possibly, in -its mere exercise, disdaining the stake, she who had had every success. -What a vitality! He looked at her, puzzling. Her complexity bewildered -him, he not being of a complex nature himself. As he looked, suddenly -he found himself questioning why her face, in its revival of youthful -smoothness and tint, recalled some other face, recently studied by -him--a face that had worn an absolutely different expression; having -the same delicate aquiline nose, the same oval contour, the same wide -brows--who? who? queried the colonel. Then he nodded. Of course; it was -the man with the moles, the brother. He looked enough like Mrs. Winter -to be her kinsman. At once he put his guess to the test. “Aunt Becky,” -said he, “have you any kin I don’t know about?” - -“I reckon not. I’m an awfully kinless old party,” said she serenely. “I -was a Winter, born as well as married, and so you and Mel and Archie -are double kin to me. I was an only child, so I haven’t anything closer -than third or fourth cousins, down in Virginia and Boston.” - -“Have you, by chance, any cousin, near or far, named Mercer?” - -Resting her finger-tips on the cards, Aunt Rebecca seemed to let her -mind search amid Virginian and Massachusetts genealogical tables. “Why, -certainly,” she answered after a pause, “there was General Philemon -Mercer--Confederate army, you know--and his son, Sam Nelson; Phil was -my own cousin and Sam Nelson my second, and Sam Nelson’s sons would be -my third, wouldn’t they? Phil and Sam are both dead, and Winnie Lee, -the daughter, is dead, and poor Phil--the grandson, you know--poor -boy, _he_ shot himself while at Harvard; but his brother Cary is alive.” - -“Do you know him?” - -“Never saw him but once or twice. He has very good manners.” - -“Is he rich?” - -“He was, but after he had spent his youth working with incredible -industry and a great deal of ability to build up a steel business and -had put it into a little combination--not a big trust, just a genuine -corporation--some of the financial princes wanted it for a club--to -knock down bigger game, I reckon--and proceeded to cheapen the stock -in order to control it. Cary held on desperately, bought more than he -could hold, mortgaged everything else; but they were too big for him -to fight. It was in 1903, you know, when they had an alleged financial -panic, and scared the banks. Cary went to the wall, and Phil with him, -and poor Phil killed himself. Afterward Cary’s wife died; he surely did -have a mean time. And, to tell you the truth, Bertie, I think there has -been a little kink in Cary’s mind ever since.” - -“Did you hold any of Cary’s stock?” He was piecing his puzzle together. - -“Yes, but my stock was all paid for, and I held on to it; now it is -over par and paying dividends. Oh, the property was all right, had it -been kept in honest hands and run for itself. The trouble with Cary -was that in order to keep control of the property he bought a lot of -shares on margins, and when they began to run downhill, he was obliged -to borrow money on his actual holdings to protect his fictitious ones. -The stock went so low that he was wiped out. He wouldn’t take my advice -earlier in the game; and I knew that it would only be losing money to -lend it to him, later--still, sometimes I have been rather sorry I -didn’t. Would I better try the spade, Bertie, or the diamond?” - -The colonel advised the spade. He wondered whether he should repeat -to his aunt the few sentences which he had overheard from Mercer and -his companion; but a belief that old age worries easily, added to his -natural man’s disinclination to attack the feminine nerves, tipped the -scales against frankness. So, instead, he began to talk about Archie; -what was he like? was he fond of athletics? or was he a bookish lad? -Aunt Rebecca reported that he had liked riding and golf; but he was not -very rugged, and since his father’s death he had seemed listless to -a degree. “But he is better now,” she added with a trace of eagerness -quite foreign to her usual manner. “Janet Smith has roused him up; and -what do you suppose she has done? But really, you are the cause.” - -“I?” queried the colonel. - -“Just you. Archie, Janet argued, is the kind of nature that must have -some one to be devoted to.” - -“And has he taken a fancy to her? Or to you?” - -Aunt Rebecca’s eyes dulled a little and her delicate lips were twisted -by a smile which had more wistfulness than humor in it. “I’m not a -lovable person; anyhow, he does not love easily. We are on terms of -the highest respect, even admiration, but we haven’t got so far as -friendship, far less comradeship. Janet is different. But I don’t mean -Janet; she has grown absurdly fond of him; and I think he’s fond of -her; but what she did was to make him fond of you. You, General Rupert -Winter; why, that boy could pass an examination on your exploits and -not miss a question. Janet and he have a scrap-book with every printed -word about you, I do believe. And she has been amazingly shrewd. We -didn’t know how to get the youngster back to his sports while he was -out of school; and, in fact, an old woman like me is rather bewildered -by such a young creature, anyhow; but Janet rode with him; _you_ are a -remarkable rider; I helped there, because I remembered some anecdotes -about you at West Point--” - -“But, my dear Aunt--” - -“Don’t interrupt, Bertie, it’s a distinctly American habit. And -we read in the papers that you had learned that Japanese trick -fighting--jiu-jitsu--and were a wonder--” - -“I’m not, I assure you; that beast of a newspaper man--” - -“Never mind, if you are not a wonder, you’ll have to be; you can take -lessons in Los Angeles; there are quantities of Japs there. Why, even -in Chicago, Janet picked up one, and we imported him, and Archie took -lessons, and practises every day. There’s a book in my bag, in the -rack there, a very interesting book; Janet and I have both read it so -we could talk to Archie. You would better skim it over a little if you -really aren’t an expert, enough so you can _talk_ jiu-jitsu, anyhow; we -can’t be destroying Archie’s ideals until he gets a better appetite.” - -“Well, upon my word!” breathed the colonel. “Do you expect me to be -a fake hero? I never took more than two lessons in my life. That -reporter interviewed my teacher, who was killed in the Japanese War, -by the way; he went to the army after my second lesson. He didn’t know -any English beyond ‘yes’ and ‘if you please’; and he used them both on -the reporter, who let his own fancy go up like a balloon. Well, where -is the book?” - -He found it easily; and with a couple of volumes of another kidney, -over which he grinned. - -“_The Hound of the Baskervilles_ and _The Leavenworth Case_! I’ve read -them, too,” he said; “they’re great! And do you still like detective -stories? You would have made a grand sleuth yourself, Aunt Becky.” -Again he had half a mind to speak of the occurrence at the station; -again he checked the impulse. “I remember,” he added, “that you used to -hold strenuous opinions.” - -“You mean my thinking that the reason crimes escape discovery is not -that criminals are so bright, but that detectives in general are so -particularly stupid? Oh, yes, I think that still. So does Sir Conan -Doyle. And I have often wished I could measure my own wits, once, with -a really _fine_ criminal intellect. It would be worth the risk.” - -“God forbid!” said the colonel hastily. - -There came a tap on the door. - -“Millicent!” groaned Aunt Rebecca. “I know the creaking of her stays. -No, don’t stay, Bertie; go and get Janet and a rescue bridge party as -quick as you can!” - -“The original and only Aunt Rebecca,” thought the colonel at the door, -smiling. But, somehow, the handsome old dame never had seemed so nearly -human to him before. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -THE TRAIN ROBBERS - - -When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly -over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys -announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was wide and monotonous; a -sweep of illimitable cornfields in their winter disarray, or bleakly -fresh from the plow, all painted with a palette holding only drabs and -browns; here and there a dab of red in a barn or of white in windmill -or house; but these livelier tints so scattered that they were no more -than pin spots on the picture. The very sky was as dimly colored as the -earth, lighter, yet of no brighter hue than the fog which smoked up -from the ground. Later in the spring this same landscape would be of -a delicate and charming beauty; in summer or autumn it would make the -beholder’s pulses throb with its glorious fertility; but on a blurred -March morning it was as dreary as the reveries of an aging man who has -failed. - -Nevertheless, Rupert Winter’s first conscious sensation was not -depression, only a little tingle of interest and excitement, such as -stings pleasantly one who rises to a prospect of conflict in which -he has the confidence of his own strength. “By Jove!” he wondered, -“whatever makes me feel so kiddish?” - -His first impulse was to peep through his curtains into the car. It -wore its early morning aspect of muffled berths and stuffy curtains, -among which Miss Smith’s trig, carefully finished presence in a fresh -white shirt-waist, attended by the pleasant whiffs of cologne water, -gave the beholder a certain refreshing surprise. One hand (white and -firm and beautifully cared for) held a wicker bottle, source of the -pleasant whiffs; her sleek back braids were coiled about her comely -head, and the hair grew very prettily in a blunted point on the -creamy nape of her neck. It was really dark brown hair, but it looked -black against the whiteness of her skin. She had very capable-looking -shoulders, the colonel noted, and a flat back; perhaps she wasn’t -pretty, but in a long while he had not seen a more attractive-looking -woman. She made him think of a Bonne Celine rose, somehow. He could -hear her talking to some one behind the berth’s curtains. Could those -doleful moans emerge from Archie? Could a Winter boy be whimpering -about the jar of the train in that fashion? Immediately he was aware -that the sufferer was Randall, for Miss Smith spoke: “Drink the tea, -and lie down again, I’ll attend to Mrs. Winter. Don’t you worry!” - -“Getting solid with Randall,” commented the colonel. “Which is -she--kind-hearted, or an accomplished villainess? Well, it’s -interesting, anyhow.” - -By the time he had made his toilet the train was slacking speed ready -to halt in Council Bluffs, and all his suspicions rushed on deck again -at the sight of Miss Smith and Archie walking outside. - -He joined them, and he had to admit that Miss Smith looked as pleased -as Archie at his appearance. Nor did she send a single furtive glance, -slanting or backward, while they walked in the crisp, clean air. -Once the train had started and Miss Smith was in the drawing-room, -breakfasting with Mrs. Winter and Archie, he politely attended Mrs. -Millicent through the morning meal in the dining-car. It was so good -a meal that he naturally, although illogically, thought better of -Miss Smith’s prospects of innocence; and cheerily he sought Haley. -He found him in the smoking compartment of the observation-car, -having for companions no less personages than the magnate and a -distinguished-looking New Englander, who, Rupert Winter made no doubt, -was a Harvard professor of rank and renown among his learned kind. He -knew the earmarks of the species. The New Englander’s pencil was flying -over a little improvised pad of telegraph blanks, while he listened -with absorbed interest to Haley’s rich Irish tones. There was a little -sidewise lunge of Haley’s mouth, a faint twinkle of Haley’s frank and -simple eyes which the colonel appraised at very nearly their real -value. He knew that it isn’t in Irish-American nature to perceive a -wide-open ear and not put something worth hearing into it. Besides, his -sharp ears had brought him a key to the discourse, a sorrowful remark -of the sergeant’s as he entered: “Yes, sor, thim wather torchures is -_terrible_!” - -He glanced suspiciously from one of Haley’s audience to the other. The -newspaper cartoonist had pictured on all kinds of bodies of preying -creatures, whether of the earth or air, the high brows, the round head, -the delicate features, the thin cheeks, the straight line of the -mouth, and the mild, inexpressive eyes of the man before him. He had -been extolled as a far-sighted benefactor of the world, and execrated -picturesquely as the king of pirates who would scuttle the business of -his country without a qualm. - -Winter, amid his own questionings and problems, could not help a -scrutiny of a man whose power was greater than that of medieval kings. -He sat consuming a cigarette, more between his fingers than his lips; -and glancing under drooping eyelids from questioner to narrator. At the -colonel’s entrance he looked up, as did Haley, who rose to his feet -with an unconscious salute. “I’d be glad to spake wid youse a minnit, -if I might, General,” said Haley, “about where I put your dress-shute -case, sor.” - -The colonel, of course, did not expect any remarks about a suit case -when he got Haley by himself at the observation end of the car; but -what he did get was of sufficient import to drive out of his mind a -curt lecture about blackening the reputation of the army with lies -about the Philippines. Haley had told him that he had seen the man with -the two moles on his face jump out of his own car at Council Bluffs. -He had simply stood on the platform, looking to right and left for a -moment; then he had swung himself back on the car. Haley had watched -him walk down the aisle and enter the drawing-room. He did not come -out; Haley had found out that the drawing-room belonged to Edwin S. -Keatcham, “the big railroad man, sor.” - -“It doesn’t seem likely that _he_ would be an accomplice of a -kidnapper,” mused the colonel. “The man might have gone in there while -he was out.” - -“Sure, he might, sor; ’twas mesilf thinking that same; and I wint -beyant to the observation-car, and there the ould gintleman was -smoking.” - -“And you stopped to tell yarns to that other gentleman instead of -getting back and following--” - -“No, sor, I beg your pardon, sor; I was kaping me eyes open and on him; -for himsilf was in the observation-car where you are now, sor, until we -come in, and thin he walked back, careless like, to his own car. Will I -be afther following him?” - -“Yes; don’t lose him.” - -They did not lose him; they both saw him enter the drawing-room and -almost immediately come out and sit down in one of the open sections. - -“See if you can’t find out from the conductor where he is going,” the -colonel proposed to Haley; and he frowned over his thoughts for a bad -quarter of an hour at the window. The precipitate of all this mental -ferment was a determination to stick close to the boy, saying nothing. -He hoped that when they stopped over night at Salt Lake City, according -to Aunt Rebecca’s plan, they might shake off the “brother’s” company. -The day passed uneventfully. He played bridge with Mrs. Millicent and -Miss Smith and Archie, while Aunt Rebecca kept up her French with one -of Bentzon’s novels. - -Afterward she said grimly to him: “I think you must have been converted -out in the Philippines; you never so much as winced, that last hand; -no, you sat there smiling over your ruin as sweetly as if you enjoyed -it.” - -The colonel smiled again. “Ah, but, you see, I did enjoy it; didn’t you -notice the hand? No? Well, it was worth watching. It was the rubber -game; they were twenty-four and we were twenty-six and we were on the -seventh round; Miss Smith had made it hearts. She sat on my left, dummy -on my right. Millicent had the lead. She had four little spades, a -little club, the queen of hearts and a trey; dummy had the queen, the -ten and the nine of spades, it had the king of hearts and three clubs -with the jack at the top. I had a lovely diamond suit which I hadn’t -had a chance to touch, top sequence, ace, king, queen; I had the jack -of trumps and the jack of spades; and the queen and a little club. I -hadn’t a lead, you understand; Millicent had taken five tricks and -they had taken one; they needed six to win the game, we needed two; -see? Well, Millicent hadn’t any diamonds to lead me, and unhappily she -didn’t think to lead trumps through dummy, which would have made a -world of difference. She led a club; dummy put on the jack. I knew Miss -Smith had the ace and one low heart; no clubs, a lot of low diamonds, -and she might or might not have a spade. I figured that she had the -ace and a little one; if she would trump in with the little one, as -ninety-nine out of a hundred women would have done, her ace and her -partner’s king would fall together; or, at worst, he would have to -trump her diamond lead, after she had led out her king of spades, and -lead spades, which I could trump and bring in all my diamonds. Do you -take in the situation?” - -“You mean that Janet had the king of spades alone, the ace and the -little trump and four worthless diamonds? I see. It is a chance for the -grand _coup_; I reckon she played it.” - -“She _did_!” cried the colonel with unction. “She slapped that ace on -the trick, she modestly led her king of spades, gathered in my jack, -then ‘she stole, she stole my child away,’ my little jack of trumps; -it fell on dummy’s king, and dummy led out his spades and I had to see -that whole diamond suit slaughtered. They made their six tricks, the -game and the rubber; and I wanted to clap my hands over the neatness of -it.” - -“She is a good player,” agreed Aunt Rebecca, “and a very pleasant -person. You remember the epitaph, don’t you, Bertie? ‘She was so -pleasant.’ Yet Janet has had a heap of trouble; but, after all, -happiness is not a condition but a temperament; I suppose Janet has the -temperament. She’s a good loser, too; and she never takes advantage of -the rules.” - -“She certainly loves a straight game,” reflected the colonel. “I -confess I don’t like the kind of woman that is always grabbing a trick -if some one plays out of the wrong hand.” - -He said something of the kind to Millicent, obtaining but scant -sympathy in that quarter. - -“She’s deep, Bertie; I told you that,” was the only reply, “but I’m -watching. I have reason for my feeling.” - -“Maybe you have been misinformed,” ventured her brother-in-law with -proper meekness. - -“Not at all,” retorted she sharply. “I happen to know that she worked -against me with the Daughters.” - -“Daughters,” the colonel repeated inanely, “your daughters?” - -“Certainly not! The Daughters of the Revolution.” - -“It’s a mighty fine society, that; did a lot during the Spanish War. -And you are the state president, aren’t you?” - -“No, Rupert,” returned Mrs. Melville with dignity, “I am no longer -state regent. By methods that would shame the most hardened men -politicians I was defeated; why! didn’t you read about it?” - -“You know I only came back from the Philippines in February.” - -“It was in all the Chicago papers. I was interviewed myself. I assure -you the other candidates (there were two) tried the very _lowest_ -political methods. Melville said it was scandalous. There were at -least three luncheons given against me. It wasn’t the congress, it was -the lobby defeated me. And their methods! I would not believe that -gentlewoman could stoop to such infamy of misrepresentation.” The -colonel chewed his mustache; he felt for that reporter of the Chicago -paper; he was evidently getting a phonographic record now; he made an -inarticulate rumble of sympathy in his throat which was as the clucking -of the driver to the mettled horse. Mrs. Melville gesticulated with -Delsartian grace, as she poured forth her woes. - -“They accused me of a domineering spirit; they said I was trying to -set up a machine. _I!_ I worked for them, many a time, half the night, -at my desk; never was a letter unanswered; I did half the work of the -corresponding secretary; yet at the crucial moment _she betrayed me_! -I learned more in those two days of the petty jealousy, the pitiless -malevolence of _some_ women than I had known all my life before; but at -the same time, to the faithful band of friends”--the colonel had the -sensation of listening to the record again--“whose fidelity was proof -against ridicule and cruel misrepresentation, I return a gratitude -that will never wane. Rupert”--she turned herself in the seat and -waved the open palm of her hand in a graceful and dramatic gesture, -“--those women not only stooped to malignant falsehoods, they not only -trampled parliamentary law underfoot, but they circulated through the -hall a cartoon called the _Making of the Slate_. Of course, we had -our quarters at a hotel, and after the evening meeting, after I had -retired, in fact, a bell-boy brought me a message; it was necessary -to have a meeting at once, to decide for the secretaryship, as we had -found out Mrs. Ellennere was false. The ladies in the adjoining rooms -and the others of us on the board who were loyal came into my chamber. -Rupert, will you believe it, those women, had a grotesque picture of -_us_, with faces cut out of the newspapers--of course, all our pictures -were in the papers--and they had the audacity and the meanness to -picture me in--in the garments of night!” - -“That was pretty tough. But where does Miss Smith come in?” - -“She was at the convention. She is a Daughter. I’ve always said we are -too lax in our admissions.” - -“Who drew the picture?” - -“It may not be Miss Smith, but--she does draw. I’m _sure_ that she -worked against me; she covered up her footprints so that I have no -proof; but I suspect her. She’s deep, Bertie, she’s deep. But she can’t -hoodwink _me_. I’ll find her out.” - -The colonel experienced the embarrassment that is the portion of a rash -man trying to defend one woman against another; he retreated because he -perceived defense was in vain; but he did not feel his growing opinion -of Miss Smith’s innocence menaced by Mrs. Melville’s convictions. - -She played too square a game for a kidnapper--and Smith was the -commonest of names. No, there must be some explanation; Rupert Winter -had lived too long not to distrust the plausible surface clue. “It is -the improbable that always happens, and the impossible most of the -time,” Aunt Rebecca had said once. He quite agreed with her whimsical -phrase. - -Nothing happened to arouse his suspicions that day. Haley reported -that Cary Mercer was going on to San Francisco. The conductor did not -know his name; he seemed to know Mr. Keatcham and was with him in his -drawing-room most of the time. Had the great man a secretary with him? -Yes, he seemed to have, a little fellow who had not much to say for -himself, and jumped whenever his boss spoke to him. There was also a -valet, an Englishman, who did not respond properly to conversational -overtures. They were all going to get off at Denver. - -Haley was not misinformed, as the colonel perceived with his own -eyes--and he saw Cary Mercer bow in parting to the great man, who -requited the low salute with a gruff nod. Here was an opportunity for a -nearer glimpse of Mercer, possibly for that explanation in which Winter -still had a lurking hope. He caught Mercer just in the car doorway, and -politely greeted him: “Mr. Mercer, I think? You may not remember me, -Colonel Winter. I met you in Cambridge, three years ago--” - -It seemed a brutal thing to do, to recall a meeting under such -circumstances; but if Mercer could give the explanation he would -excuse him; it was better than suspecting an innocent man. But there -was no opportunity for explanation. Mercer turned a blank and coldly -suspicious face toward him. “I beg pahdon,” he said in his Southern -way, “I think you have made a mistake in the person.” - -“And are you _not_ Mr. Cary Mercer?” The colonel felt the disagreeable -resemblance of his own speeches to those made in newspaper stories by -the gentleman who wishes his old friend to change a fifty-dollar bill -or to engage in an amusing game with a thimble. Mercer saw it as well -as he. “Try some one from the country,” he remarked with an unpleasant -smile, brushing past, while the color mounted to the colonel’s tanned -cheek. “The _next_ time you meet me,” Rupert Winter vowed, “you’ll know -me.” - -A new porter had come on at Denver; a light brown, chubby, bald man -with a face that radiated friendliness. He was filled with the desire -for conversation, and he had worked on the road for eight years, hence -could supplement _Over the Range_ and the other guide-books with -personal gossip. He showed marked deference to the colonel, which -that unassuming and direct man could not quite fathom, until Archie -enlightened him. Archie smiled, a queer, chewed-up smile which the -colonel hailed with: - -“Why are you making fun of me, young man?” - -“It’s Lewis, the porter; he follows you round and listens to you in -such an awestruck way.” - -“But why?” - -“Why, Sergeant Haley told him about you; and I told him a _little_, -and he says he wishes you’d been on the train when they had the -hold-ups. This is an awful road for hold-ups, he says. He’s been at -five hold-ups.” - -“And what does he advise?” - -“Oh, he says, hold up your hands and they won’t hurt you.” - -“Well, I reckon his advice is sound,” laughed the colonel. “See you -follow it, Archie.” - -“Shall _you_ hold up your hands, Uncle Bertie?” asked Archie. - -“Much the wisest course; these fellows shoot.” - -Archie looked disappointed. “I suppose so,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I’d -want to, if they were pointing pistols at me. Lewis was on the train -once when a man showed fight. He wouldn’t put up his hands, and the -bandit plugged him, like a flash; he fell crosswise over the seat and -the blood spurted across Lewis’ wrist; he said it was like a hot jet of -water.” - -The homely and bizarre horror of the picture had evidently struck home -to Archie; he half shivered. - -“Too much imagination,” grumbled the colonel to himself. “A Winter -ought to take to fighting like a duck to water!” He betook himself to -Miss Smith; and he was uneasily conscious that he was going to her for -consoling. But he felt better after a little talk about Archie with -her. Plainly she thought Archie had plenty of spirit; although, of -course, he hadn’t told her about the bandits. The negro was “kidding” -the passengers; and women shouldn’t be disturbed by such nonsense. -The colonel had old-fashioned views of guarding his womankind from -the harsh ways of the world. Curious, he reflected, what sense Miss -Smith seemed to have; and how she understood things. He felt better -acquainted with her than a year’s garrison intercourse would have made -him with any other woman he knew. - -That afternoon, they two sat watching the fantastic cliffs which took -grotesque semblance of ruined castles crowning their barren hillsides; -or of deserted amphitheaters left by some vanished race to crumble. -They had talked of many things. She had told him of the sleepy old -South Carolinian town where she was born, and the plantation and the -distant cousin who was like her mother, and the hospital where she -had been taught, and the married sister who had died. Such a narrow, -laborious, innocent existence as she described! How cheerfully, too, -she had shouldered her burdens! They talked of the South and of the -Philippines; a little they talked of Archie and his sorrow and of the -eternal problems that have troubled the soul of man since first death -entered the world. As they talked, the colonel’s suspicions faded into -grotesque shadows. “Millicent is ridiculous,” quoth he. Then he fell to -wondering whether there had been a romance in Miss Smith’s past life. -“Such a handsome woman would look high,” he sighed. Only twenty-four -hours ago he had called Miss Smith “nice-looking,” with careless -criticism. He was quite unconscious of his change of view. That night -he felt lonely, of a sudden; the old wound in his heart ached; his -future looked as bleak as the mountain-walled plains through which -he was speeding. After a long time the train stopped with a jar and -rattle, ending in a sudden shock. He raised the curtain to catch the -flash of the electric lights at Glenwood. Out of the deep defile they -glittered like diamonds in a pool of water. Why should he think of Miss -Smith’s eyes? With an impatient sigh, he pulled down the curtain and -turned over to sleep. - -His thoughts drifted, floated, were submerged in a wavering procession -of pictures; he was back in the Philippines; they had surprised the -fort; how could that be when he was on guard? But they were there-- -He sat up in his berth. Instinctively he slipped the revolver out of -his bag and held it in one hand, as he peeped through the crevice -of the curtains. There was no motion, no sound of moving; but heads -were emerging between the curtains in every direction; and Archie was -standing, his hands shaking above his tumbled brown head and pale face. -A man in a soft hat held two revolvers while another man was pounding -on the drawing-room door, gruffly commanding those inside to come -out. “No, we shall not come out,” responded Aunt Rebecca’s composed, -well-bred accents, her neat enunciation not disturbed by a quiver. “If -you want to kill an old woman, you will have to break down the door.” - -“Let them alone, Shay, it takes too long; let’s finish here, first,” -called the man with the revolver; “they’ll come soon enough when we -want them. Here, young feller, fish out! Nobody’ll get hurt if you keep -quiet; if you don’t you’ll get a dose like the man in number six, two -years ago. Hustle, young feller!” - -The colonel was eying every motion, every shifting from one foot to -the other. Let them once get by Archie-- - -The boy handed over his pocket-book. - -“Now your watch,” commanded the brigand; “take it, Shay!” - -“Won’t you please let me keep that watch?” faltered Archie; “that was -papa’s watch.” - -The childish name from the tall lad made the robber laugh. “And mama’s -little pet wants to keep it, does he? Well, he can’t. Get a move on -you!” - -The colonel had the sensation of an electric shock; as the second -robber grabbed at the fob in the boy’s belt, Archie struck him with the -edge of his open hand so swiftly and so fiercely under the jaw that -he reeled back against his companion. The colonel’s surprise did not -disturb the automatic aim of an old fighter of the plains; his revolver -barked; and he sprang out, on the man he shot. “Get back in the berths, -all of you,” he shouted; “give me a chance to shoot!” - -The voice of the porter, whose hands had been turning up the lights not -quite steadily, now pealed out with camp-meeting power, “Dat’s it; give -de colonel a chance to do some killing!” - -Both bandits were sprawling on the floor of the aisle, one limp and -moaning; but the other got one hand up to shoot; only to have Archie -kick the revolver out of it, while at the same instant an umbrella -handle fell with a wicked whack on the man’s shoulder. The New England -professor was out of his berth. He had been a baseball man in his own -college days; his bat was a frail one, but he hit with a will; and -a groan told of his success. Nevertheless, the fellow scrambled to -his feet. Mrs. Melville was also out of her berth, thanks to which -circumstance he was able to escape; as the colonel (who had grappled -with the other man and prevented his rising) must needs have shot -through his sister-in-law to hit the fleeing form. - -[Illustration: Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie, holding the watch. -Page 67] - -“What’s the matter?” demanded Mrs. Melville, while the New Englander -used an expression which, no doubt, as a good church-member, he -regretted, later, and the colonel thundered: “All the women back into -their berths. Don’t anybody shoot! You, professor, look after that -fellow on the floor.” He was obeyed; instinctively, the master of the -hour is obeyed. The porter came forward and helped the New Englander -bind the prostrate outlaw, with two silk handkerchiefs and a pair of -pajamas, guard mount being supplied by three men in very startling -costumes; and a kind of seraglio audience behind the curtains of the -berth being enacted by all the women in the car, only excepting Aunt -Rebecca and Miss Smith. Aunt Rebecca, in her admirable traveling -costume of a soft gray silk wrapper, looked as undisturbed as if -midnight alarms were an every-night feature of journeys. Miss Smith’s -black hair was loosely knotted; and her face looked pale, while her -dark eyes shone. They all heard the colonel’s revolver; they all saw -the two men who had met him at the car door spring off the platform -into the dark. The robbers had horses waiting. The colonel got one -shot; he saw the man fall over his horse’s neck; but the horse galloped -on; and the night, beyond the little splash of light, swallowed them -completely. - -After the conductor and the engineer had both consulted him, and the -express messenger had appeared, armed to the teeth, a little too late -for the fray, but not too late for lucid argument, Winter made his -way back to the car. Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie; she was -holding the watch, which had played so important a part in the battle, -up under the electric light to examine an inscription. The loose black -sleeves of her blouse fell back, revealing her arms; they were white -and softly rounded. She looked up; and the soldier felt the sudden rush -of an emotion that he had not known for years; it caught at his throat -almost like an invisible hand. - -“Well, Archie,” he said foolishly, “good for jiu-jitsu!” - -Archie flushed up to his eyes. - -“Why didn’t you obey orders, young man, and hold up your hands?” said -Colonel Rupert Winter. “You’re as bad as poor Haley, who is nearly -weeping that he had no chance, but only broke away from Mrs. Haley in -time to see the robbers make off.” - -“I--I did at first; but I got so mad I forgot,” stammered Archie -happily. “Afterward you were my superior officer and I had to do what -you said.” - -All the while he chaffed the boy, he was watching for that beautiful -look in Janet Smith’s eyes; and wondering when he could get her off by -herself to brag to her of the boy’s courage. When his chance at a few -words did come he chuckled: “Regular fool Winter! I knew he would act -in just that absurd, reckless way.” Then he caught the look he wanted; -it surely was a lovely, womanly look; and it meant--what in thunder -_did_ it mean? As he puzzled, his pulses gave the same unaccountable, -smothering leap; and he felt as the boy of twenty had felt, coming back -from his first battle to his first love. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -THE VANISHING OF ARCHIE - - -“In my opinion,” said Aunt Rebecca, critically eying her new -drawing-room on the train to San Francisco; “the object of our legal -methods seems to be to defend the criminal. And a very efficient means -to this end is to make it so uncomfortable and costly and inconvenient -for any witness of a crime that he runs away rather than endure it. -Here we have had to stay over so long in Salt Lake we nearly lost our -drawing-room. But never mind, you got your man committed. Did you find -out anything about his gang?” - -The colonel shook his head. “No, he’s a tough country boy; he has -the rural distrust of lawyers and of sweat-boxes. He does absolutely -nothing but groan and swear, pretending his wound hurts him. But I’ve a -notion there are bigger people back of him. It’s most awfully good of -you, Aunt Rebecca, to stick to me this way.” - -“Of course, I stick to you; I’m too old to be fickle. Did you ever -know a Winter who wouldn’t stand by his friends? I belong to the old -régime, Bertie; we had our faults--glaring ones, I dare say--but if -we condoned sin too readily, we never condoned meanness; such a trick -as that upstart Keatcham is doing would have been impossible to my -contemporaries. You saw the morning papers; you know he means to eat up -the Midland?” - -“Yes, I know,” mused the colonel; “and turn Tracy, the president, -down--the one who gave him his start on his bucaneering career. Tracy -declines to be his tool, being, I understand, a very decent sort of -man, who has always run his road for his stock-holders and not for the -stock-market. A capital crime, that, in these days. So Keatcham has, -somehow, by one trick or another, got enough directors since Baneleigh -died to give him the control; though he couldn’t get enough of the -stock; and now he means to grab the road to use for himself. Poor -Tracy, who loves the road as a child, they say, will have to stand by -and see it turned into a Wall Street foot-ball; and the equipment run -down as fast as its reputation. I think I’m sorry for Tracy. Besides, -it’s a bad lookout, the power of such fellows; men who are not captains -of industry, not a little bit; only inspired gamblers. Yet they are -running the country. I wonder where is the class that will save us.” - -“I don’t know. I don’t admire the present century, Bertie. We had -people of quality in my day; we have only people of culture in this. I -confess I prefer the quality. They had robuster nerves and really asked -less of people, although they may have appeared to ask more. _We_ used -to be contented with respect from our inferiors and courtesy from our -equals--” - -“And what from your betters, Aunt Rebecca?” drawled the colonel. - -“We had no betters, Rupert; we were the best. I think partly it was our -assurance of our position, which nobody else doubted any more than we, -that kept us so mannerly. Nowadays, nobody has a real position. He may -have wealth and a servile following, who expect to make something out -of him, but he hasn’t position. The newspapers can make fun of him. -The common people watch him drive by and never think of removing their -caps. Nobody takes him seriously except his toadies and himself. And -as for the sentiments of reverence and loyalty, very useful sentiments -in running a world, they seem to have clean disappeared, except”--she -smiled a half-reluctant smile--“except with youngsters like Archie, -who would find it agreeable to be chopped into bits for _you_, and the -women who have not lived in the world, like Janet, who makes a heroine -out of _me_--upon my word, Bertie, _je t’ai fait rougir_!” - -“Not at all,” said the colonel; “an illusion of the sunset; but what do -you mean when you say people of quality required less than people of -culture?” - -“Oh, simply this; all _we_ demanded was deference; but your cultivated -gang wants admiration and submission, and will not let us possess our -secret souls, even, in peace. And, then, the quality despised no one, -but the cultivated despise every one. Ah, well-- - - ‘Those good old times are past and gone, - I sigh for them in vain,--’ - -Janet, I wish Archie would fish his mandolin out and you would sing to -me; I like to hear the songs of my youth. Not rag-time, or coon-songs, -but dear old Foster’s melodies; _Old Kentucky Home_, and _Massa’s in -the Col’, Col’ Ground_, and _Nellie Was a Lady_--what makes that so -sad, I wonder?--‘Nellie was a lady, las’ night she died;’ it’s all -in that single line; I think it is because it represents the pathetic -idealization of love; Nellie was that black lover’s ideal of all that -was lovely, and she was dead. Is the orchestra ready--and the choir? -Yes, shut the door; we are for art’s sake only, not for the applause of -the cold world in the car.” - -Afterward, when he was angry over his own folly, his own blind, -dogged, trustfulness against all the odds of evidence, Rupert Winter -laid his weakness to that hour; to a woman’s sweet, untrained, tender -voice singing the simple melodies of his youth. They sang one song -after another while the sun sank lower and stained the western sky. -Through the snow-sheds they could catch glimpses of a wild and strange -nature; austere, yet not repelling; vistas of foot-hills bathed in -the evening glow; rank on rank of firs, tall, straight, beautiful, -not wind-tortured and maimed, like the woeful dwarfs of Colorado; and -wonderful snow-capped mountain peaks, with violet shadows and glinting -streaks of silver. Snow everywhere: on the hillsides; on the close -thatch of the firs; on the ice-locked rivers; snow freshly fallen, -softly tinted, infinitely, awesomely pure. - -Presently they came out into a lumber country where the mills huddled -in the hollows, over the streams. Huge fires were blazing on the -river-banks. Their tawny red glare dyed the snow for a long distance, -making entrancing tints of rose and yellow; and the dark green of the -pines, against this background, looked strangely fresh. And then, -without warning, they plunged into the dimness of another long wooden -tunnel and emerged into lovely spring. The trees were in leaf, and not -alone the trees; the undulating swells of pasture land and roadside -by the mountains were covered with a tender verdure; and there were -innumerable vines and low glossy shrubs with faintly colored flowers. - -“This is like the South,” said Miss Smith. - -Archie was devouring the scene. “Doesn’t it just somehow make you feel -as if you couldn’t breathe, Miss Janet?” said he. - -“Are you troubled with the high altitude?” asked Millicent anxiously; -“I have prepared a little vial of spirits of ammonia; I’ll fetch it for -you.” - -The colonel had some ado to rescue Archie; but he was aided by the -porter, who was now passing through the car proclaiming: “You all have -seen Dutch Flat Mr. Bret Hahte wrote ’bout; nex’ station is Shady Run; -and eve’ybody look and see the greates’ scenic ’traction of dis or any -odder railroad, Cape Hohn!” - -Instantly, Mrs. Melville fished her guide-book and began to read: - -“‘There are few mountain passes more famous than that known to the -world as Cape Horn. The approach to it is picturesque, the north fork -of the American River raging and foaming in its rocky bed, fifteen -hundred feet below and parallel with the track--’” - -“Do you mind, Millicent, if we look instead of listen?” Aunt Rebecca -interrupted, and Mrs. Melville lapsed into an injured muteness. - -Truly, Cape Horn has a poignant grandeur that strikes speech from the -lips. One can not look down that sheer height to the luminous ghost -of a river below, without a thrill. If to pass along the cliff is a -shivering experience, what must the actual execution of that stupendous -bit of engineering have been to the workmen who hewed the road out of -the rock, suspended over the abyss! Their dangling black figures seem -to sway still as one swings around the curve. - -Our travelers sat in silence, until the “Cape” was passed and again -they could see their road-bed on the side. Then Mrs. Melville made a -polite excuse for departure; she had promised a “Daughter” whom she -had met at various “biennials” that she would have a little talk with -her. Thus she escaped. They did not miss her. Hardly speaking, the -four sat in the dimly lighted, tiny room, while mountains and fields -and star-sown skies drifted by. Unconsciously, Archie drew closer to -his uncle, and the older man threw an arm about the young shoulders. -He looked up to meet Janet’s eyes shining and sweet, in the flash of a -passing station light. Mrs. Winter smiled, her wise old smile. - -With the next morning came another shift of scene; they were in the -fertile valleys of California. At every turn the landscape became more -softly tinted, more gracious. Aunt Rebecca was in the best of humor -and announced herself as having the journey of her life. The golden -green of the grain fields, the towering palms, the pepper-trees with -their fascinating grace, the round tops of the live-oaks, the gloss -of the orange groves, the calla-lily hedges and the heliotrope and -geranium trees which climbed to the second story of the stucco houses, -filled her with the enthusiasm of a child. She drank in the cries -of the enterprising young liar who cried “Fresh figs,” months out of -season, and she ate fruit, withered in cold storage, with a trustful -zest. No less than three books about the flora of California came out -of her bag. A certain vine called the Bougainvillea, she was trying -to find, if only the cars would not go so fast; as for poinsettias, -she certainly should raise her own for Christmas. She was learned in -gardens and she discoursed with Miss Smith on the different kinds of -trumpet-vine, and whether the white jasmine trailing among the gaudy -clusters was of the same family as that jasmine which they knew in the -pine forests. But she disparaged the roses; they looked shop-worn. The -colonel watched her in amazement. - -“Bertie, I make you think of that little dwarf of Dickens’, don’t -I?” she cried. “Miss Muffins, Muggins? what _was_ her name? You are -expecting me to exclaim, ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ Thank Heaven, I am. I -could always take an interest in trifles. It has been my salvation to -cultivate an interest in trifles, Bertie; there are a great many more -trifles than crises in life. Where has Janet gone? Oh, to give the -porter the collodion for his cut thumb. People with troubles, big or -little, are always making straight for Janet. Bertie, have you made -your mind up about her?” - -“Only that she is charming,” replied the colonel. He did not change -color, but he was uneasily conscious that he winced, and that the -shrewd old critic of life and manners perceived it. But she was -mercifully blind to all appearance; she went on with the little frown -of the solver of a psychological enigma. “Yes, Janet is charming; and -why? She is the stillest creature. Have you noticed? Yet you never have -the sense that she hasn’t answered you. She’s the best listener in the -world; and there’s one thing about her unusual in most listeners--her -eyes never grow vacant.” - -Rupert had noticed; he called himself a doddering old donkey silently, -because he had assumed that there was anything personal in the interest -of those eyes when he had spoken. Of course not; it was her way with -every one, even Millicent, no doubt. His aunt’s next words were lost, -but a sentence caught his ear directly: “For all she’s so gentle, she -has plenty of spirit. Bertie, did I ever tell you about the time our -precious cousin threw our great-great-grandfather’s gold snuff-box at -her? No? It was funny. She flew into one of her towering rages, and -shrieking, ‘Take _that_!’ hurled the snuff-box at Janet. Janet wasn’t -used to having things thrown at her. She caught the box, then she rang -the bell. ‘Thank you very much,’ says Janet; and when old Aunt Phrosie -came, she handed the snuff-box to her, saying it had just been given to -her as a present. But she sent it that same day to one of the sisters. -There was never anything else thrown at her, I can tell you.” - -They found a wonderful sunset on the bay when San Francisco was -reached. Still in her golden humor, as they rattled over the -cobblestones of the picturesque streets to the Palace Hotel, Mrs. -Winter told anecdotes of Robert Louis Stevenson, obtained from a -friend who had known his mother. Mrs. Winter had chosen the Palace in -preference to the St. Francis, to Mrs. Melville’s high disgust. - -“She thinks it more typical,” sneered Millicent; “myself, I prefer -cleanliness and comfort to types.” - -Their rooms were waiting for them and two bell-boys ushered Mrs. -Winter into her suite. Randall was lodged on the same floor, and Mrs. -Melville, who was to spend a few days with her aunt on the latter’s -invitation, was on a lower floor. The colonel had begged to have Archie -next to him; and he examined the quarters with approbation. His own -room was the last of the suite; to the right hand, between his room and -Archie’s, was their bath; then the parlor of Mrs. Winter’s suite next -her room and bath, and last, to the right, Miss Smith’s room. - -Archie was sitting by the window looking out on the street; only the -oval of his soft boyish cheek showed. The colonel went by him to the -parlor beyond, where he encountered his aunt, her hands full of gay -postal cards. - -“_Souvenirs de voyage_,” she answered his glance; “I am going to post -them.” - -“Can’t I take them for you?” - -“No, thanks, I want the exercise.” - -“May I go with you?” - -“Indeed, no. My dear Bertie, I’m only aged, I’m not infirm.” - -“You will _never_ be aged,” responded the colonel gallantly. He turned -away and walked along the arcade which looked down into the great court -of the hotel. Millicent was approaching him; Millicent in something of -a temper. Her room was hideously draughty and she could not get any -one, although she had rung and telephoned to the office and tried -every device which was effectual in a well-conducted hotel; but this, -she concluded bitterly, was not well-conducted; it was only typical. - -“There’s a lovely fire in Aunt Rebecca’s parlor,” soothed the colonel; -“come in there.” - -Afterward it seemed to him that this whole interview with Millicent -could not have occupied more than four minutes; that it was not more -than seven minutes since he had seen Archie’s shapely curly head -against the curtain fall of the window. - -But when he opened the door, Miss Smith came toward them. “Is Archie -with Aunt Rebecca?” said she. - -The colonel answered that he had left him in the parlor; perhaps he had -stepped into his own room. - -But neither in Archie’s nor the colonel’s nor in any room of the party -could they find the boy. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -BLIND CLUES - - -“But this is preposterous,” cried Mrs. Melville, “you _must_ have seen -him had he come out of the room; you were directly in front of the -doors all the time.” - -“I was,” admitted the colonel; “can--can the boy be hiding to scare -us?” He spoke to Miss Smith. She had grown pale; he did not know that -his own color had turned. Millicent stared from one to the other. - -“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed; “of course not; but he must be -somewhere; let _me_ look!” - -Look as they might through all the staring, empty rooms, there was no -vestige of the boy. He was as clean vanished as if he had fallen out of -the closed and locked windows. The colonel examined them all; had there -been one open, he would have peered outside, frightened as he had never -been when death was at his elbow. But it certainly wasn’t possible to -jump through a window, and not only shut, but lock it after one. - -Under every bed, in every closet, he prowled; he was searching still -when Mrs. Winter returned. By this time Mrs. Melville was agitated, -and, naturally, irritated as well. “I think it is unpardonable in -Archie to sneak out in this fashion,” she complained. - -“I suppose the boy wanted to see the town a bit,” observed Aunt Rebecca -placidly. “Rupert, come in and sit down; he will be back in a moment; -smoke a cigar, if your nerves need calming.” - -Rupert felt as if he were a boy of ten, called back to common sense out -of imaginary horrors of the dark. - -“But, if he wanted to go out, why did he leave his hat and coat behind -him?” asked Miss Smith. - -“He may be only exploring the hotel,” said Mrs. Winter. “Don’t be so -restless, Bertie; sit down.” - -The colonel’s eye was furtively photographing every article of -furniture in the room; it lingered longest on Mrs. Winter’s -wardrobe-trunk, which was standing in her room. Randall had been -despatched for a hot-water bottle in lieu of one which had sprung a -leak on the train; so the trunk stood, its door ajar. - -“Maybe he is doing the Genevra stunt in there--is that what you are -thinking?” she jeered. “Well, go and look.” - -Light as her tone was, she was not unaffected by the contagion of -anxiety about her; after a moment, while Rupert was looking at the -wardrobe-trunk, and even profanely exploring the swathed gowns held in -rigid safety by bands of rubber, she moved about the rooms herself. - -“There isn’t room for a mouse in that box,” growled the colonel. - -“Of course not,” said his aunt languidly, sinking into the easiest -chair; “but your mind is easier. Archie will come back for dinner; -don’t worry.” - -“How could he get by _me_?” retorted the colonel. - -“Perhaps he went into one of the neighboring rooms,” Miss Smith -suggested. “Shall I go out and rap on the door of the next room on the -left?” On the right the last room of the party was a corner room. - -“Why, you _might_,” acquiesced Aunt Rebecca; but Mrs. Melville cut the -ends of her words. - -“Pray let me go, Aunt Rebecca,” she begged, suiting the action to the -words, and was out of the door almost ahead of her sentence. - -The others waited; they were silent; little flecks of color raddled -Mrs. Winter’s cheeks. They could hear Millicent’s knock reverberating. -There was no answer. “Telephone to the adjacent rooms,” proposed the -colonel. - -“I’ll telephone,” said Mrs. Winter, and rang up the number of the next -room. There was no response; but when she called the number of the -room adjoining, she seemed to get an answer, for she announced her -name. “Have you seen a young lad?” she continued, after an apology for -disturbing them. “He belongs to our party; has he by chance got into -your room? and is he there?” In a second she put down the receiver with -a heightened color, saying, “They might be a little civiler in their -answers, if it _is_ Mr. Keatcham’s suite.” - -“What did the beggar say?” bristled the colonel. - -“Only that it was Mr. Keatcham’s suite--Mr. E. S. Keatcham--as if -_that_ put getting into it quite out of the question. Some underling, I -presume.” - -“There is the unoccupied room between. That is not accounted for. -But it shall be. I will find out who is in there.” Rupert rose as he -spoke, pricked by the craving for action of a man accustomed to quick -decision. He heard his aunt brusquely repelling Millicent’s proposal of -the police, as he left the room. Indeed, she called him back to exact a -promise that he would not make Archie’s disappearance public. “We want -to find him,” was her grim addendum; “and we can’t have the police and -the newspapers hindering us.” - -In the office, he found external courtesy and a rather perfunctory -sympathy, based on a suppressed, but perfectly visible conviction that -the boy had stolen out for a glimpse of the city, and would be back -shortly. - -The manager had no objection to telling Colonel Winter, whom he knew -slightly, that the occupant of the next room was a New England lady -of the highest respectability, Mrs. Winthrop Wigglesworth. If the -young fellow didn’t turn up for dinner, he should be glad to ask -Mrs. Wigglesworth to let Mrs. Winter examine her room; but he rather -thought they would be seeing young Winter before then--oh, his hat? -They usually carried caps in their pockets; and as to coats--boys never -thought of their coats. - -The manager’s cheeriness did not especially uplift the colonel. He -warmed it over dutifully, however, for his womankind’s benefit. Miss -Smith had gone out; why, he was not told, and did not venture to ask. -Mrs. Melville kept making cautious signals to him behind his aunt’s -back; otherwise she was preserving the mien of sympathetic solemnity -which she was used to show at funerals and first visits of condolence -and congratulation to divorced friends. Mrs. Winter, as usual, wore an -inscrutable composure. She was still firmly opposed to calling in the -aid of the police. - -Did she object to his making a few inquiries among the hotel bell-boys, -the elevator boy and the people in the restaurant or in the office? - -Not at all, if he would be cautious. - -So he sallied out, and, in the midst of his fruitless inquisition, -Millicent appeared. - -Forcing a civil smile, he awaited her pleasure. “Go on, don’t mind me,” -said she mournfully; “you will feel better to have done everything in -your power.” - -“But I shall not discover anything?” - -“I fear not. Has it not occurred to you that he has been kidnapped?” - -“Hmn!” said the colonel. - -“And did you notice how perturbed Miss Smith seemed? She was quite -pale; her agitation was quite noticeable.” - -“She is tremendously fond of Archie.” - -“Or--she knows more than she will say.” - -“Oh, what rot!” sputtered the colonel; then he begged her pardon. - -“Wait,” he counseled, and his man’s resistance to appearances had -its effect, as masculine immobility always has, on the feminine -effervescence before him. “Wait,” was his word, “at least until we give -the boy a chance to turn up; if he has slipped by us, he is taking a -little _pasear_ on his own account; lads do get restless sometimes if -they are held too steadily in the leash, especially--if you will excuse -me--by, well, by ladies.” - -“If he has frightened us out of our wits--well, I don’t know what -oughtn’t to be done to him!” - -“Oh well, let us wait and hear _his_ story,” repeated the soldier. - -But the last streaks of red faded out of the west; a chill fog smoked -up from the darkening hills, and Archie had not come. At eight, Mrs. -Winter ordered dinner to be served in their rooms. Miss Smith had -not returned. The colonel attempted a military cheerfulness, which -his aunt told him bluntly, later in the evening, reminded her of a -physician’s manner in critical cases where the patient’s mind must be -kept absolutely quiet. - -But she ate more than he at dinner; although her own record was not a -very good one. Millicent avowed that she was too worried to eat, but -she was tempted by the strawberries and carp, and wondered were the -California fowls really so poor; and gave the sample the benefit of -impartial and fair examination, in the end making a very fair meal. - -It is not to be supposed that Winter had been idle; before dinner he -had put a guard in the hall and had seen Haley, who reported that his -wife and child had gone to a kinswoman in Santa Barbara. - -“Sure the woman has a fine house intirely, and she’s fair crazy over -the baby that’s named afther her, for she’s a widdy woman with never a -child excipt wan that’s in hivin, a little gurrl; and she wudn’t let -us rist ’til she’d got the cratur’. Nor I wasn’t objictin’, for I’m -thinking there’ll be something doin’ and the wimin is onconvanient, -thim times.” - -The colonel admitted that he shared Haley’s opinion. He questioned the -man minutely about Mercer’s conduct on the train. It was absolutely -commonplace. If he had any connection (as the colonel had suspected) -with the bandits, he made no sign. He sent no telegrams; he wrote no -letters; he made no acquaintances, smoking his solitary cigar over a -newspaper. Indeed, absolutely the only matter of note (if that were -one) was that he read so many newspapers--buying every different -journal vended. At San Francisco he got into a cab and Haley heard -him give the order: “To the St. Francis.” Having his wife and child -with him, the sergeant couldn’t follow; but he went around to the St. -Francis later, and inquired for Mr. Mercer, for whom he had a letter -(as was indeed the case--the colonel having provided him with one), -but no such name appeared on the register. Invited to leave the letter -to await the gentleman’s arrival, Haley said that he was instructed -to give it to the gentleman himself; therefore, he took it away with -him. He had carried it to all the other hotels or boarding-places in -San Francisco which he could find, aided greatly thereto by a friend -of his, formerly in “the old --th,” a sergeant, now stationed at the -Presidio. Thanks to him, Haley could say definitely that Mercer was not -at any of the hotels or more prominent boarding-houses in the city, at -least under his own name. - -“And you haven’t seen him since he got into the cab at the station?” -the colonel summed up. - -Haley’s reply was unexpected: “Yes, sor, I seen him this day, in the -marning, in this same hotel.” - -“Where?” - -“Drinking coffee at a table in th’ coort. He wint out, havin’ paid -the man, not a-signin’, an’ he guv the waiter enough to make him say, -‘Thank ye, sor,’ but not enough to make him smile and stay round to -pull aff the chair. I follied him to the dure, but he got into an -autymobile--” - -“Get the number?” - -“Yis, sor. Number--here ’tis, sor, I wrote it down to make sure.” He -passed over to the colonel an old envelope on which was written a -number. - -[A]“M. 20139,” read the colonel, carefully noting down the number in -his own memorandum-book. And he reflected, “That is a Massachusetts -number--humph!” - -Haley’s information ended there. He heard of Archie’s disappearance -with his usual stolid mien, but his hands slowly clenched. The colonel -continued: - -“You are to find out, if you can, by scraping acquaintance with the -carriage men, if that auto--you have written a description, I see, -as well as the number--find out if that auto left this hotel this -afternoon between six and seven o’clock. Find out who were in it. Find -out where it is kept and who owns it. Get H. Birdsall, Merchants’ -Exchange Building, to send a man to help you. Wait, I’ve a card ready -for you to give him from me; he has sent me men before. Report by -telephone as soon as you know anything. If I’m not here, speak Spanish -and have them write it down. Be back here to-night by ten, if you can, -yourself.” - -Haley dismissed, and his own appetite for dinner effectually dispelled -by his report, Winter joined his aunt. Should he tell her his -suspicions and their ground? Wasn’t he morally obliged, now, to tell -her? She was co-guardian with him of the boy, who, he had no doubt, had -been spirited away by Mercer and his accomplice; and hadn’t she a right -to any information on the matter in his possession? - -Reluctantly he admitted that she did have such a right; and, he -admitted further, being a man who never cheated at solitaire, that his -object in keeping the talk of the two men from her had not been so much -the desire to guard her nerves (which he knew perfectly well were of a -robuster fiber than those of most women twenty or forty years younger -than she); no, he admitted it grimly, he had not so much spared his -aunt as Janet Smith; he could not bear to direct suspicion toward her. -But how could he keep silent longer? Kicking this question about in his -mind, he spoiled the flavor of his after-dinner cigar, although his -aunt graciously bade him smoke it in her parlor. - -And still Miss Smith had not returned; really, it was only fair to her -to have her present when he told his story to his aunt; no, he was -_not_ grabbing at any excuse for delay; if he could watch that girl’s -face while he told his story he would--well, he would have his mind -settled one way or another. - -Here the telephone bell rang; the manager informed Colonel Winter that -Mrs. Wigglesworth had returned. - -“Wigglesworth? what an extraordinary name!” cried Millicent when the -colonel shared his information. - -“Good old New England name; I know some extremely nice Wigglesworths -in Boston,” Mrs. Winter amended with a touch of hauteur; and, at this -moment, there came a knock at the door. - -There is all the difference in the world between knocks; a knock -as often as not conveys a most unintentional hint in regard to the -character of the one behind the knuckles; and often, also, the mood of -the knocker is reflected in the sound which he makes. Were there truth -in this, one would judge that the person who knocked at this moment -must be a woman, for the knock was not loud, but almost timidly gentle; -one might even guess that she was agitated, for the tapping was in a -hurried, uneven measure. - -“I believe it is Mrs. Wigglesworth herself,” declared Aunt Rebecca. -“Bertie, I’m going into the other room; she will talk more freely to -you. She would want to spare my nerves. That is the nuisance of being -old. Now open the door.” - -She was half-way across the threshold before she finished, and the -colonel’s fingers on the door-knob waited only for the closing of her -door to turn to admit the lady in waiting. - -A lady she was beyond doubt, and any one who had traveled would have -been sure that she was a lady from Massachusetts. She wore that little -close bonnet which certain elderly Boston gentlewomen can neither be -driven nor allured to abandon; her rich and quiet black silken gown -might have been made any year within the last five, and her furs -would have graced a princess. She had beautiful gray hair and a soft -complexion and wore glasses. Equally evident to the observer was the -fact of her suppressed agitation. - -She waved aside the colonel’s proffered chair, introducing herself in -a musical, almost tremulous voice with the crisp enunciation of her -section of the country. “I am Mrs. Wigglesworth; I understand, Colonel -Winter--you?--y-yes, no, thank you, I will not sit. I--I understood -Mrs. Winter--ah, your aunt, is an elderly woman.” - -“This is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Melville Winter,” explained the -colonel. “My aunt is elderly in years, but in nothing else.” - -Mrs. Wigglesworth smiled a faint smile; the colonel could see a tremble -of the hand that was unconsciously drawing her fur collar more tightly -about her throat. “How very nice--yes, to be sure,” she faltered. “But -you will understand that I did not wish to alarm her. I heard that you -wanted to speak to me, and that the little boy was lost.” - -“Or stolen,” Mrs. Melville said crisply. - -The colonel, in a few words, displayed the situation. He had prevailed -upon his visitor to sit down, and while he spoke he noticed that her -hands held each other tightly, although she appeared perfectly composed -and did not interrupt. She answered his questions directly and quietly. -She had been away taking tea with a friend; she had remained to dine. -Her maid had gone out earlier to spend the day and night with a sister -in the city; so the room was empty between six and seven o’clock. - -“The chambermaid wasn’t there, then?” - -“I don’t think so. She usually does the room and brings the towels -for the bath in the morning. But I asked her, to make sure, and she -says that she was not there since morning. She seems a good girl; I -think she didn’t--but I have found something. At least I am af--I may -have found something. I thought I might see Mrs. Winter’s niece about -it”--she glanced toward Millicent, who said, “Certainly,” at a venture; -and looked frightened. - -“And you found--?” said the colonel. - -“Only this. I went to my rooms, turned on the light and was taking off -my gloves before I untied my bonnet. One of my rings fell on the floor. -It went under a rug, and I at once remarked that it was a different -place for the rug to the one where it had been before. Before, it -was in front of the dresser, a very natural place, but now it is on -the carpet to one side, a place where there seemed no reason for its -presence. These details seem trivial, but--” - -“I can see they are not,” said the colonel. “Pray proceed, Madam. The -ring had rolled under the rug!” - -Mrs. Wigglesworth gave him a grateful nod. - -“Yes, it had. And when I removed the rug I saw it; but as I bent to -pick it up I saw something else. In one place there was a stain, as -large as the palm of my hand, a little pool of--it looks like blood.” - -Mrs. Melville uttered an exclamation of horror. - -The colonel’s face stiffened; but there was no change in his polite -attention. - -“May we be permitted to see this--ah, stain?” said he. - -The three stepped through the corridor to the outside door, and went -into the chamber. The rug was flung to one side, and there on the gray -velvet nap of the carpet was an irregular, sprawling stain about which -were spattered other stains, some crimson, some almost black. - -Millicent recoiled, shuddering. The colonel knelt down and examined the -stains. “Yes,” he said very quietly, “you are right, it is blood.” - -There was a tap on the door, which was opened immediately without -waiting for a permission. Millicent, rigid with fright, could only -stare helplessly at the erect figure, the composed, pale face and the -brilliant, imperious eyes of her aunt. - -“What did you say, Bertie?” said Rebecca Winter. “I think I have a -right to the whole truth.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -THE VOICE IN THE TELEPHONE - - -“Well, Bertie?” Mrs. Winter had gone back to her parlor in the most -docile manner in the world. Her submission struck Rupert on the heart; -it was as if she were stunned, he felt. - -He was sitting opposite her, his slender, rather short figure looking -shrunken in the huge, ugly, upholstered easy-chair; he kept an almost -constrained attitude of military erectness, of which he was conscious, -himself; and at which he smiled forlornly, recalling the same pose in -Haley whenever the sergeant was disconcerted. - -“But, first,” pursued his aunt, “who was that red-headed bell-boy with -whom you exchanged signals in the hall?” - -The colonel suppressed a whistle. “Aunt Becky, you’re a wonder! Did you -notice? And he simply shut the palm of his hand! Why, it’s this way: I -was convinced that Archie must be on the premises; he _couldn’t_ get -off. So I telephoned a detective that I know here, a private agency, -_not_ the police, to send me a sure man to watch. He is made up as -a bell-boy (with the hotel manager’s consent, of course); either I, -or Millicent, or that boy has kept an eye on the Keatcham doors and -the next room ever since I found Archie was gone. No one has gone out -without our seeing him. If any suspicious person goes out, we have it -arranged to detain him long enough for me to get a good look. I can -tell you exactly who left the room.” - -“It is you who are the wonder, Bertie,” said Aunt Rebecca, a little -wearily, but smiling. “Who has gone out?” - -“At seven Mr. Keatcham’s secretary went down to the office and ordered -dinner, very carefully. I didn’t see him, but my sleuth did. He had the -secretary and the valet of the Keatcham party pointed out to him; he -saw them. They had one visitor, young Arnold, _the_ Arnold’s son--” - -“The one who has all the orange groves and railways? Yes, I knew his -father.” - -“That one; he only came a few moments since. Mr. Keatcham and his -secretary dined together, and Keatcham’s own man waited on them; but -the waiter for this floor brought up the dishes. At nine the dishes -were brought out and my man helped Keatcham’s valet to pile them a -little farther down the corridor in the hall.” - -These items the colonel was reading out of his little red book. - -“You have put all that down. Do you think it means anything?” - -“I have put everything down. One can’t weed until there is a crop of -information, you know.” - -“True,” murmured Aunt Rebecca, nodding her head thoughtfully. “Well, -did anything else happen?” - -“The secretary posted a lot of letters in the shute. They are all -smoking now. Yes--” he was on his feet and at the door in almost a -single motion. There had been just the slightest tattoo on the panel. -When the door was opened the colonel could hear the rattle of the -elevator. He was too late to catch it, but he could see the inmates. -Three gentlemen stood in the car. One was Keatcham, the other two had -their backs to Winter. One seemed to be supporting Keatcham, who looked -pale. He saw the colonel and darted at him a single glance in which -was something like a poignant appeal; what, it was too brief for the -receiver to decide, for in the space of an eye-blink a shoulder of the -other man intervened, and simultaneously the elevator car began to sink. - -There was need to decide instantly who should follow, who stay on -guard. Rupert bade the boy go down by the stairs, while, with a kind -of bulldog instinct, he clung to the rooms. The lad was to fetch the -manager and the keys of the Keatcham suite. - -Meanwhile Rupert paced back and forth before the closed doors, whence -there penetrated the rustle of packing and a murmur of voices. -Presently Keatcham’s valet opened the farther door. He spoke to some -one inside. “Yes, sir,” he said, “the porter hought to be ’ere now.” - -The porter was there; at least he was coming down the corridor which -led to the elevator, trundling his truck before him. He entered the -rooms and busied himself about the luggage. - -Doggedly the colonel stuck to his guard until the valet and another -man, a clean-shaven, fresh-faced young man whom the watcher had never -seen before, came out of the room. The valet superintended the taking -of two trunks, accepting tickets and checks from the porter with a -thoroughly Anglican suspicion and thoroughness of inspection, while -the young man stood tapping his immaculate trousers-leg with the stick -of his admirably slender umbrella. - -“It’s all right, Colvin,” he broke in impatiently; “three tickets to -Los Angeles, drawing-room, one lower berth, one section, checks for two -trunks; come on!” - -Very methodically the man called Colvin stowed away his green and red -slips, first in an envelope, then in his pocket-book, finally buttoning -an inside pocket over all. He was the image of a rather stupid, -conscientious English serving creature. Carefully he counted out a -liberal but not lavish tip for the porter, and watched that functionary -depart. Last of all, he locked the door. - -With extreme courtesy of manner Winter approached the young man. - -“Pardon me,” said he. “I am Colonel Winter; my aunt, Mrs. Winter, has -the rooms near yours, and she finds that she needs another room or two. -Are you leaving yours?” - -“These are Mr. Keatcham’s rooms, not mine,” the young man responded -politely. “_He_ is leaving them.” - -“When you give up your keys, would you mind asking the clerk to send -them up to me?” pursued the colonel. “Room three twenty-seven.” - -“Certainly,” replied the young man, “or would you like to look at them -a moment now?” - -“Why--if it wouldn’t detain you,” hesitated Winter; he was hardly -prepared for the offer of admittance. - -“Get the elevator and hold it a minute, Colvin,” said the young man, -and he instantly fitted the key to the door, which he flung open. - -“Excuse me,” said he, as they stood in the room, “but aren’t you the -Colonel Winter who held that mountain pass to let the other fellows get -off, after your ammunition was exhausted?” - -“I seem to recall some such episode, only it sounds rather gaudy the -way you put it.” - -“I read about you in the papers; you swam a river with Funston; did all -kinds of stunts--” - -“Or the newspaper reporter did. You don’t happen to know anything about -the price of these rooms, I suppose?” - -The young man did not know, but he showed the colonel through all the -rooms with vast civility. He seemed quite indifferent to the colonel’s -interest in closets, baths and wardrobes; he only wanted to talk about -the Philippines. - -The colonel, who always shied like a mettled horse from the flutter of -his own laurels, grew red with discomfort and rattled the door-knobs. - -“There the suite ends,” said the young man. - -“Oh, we don’t want it all, only a room or two,” Colonel Winter -demurred. “Any one of these rooms would do. Well, I will not detain -you. The elevator boy will be tired, and Mr. Keatcham will grow -impatient.” - -“Not at all; he will have gone. I--I’m so very glad to have met you, -Colonel--” - -In this manner, with mutual civilities, they parted, the young man -escorting the colonel to his own door, which the latter was forced to -enter by the sheer demands of the situation. - -But hardly had the door closed than he popped out again. The young man -was swinging round the corner next the elevator. - -“Is he an innocent bystander or what?” puzzled the soldier. He resumed -his march up and down the corridor. The next room to the Keatcham suite -was evidently held by an agent of the Fireless Cooking Stove, since one -of his samples had strayed into the hall and was mutely proclaiming its -own exceeding worth in very black letters on a very white placard. - -“If the young man and the valet are straight goods, the key will come -up reasonably soon from the office,” thought the watcher. - -Sure enough, the keys, in the hands of Winter’s own spy, appeared -before he had waited three minutes. He reported that the old gentleman -got into a cab with his secretary and the valet, and the other -gentlemen took another cab. The secretary paid the bill. Had he gone -sooner than expected? No; he had engaged the rooms until Thursday -night; this was Thursday night. - -The colonel asked about the next room, which was directly on the cross -corridor leading to the elevator. The detective had been instructed to -watch it. How long had the Fireless Cooking Stove man had it? There was -no meat for suspicion in the answer. The stove man had come the day -before the Keatcham party. He was a perfectly commonplace, good-looking -young man, representing the Peerless Fireless Cooking Stove with much -picturesque eloquence; he had sold a lot of stoves to people in the -hotel, and he tried without much success to tackle “old Keatcham”; he -had attacked even the sleuth himself. “He gave me a mighty good cigar, -too,” chuckled the red-headed one. - -“Hmn, you got it now?” - -“Only the memory,” the boy grinned. - -“You ought to have kept it, Birdsall would tell you; you are watching -every one in these rooms. Did it have a necktie? And did you throw that -away?” - -“No, sir, I kept that; after I got to smoking, I just thought I’d keep -it.” - -When he took the tiny scrap of paper from his pocket-book the colonel -eyed it grimly. “‘_A de Villar y Villar_,’” he read, with a slight -ironic inflection. “Decidedly our young Fireless Stove promoter smokes -good cigars!” - -“Maybe Mr. Keatcham gave it to him. He was in there.” - -“Was he? Oh, yes, trying to sell his stove--but not succeeding?” - -“He said he was trying to get past the valet and the secretary; he -thought if he could only get at the old man and demonstrate his stove -he could make the sale. He could cook all right, that feller.” - -The colonel made no comment, and presently betook himself to his aunt. -She was waiting for him in the parlor, playing solitaire. Through the -open door the white bed that ought to have been Archie’s was gleaming -faintly. The colonel’s brows met. - -“Well, Bertie? Did you find anything?” Mrs. Winter inquired smoothly. - -“I’m afraid not; but here is the report.” He gave it to her, even down -to the cigar wrapper. - -“It doesn’t seem likely that Mr. Keatcham has anything to do with it,” -said she. “He, no doubt, has stolen many a little railway, but a little -boy is too small game.” - -“Oh, I don’t suspect Keatcham; but I wish I had caught the elevator -to-night. He looked at me in a mighty queer way.” - -“Did you recognize his secretary as any one whom you ever saw before?” -asked Mrs. Winter. - -“I can’t say,” was the answer, given with a little hesitation. “I’m not -sure.” - -“I don’t think I quite understand you, Bertie; better make a clean -breast of all you know. I’m getting a little worried myself.” - -The colonel reached across the cards and tapped his aunt’s arm -affectionately. He felt the warmest impulse toward sympathy for her -that he had ever known; it glistened in his eyes. Mrs. Winter’s cheeks -slowly crimsoned; she turned her head, exclaiming, did she hear a -noise; but the colonel’s keen ears had not been warned. “Poor woman,” -he thought, “she is worried to death, but she will not admit it.” - -“Now, Bertie,” said Mrs. Winter calmly, but her elbow fell on her cards -and spoiled a very promising game of Penelope’s Web, “now, Bertie, -_what_ are you keeping back?” - -Then, at last, the colonel told her of his experience in Chicago. -She heard him quite without comment, and he could detect no shift of -emotion in her demeanor of absorbed but perfectly calm attention, -unless a certain tension of attitude and feature (as if, he phrased it, -she were “holding herself in”) might be so considered. And he was not -sure of this. When he came to the words which stuck in his throat, the -sentence about Miss Smith, she smiled frankly, almost laughed. - -At the end of the recital--and the colonel had not omitted a word or a -look in his memory--she merely said: “Then you think Cary Mercer has -kidnapped Archie, and the nice-looking Harvard boy is helping him?” - -“Don’t you think it looks that way, yourself?” - -She answered that question by another one: “But you don’t think, do -you, that Janet is the Miss Smith mentioned?” - -His reply came after an almost imperceptible hesitation: “No!” - -Again she smiled. “That is because you know Janet; if you didn’t know -her you would think the chances were in favor of their meaning her? -Naturally! Well, I know Cary a little. I knew his father _well_. I -don’t believe he would harm a hair of Archie’s head. He isn’t a cruel -fellow--at least not toward women and children. I’ve a notion that what -he calls his wrongs have upset his wits a bit, and he might turn the -screws on the Wall Street crowd that ruined him. That is, if he had a -chance; but he is poor; he would need millions to get even a chance for -a blow at them. But a child, a lad who looks like his brother--no, you -may be sure he wouldn’t hurt Archie! He _couldn’t_.” - -“But--the name, Winter; it is not such a common name; and the words -about a lady of--of--” The polite soldier hesitated. - -“An old woman, do you mean?” said Aunt Rebecca, with a little curving -of her still unwrinkled upper lip. - -“It sounds so complete,” submitted her nephew. - -“Therefore distrust it,” she argued dryly. “Gaboriau’s great detective -and Conan Doyle’s both have that same maxim--not to pick out easy -answers.” - -Winter smiled in his own turn. “Still, sometimes the easy answers are -right. Now, here is the situation: I hear this conversation at the -depot. I find one of the men on the same train with me. He, presumably, -if he _is_ Cary Mercer, and I don’t think I can be mistaken in his -identity--” - -“Unless another man is making up as Cary!” - -“It may seem conceited, but I don’t think I could be fooled. This man -had every expression of the other’s, and I was too struck by the--I may -almost call it malignant--look he had, not to recognize him. No, it -_was_ Mercer; he would certainly recognize you, and he would know who -I am; he would not be called upon to snub me as a possible confidence -man.” - -“That rankles yet, Bertie?” - -He made a grimace and nodded. - -“But,” he insisted, “isn’t it so? If he is up to some mischief, any -mischief--doesn’t care to have his kin meet him--that is the way he -would act, don’t you think?” - -“He might be up to mischief, yet have no designs on his kin.” - -“He might,” said the colonel musingly. A thought which he did not -confide to the shrewd old woman had just flipped his mind. But he went -on with his plea. - -“He avoids you; he avoids me. He is seen going into Keatcham’s -drawing-room; that means some sort of an acquaintance with Keatcham, -enough to talk to him, anyway. How much, I can’t say. Then comes the -attack by the robbers; he is in another car, so there is no call for -him to do anything; there is no light whatever on whether he had -anything to do with the robbery. - -“Then we come here. Keatcham has the room next but one. Archie goes -into his own room; we see him go; I am outside, directly outside; it -is simply impossible for him to go out into the hall without my seeing -him; besides, I found the doors outside all locked except the one to -the right where we entered your suite; then we may assume that he could -not go out. He could not climb out of locked windows on the third floor -down a sheer descent of some forty or fifty feet. Your last room to -the right, Miss Smith’s bedroom, is a corner room; besides, she was -in it; that excludes every exit except that to the left. We find Mrs. -Wigglesworth was absent, and there were evidences of--an--an attack -of some kind carefully hidden, afterward. But there is no sign of -the boy. I watch the rooms. If he is hidden somewhere in Keatcham’s -rooms, the chances are, after Keatcham goes, they will try to take him -off. I don’t think it probable that Keatcham knows anything about the -kidnapping; in fact, it is wildly _im_probable. Well, Keatcham goes; -immediately I get into the room. The valet and the young man visiting -Keatcham, young Arnold, let me in without the slightest demur. Either -they know nothing of the boy or somehow they have got him away, else -they would not let me in so easily. Maybe they are ignorant and the boy -is gone, both. We go to the rooms very soon after; there is not the -smallest trace of Archie.” - -“How did he get out?” - -“They must have outwitted me, somehow,” the colonel sighed, “and it -looks as if he went voluntarily; there was no possible carrying away -by force. And there was no odor of chloroform about; that is very -penetrating; it would get into the halls. They must have persuaded him -to go--but how?” - -“If they have kidnapped him,” said Mrs. Winter, “they will send me some -word, and if they have persuaded him to run away, plainly he must be -able to walk, and that--mess in Mrs. Wigglesworth’s room doesn’t mean -anything bad.” - -“Of course not,” said the colonel firmly. - -Then, in as casual a tone as he could command: “By the way, where is -Miss Smith? She is back, isn’t she?” - -“Oh, a long time ago,” said Mrs. Winter. “I sent her to bed.” - -“I’ve been frank with you. You will reciprocate and tell me why, for -what, you sent her out?” - -Mrs. Winter made not the least evasion. She answered frankly: “I -sent her with a carefully worded advertisement--but you needn’t tell -Millicent, who has also gone to bed, thank Heaven--I sent her with -a carefully worded advertisement to all the papers. This is the -advertisement. It will reach the kidnappers, and it will not reach any -one else. See.” She handed him a slip of paper from her card-case. He -read: - -“To the holders of Archie W: Communicate with R. S. W., same address -as before, and you will hear of something to your advantage. Perfectly -safe.” - -The colonel read it thoughtfully, a little puzzled. Before he had time -to speak, his quick ears caught the sharp ring of his room telephone -bell. He excused himself to answer it. His room was the last of the -suite, but he shut the door on his way to the telephone. - -He expected Haley; nor was he disappointed. Haley reported--in -Spanish--that he had traced the automobile; it was the property of -young Mr. Arnold, son of the rich Mr. Arnold. Young Arnold had been at -Harvard last year, and he took out a Massachusetts license; he had a -California one, too. Should he (Haley) look up young Arnold? And should -he come to report that night? - -The colonel thought he could wait till morning, and, a little -comforted, hung up the receiver. Barely was it out of his hand when the -bell shrilled again, sharply, vehemently. Winter put the tube to his -ear. - -“Does any one want Colonel Winter, Palace Hotel?” he asked. - -A sweet, eager, boyish voice called back: “Uncle Bertie! Uncle Bertie, -don’t you worry; I’m all right!” - -“_Archie!_” cried the colonel. “_Where are you?_” - -But there was no answer. He called again, and a second time; he -told the lad that they were dreadfully anxious about him. He got no -response from the boy; but another voice, a woman’s voice, said, with -cold distinctness, as if to some one in the room: “No, don’t let him; -it is impossible!” Then a dead wall of silence and Central’s impassive -ignorance. He could get nothing. - -Rupert Winter stood a moment, frowning and thinking deeply. Directly, -with a shrug of the shoulders, he walked out of his own outside door, -locking it, and went straight to Miss Smith’s. - -He knocked, at first very gently, then more vigorously. But there was -no answer. He went away from the door, but he did not reënter his room. -He did not bear to his aunt the news which, with all its meagerness -and irritating incompleteness, had been an enormous relief to him. He -simply waited in the corridor. Five minutes, ten minutes passed; then -he heard the elevator whir, and, standing with his hand on the knob of -his open door, he saw his aunt’s companion, dressed for the street, -step out and speed down the corridor to her own door. - -The other voice--the woman’s voice--had been Janet Smith’s. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE HAUNTED HOUSE - - -A mud-splashed automobile runabout containing two men was turning -off Van Ness Avenue down a narrower and shadier side street in the -afternoon of the Sunday following the disappearance of Archie Winter. -One of the occupants seemed to be an invalid whom the brilliant March -sunshine had not tempted out of his heavy wrappings and cap; the -other was a short, thick-set, corduroy-jacketed chauffeur. One marked -the runabout at a glance as a hardly used livery motor-car; but a -moment’s inspection might have shown that it was running with admirable -smoothness and quiet. The chauffeur wore goggles, hence his eyes were -shielded, but he turned a broad smile upon the pallid cheeks and -sharpened profile beside him. - -“Colonel, as a health-seeker who can’t keep warm enough, you’re great!” -he cried. “Lord, but you look the part!” - -“If I can’t shed some of these confounded mufflers soon,” growled -the pale sufferer addressed, “I’ll get so red with heat it will come -through my beautiful powder. I hope those fellows won’t see us, for -they will be on to us, all right.” - -“Our own mothers wouldn’t be on to us in these rigs,” the chauffeur -replied cheerily; he seemed to be in a hopeful mood; “and let us once -get into the house, and surprise ’em, and there’ll be something drop. -But I haven’t really had a chance to tell you the latest--having -to pick you up at a drug store this way. Now, let’s sum things up! -You think the boy got out through Keatcham’s apartment? Or Mrs. -Wigglesworth’s?” - -“How else?” said the colonel, “he can’t fly, and if he could, he -couldn’t fly out and then lock the windows from the inside.” - -“I see”--the chauffeur appeared thoughtful--“and the Wigglesworth door -was locked. You think that Keatcham is in it, someway?” - -“Not Keatcham,” said the colonel. “There was another man in the -car--Atkins they called him, though he has disappeared. But Mercer -remains. His secretary and that valet of his; I think the secretary is -Cary Mercer. The boy might have slipped out in those few moments we -were hunting for him inside. Afterward, either Mrs. Melville Winter or -I was on guard until your man came. He might go to the Fireless Stove -man, slip out of his rooms, and round the corner to the elevator in a -couple of seconds. Then, of course, I might see their rooms--” - -“Provided, that is, the Fireless Stove drummer is in the plot, too.” - -“The Fireless Stove drummer who smokes _Villar y Villar_ cigars? He is -in it, I think, Birdsall.” - -“Well, I’ll assume that. Next thing: you get the telephone call. And -you say the voice sounded chipper; didn’t look like he was being hurt -or bothered anyway, did it?” - -“Not at all. Besides, you know the letter Miss Smith got this morning?” - -“I think I’d like another peek at that; will you drive her a minute, -while I look at the letter again?” The instant his hands were free -Birdsall pulled out the envelope from his leather-rimmed pocket. - -It was rectangular in shape and smaller than the ordinary business -envelope. The paper was linen of a common diamond pattern, having -no engraved heading. The detective ran his eyes down the few lines -written in an unformed boyish hand. There was neither date nor place; -only these words: - - DEAR MISS JANET--Don’t you or auntie be woried about me because I am - well and safe and having a good time. I had the nose bleed that is - why I spoted the carpet. Tell Auntie to please pay for it out of my - next week’s allowance. Be sure and don’t wory. - - Your aff. friend, - ARCHIBALD PAGE WINTER. - -“You’re sure this is the boy’s writing?” was the detective’s comment. - -“Sure. And his spelling, too.” - -“Now,” said Birdsall, watching the colonel’s keen, aquiline profile -as he spoke, “now you notice there’s no heading or mark on the paper; -and the water-mark is only O. K. E., Mass., 1904. And that amounts to -nothing; those folks sell all over the country. But you notice that -it is not the ordinary business paper; it looks rather ladylike than -commercial, doesn’t it?” - -The colonel admitted that it did look so. - -“Now, assuming that this letter was sent with the connivance of the -kidnappers, it looks as if our young gentleman wasn’t in any particular -danger of having a hard time. To me, it looks pretty certain he must -have skipped himself; tolled along someway, maybe, but not making -any resistance. Now, is there anybody that you know who has enough -influence over him for that? How about the lady’s maid?” - -“Randall has been a faithful servant for twenty years, a middle-aged, -serious-minded, decent woman. Out of the question.” - -“This Miss Smith, your aunt’s companion, who is she? Do you know?” - -“A South Carolinian; good family; she has lived with my aunt as -secretary and companion for a year; my aunt is very fond of her.” - -“That all you know? Well _I_ have found out a little more; she used to -live with a Mrs. James S. Hastings, a rich Washington woman. The lady’s -only son fell in love with her; _somehow_ the marriage was broken off.” - -“What was his name?” - -“Lawrence. They call him Larry. He went to Manila. Maybe you’ve met him -there.” - -“Yes, I knew him; I don’t believe he ever was accepted by her.” - -“I don’t know. I have only had two days on her biography. Later, she -went to Johns Hopkins Hospital. One of the doctors was very attentive -to her--but it did not come to anything. She didn’t graduate. Don’t -know why. Then she went to live with Miss Angela Nelson, who died and -left her money, away from her own family. There was talk of breaking -the will; but it wasn’t done. Then she came to Mrs. Winter.” - -The colonel was silent; there was nothing discreditable in these -details. He had known before that Janet Smith was poor; that she -had been thrown on the world early; that she must earn her own -livelihood; yet, somehow, as Birdsall marshaled the facts, there was -an insidious, malarious hint of the adventuress, bandied from place -to place, hawking her attractions about, wheedling, charming for -hire, entrapping imbecile young cubs--Larry Hastings wasn’t more than -twenty-two--somehow he felt a revolt against the picture and against -the man submitting it--and, confound Millicent! - -The detective changed the manner of his questions a little. “I suppose -your aunt is pretty advanced in years, though she is as well preserved -an old lady as I have ever met, and as shrewd. Say, wouldn’t she be -likely to leave the boy a lot of money?” - -“I dare say.” The colonel was conscious of an intemperate impulse to -kick Birdsall, who had been such a useful fellow in the Philippines. - -“If anything was to happen to him, who would get the money?” - -“Well, Mrs. Melville and I are next of kin,” returned the colonel -dryly. “Do you suspect _us_?” - -“I did look up Mrs. Melville,” answered the unabashed detective, “but I -guess she’s straight goods all right. But say, how about Miss Smith?” - -The colonel stared, then he laughed. “Birdsall,” said he, “there’s -somewhat too much mention of ladies’ names to suit my Virginian taste. -But if you mean to imply that Miss Smith is going to kill Archie to get -my aunt’s money, I can tell you you are _’way off!_ Your imagination -is too active for your profession. You ought to hire out to the yellow -journals.” - -His employer’s satire did not even flick the dust off Birdsall’s -complacency; he grinned cheerfully. “Oh, I’m not so bad as _that_; I -don’t suppose she did kill the boy; I think he’s alive, all right. -But say, Colonel, I’ll give it to you straight; I do think the señora -coaxed the boy off. You admit, don’t you, he went off. Well, then he -was coaxed, somehow. Now, who’s got influence enough to coax him? You -cross out the maid; so do I. You cross out Mrs. Melville Winter; so do -I. I guess we both cross out the old lady. Well, there’s you and the -señora left. I don’t suspect _you_, General.” - -“Really? I don’t see why. I stand to make more than anybody else, if -you are digging up motives. And how about the chambermaid?” - -Birdsall flashed a glance of reproach on his companion. “Now, Colonel, -do you think I ain’t looked _her_ up? First thing. Nothing in it. -Decent Vermont girl, three years in the hotel. Came for her lungs. She -ain’t in it. But let’s get back to Miss Smith. Did you know she is Cary -Mercer’s sister-in-law?” - -He delivered his shot in a casual way, and the colonel took it stonily; -nevertheless, it went to the mark. Birdsall continued. “Now, question -is, _was_ Mercer the secretary? You didn’t see the man in the elevator, -except his back. Had he two moles?” - -“I couldn’t see. He had different clothes; but still there was -something like Mercer about the shoulders.” - -“Burney didn’t get a chance to take a snapshot, but he did snap the -stove man. Here it is. Pull that book out of my pocket.” - -Obeying, the colonel lifted a couple of small prints which he -scrutinized intently, at the end, admitting, “Yes, it is he all right. -Now do you know what _I_ think?” - -Birdsall couldn’t form an idea. - -“I think the Keatcham party is in it; and I think they are after -bigger game than Archie. Maybe the train robbers were a part of the -scheme--although I’m not so sure of that.” - -“Oh, the robbers were in it all right. But now come to Miss Smith; -where does she come in? Or are you as sure of her as Mercer was in -Chicago?” - -If he had expected to get a spark out of the Winter tinder by this -scraping stroke, he was mistaken; the soldier did not even move his -brooding gaze fixed on the hills beyond the house roofs; and he -answered in a level tone: “Did you get _that_ story from my aunt, or -was it Mrs. Melville? I’m pretty certain you got your biography from -that quarter. My aunt might have told her.” - -“That would be betraying a lady’s confidence. I’m only a detective, -whose business is to pry, but I never go back on the ladies. And I -think, same’s you, that the lady in question is a real nice, high-toned -lady; but I can’t disregard the evidence. I never give out my system, -but I’ve got one, all the same. Look here, see this paper?”--he had -replaced the envelope in his pocket; he pulled it out again; or rather, -so the colonel fancied, until Birdsall turned the envelope over, -revealing it to be blank. “There’s a sheet of paper inside; take it -out. Look at the water-mark, look at the pattern; then compare it with -this letter”--handing the colonel the original envelope. “Same exactly, -ain’t they?” - -The colonel, who had studied the two sheets of paper silently, nodded -as silently; and he had a premonition of Birdsall’s next sentence -before it came. “Well, Mrs. Melville Winter, this morning, took me to -Miss Smith’s desk, where we found this and a lot more like it.” - -“You seem to be right in thinking the paper widely distributed,” -observed the colonel. - -“And you don’t think that suspicious?” - -“I should think it more suspicious if the paper were not out on her -desk. If she is such a deep one as you seem to think, she would hide -such an incriminating bit of evidence.” - -“She didn’t know we suspected her. Of course, you haven’t shadowed her -a little bit?” - -“There is a limit to detective duty in the case of a gentleman,” -returned the colonel haughtily. “I have not.” - -Little Birdsall sighed; then in a propitiatory tone: “Well, of course, -we both think there are other people in the job; I don’t know exactly -what you mean by bigger game, but I can make a stagger at it. Now, say, -did you get any answer when you wrote to Keatcham himself?” - -“Yes,” said the colonel grimly, “I heard. You know the sort of letter -I wrote; telling him of our dreadful anxiety and about the lad’s being -an orphan; don’t you think it was the sort of letter a decent man would -answer, no matter how busy he might be?” - -“Sure. Didn’t you get an answer?” - -“I did.” The colonel extricated himself from his wrappings enough to -find a pale blue envelope, which he handed to Birdsall, at the same -time taking the motor handle. “You see; type-written, very polite, -chilly sort of letter, kind to make a man hot under the collar and -swear at Keatcham’s heartlessness. Mr. Keatcham unable to answer, -having been ill since he left San Francisco. Did not see anything of -any boy. Probably boy ran away. Has no information of any kind to -afford. And the writer is very sincerely mine. The minute I read it I -was sure Mercer wrote it; and he wrote it to make me so disgusted with -Keatcham I wouldn’t pursue the subject with him. Just the same way he -snubbed my aunt; and, for that matter, just the way he tried to snub -me on the train. But he missed his mark; I wired every hotel in Santa -Barbara and every one in Los Angeles; and Keatcham isn’t there and -hasn’t been there. He has a big bunch of mail at Santa Barbara waiting -for him, forwarded from Los Angeles, but he hasn’t shown himself.” - -Birdsall shot a glance of cordial admiration at the colonel. “You’re -all there, General,” he cried with unquenchable familiarity. “I’ve been -trying to call up the Keatcham outfit, and _I_ couldn’t get a line, -either. They haven’t used the tickets they bought--their reservations -went empty to Los Angeles. Now, what do you make out of that?” - -“I make out that Archie is only part of their game,” replied the -soldier. “Now see, Birdsall, you are not going to get a couple of rich -young college fellows to do just plain kidnapping and scaring women out -of their money--” - -“Lord, General,” interrupted Birdsall, “those college guys don’t turn a -hair at kidnapping; they regularly steal the president of the freshman -class, and the things they do at their hazing bees and initiations -would make an Apache Indian sit up and take notice. I tell you, -General, they’re the limit for deviltry.” - -“Some kinds. Not that kind; it’s too dirty. Arnold was one of the -cleanest foot-ball players at Harvard. And I don’t know anything about -human nature if that other youngster isn’t decent. But Mercer--_es -un loco_; you can look out for anything from him. Now, see the -combination. Arnold was at Harvard! I have traced the motor-car they -used to him; and then, if you add that his father is away safe in -Europe and he has an empty house, off to one side, with a quantity of -space around it and the reputation of being haunted, why--” - -“It looks good to me. And I understand my men have got around it on the -quiet all right. How’s your man Haley got on, hiring out to the Jap in -charge?” - -“Well enough; the Jap took him on to mow, but either Mr. Caretaker -doesn’t know anything or he won’t tell. He’s bubbling over with -conversation about the flowers and the country and the Philippines, -where he used to be; but he only knows that the honorable family are -all away and he is to shun the house. Aren’t we almost there?” - -“Just around the corner. I guess when you see it you’ll think it’s just -the _patio_ a spook of taste would freeze to.” - -“_Why_ is it haunted?” - -“Now you have me. I ain’t on to such dream stuff. Gimme five cards. -Mrs. Arnold died off in Europe, so ’tain’t her; and the house has -only been built two years; but the neighbors have seen lights and -heard groans and a pick chopping at the stones. Some folks say the -land belonged to an old miner and he died before he could tell where -he’d buried his _mazuma_; so he is taking a little _buscar_ after it. -There’s the house, General.” - -The street climbed a gentle hill, and on its crest a large house, in -mission style, looked over a pleasant land. Its position on a corner -and the unusual size of the grounds about it gave the mansion an -effect of space. Of almost rawly recent erection though it was, the -kindly climate had so fostered the growth of the pines, acacias and -live-oaks, the eucalypti and the orange-trees, which made a rich blur -of color on the hillside, had so lavishly tended the creeping ivies -and Bougainvilleas which masked the rounded lantern arches of the -stern gray façade, and so sumptuously blazoned the flower-beds in the -garden on the one hand, yet, on the other, had so cunningly dulled the -greenish gray of the cobblestones from California arroyos in chimney -and foundation, and had so softly streaked the marble of the garden -statues and the plaster of walls and mansion with tiny filaments of -lichens or faint green moss, that the beholder might fancy the house -to be the ancient home of some Spanish hidalgo, handed down with an -hereditary curse, through generations, to the last of his race. One -was tempted to such a flutter of fancy because of the impression given -by the mansion. A sullen reticence hung about the place. The windows, -for the most part, were heavily shuttered. Not a pane of glass flashed -back at the sunlight; even those casements not shuttered turned blank -dark green shades, like bandaged eyes, on the court and the beautiful -terraces and the lovely sweep of hillsides where the wonderful shadows -swayed and melted. - -The bent figure of a man raking, distorted by the perspective, was -visible just beyond the high pillars of the gateway. He paid no -attention to the motions of the motor-car, nor did he answer a hail -until it was repeated. Then he approached the car. Birdsall was in the -roadway trying to unlock the gate. The man, whose Japanese features -were quite distinguishable, bowed; he explained that the honorable -owners were not at home; his insignificant self was the only keeper of -the grounds. He spoke sufficiently good English with the accompaniment -of a deprecatory, amiable smile. Birdsall, in turn, told him that his -own companion was a very great gentleman from the East who belonged to -a society of vast power which was investigating spectral appearances, -and that he had come thousands of miles to see the ghost. - -The Japanese extended both hands, while the appeal of his smile -deepened. “Too bad, velly,” he murmured, “but not leally any g’lost, -no, nev’.” - -“Don’t you believe in the ghost?” asked Colonel Winter. - -“No, me Clistian boy, no believe not’ing.” - -“All the samee,” said the colonel, laboriously swinging himself from -his vantage-ground of the motor seat to the flat top of the wall, -thence dropping to the greensward below, “allee samee, like go in house -hunt ghost.” He crackled a bank-note in the palm of the slim brown -hand, smiling and nodding as if to break the force of his brusque -action. Meanwhile, Birdsall had safely shut off his engine before he -placed himself beside the others with an agility hardly to be expected -of his rotund build. - -As for the caretaker, whether because he perceived himself outnumbered, -or because he was really void of suspicion, he accepted the money with -outward gratitude and proffered his guidance through the garden and -the orchards. He slipped into the rôle of cicerone with no atom of -resistance; he was voluble; he was gracious; he was artlessly delighted -with his señors. In spite of this flood of suavity, however, there -seemed to be no possibility of persuading him to admit them to the -house. - -Assured of this, the two fell back for a second, time for the merest -eyeflash from the detective to the soldier, who at once limped briskly -up to the Jap, saying: “We are very much obliged to you; this is a -beautiful house, beautiful gardens; but we want to see the ghost; and -if you can give me young Mr. Arnold’s address I will see him--or write, -and we can come back.” - -The gardener, with many apologies and smiles, did not know Mr. Arnold’s -honorable address, but he drew out a soiled card, explaining that it -bore the name of the gentleman in charge of the property. Birdsall, -peering over the Jap’s shoulders, added that it was the card of a -well-known legal firm. - -“Then,” said the colonel with deliberation, “we will thank you again -for your courtesy, and--what’s that?” - -The Jap turned; they all started at the barking detonation of some -explosion; while they gazed about them there came another booming -sound, and they could see smoke pouring from the chimney and leaking -through the window joints of a room in the rear of the house. Like a -hare, not breaking his wind by a single cry, the Jap sped toward the -court. The others were hard on his heels, though the colonel limped and -showed signs of distress by the time they reached the great iron door. - -The Jap pulled out a key; he turned it and swung the door barely wide -enough to enter, calling on them to stay out; he would tell them if he -needed them. - -“Augustly stay; maybe honolable t’ieves!” he cried. - -But the detective had interposed a stalwart leg and shoulder. -Instantly the door swung open; he acted as if he had lost his wits with -excitement. “You’re burning up! Lord! you’re burning! _Fire!_ _Fire!_” -he bawled, and rushed boldly into the room. - -Winter followed him, also calling aloud in a strident voice. And it was -to be observed, being such an unusual preparation for a conflagration, -that he had drawn a heavy revolver and ran with it in his hand. Before -he jumped out of the car he had discarded his thick top-coat and all -his wrappings. - -An observer, also (had there been one near), would have taken note of a -robust Irishman, who had been weeding the flower-beds, and would have -seen him straighten at the first peal of the explosion, stare wildly at -the chimneys before any distinct smoke was to be seen, then run swiftly -and climb up to a low chimney on a wing of the house, watering-pot in -hand. He would have seen him empty his inadequate fire extinguisher -and rapidly descend the ladder, while the smoke volleyed forth, as if -defying his puny efforts; later, he would have seen the watering-pot -bearer pursue the others into the house, emitting noble yells of -“Fire!” and “Help!” - -[Illustration: The detective had interposed a stalwart leg and -shoulder. Page 135] - -Further, this same observer, had he been an intimate friend of Sergeant -Dennis Haley, certainly would have recognized that resourceful man of -war in the amateur fireman. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -FACE TO FACE - - -When the two men got into the house the dim rooms made them stumble -for a moment after the brilliant sunshine of the outer skies; but in -a second Birdsall’s groping hand had found an electric push-button -and the room was flooded with light. They were in a small office -off the kitchen, apparently. Smoke of a peculiarly pungent odor and -eye-smarting character blurred all the surroundings; but during the -moment the Jap halted to explore its cause the others perceived two -doors and made for them. One was locked, but the other must have been -free to open, since Haley, with his watering-can, bounded through it -while they were tugging at the other. Almost immediately, however, -Haley was back again shouting and pointing down the dark passage. - -“The fire’s _there_,” screamed the detective. “I can smell smoke! -The smoke comes through the keyhole!” But while the Jap fitted a key -in the lock and swung back the door, and Haley, who had paused to -replenish his watering-can at a convenient faucet, darted after the -other two, the colonel stood listening with every auditory nerve -strained to catch some sound. He yelled “Fire! help!” at the top of his -voice, but not moving a muscle. “Too far off,” he muttered, then he -yelled again and threw a heavy chair as if he had stumbled against it. -Another pause; he got down on his knees to put his ear to the floor. -Directly he rose; he did not speak, but the words that he said to -himself were only: “Just possible. Some one down cellar; but not under -here.” Meanwhile he was hurrying in pursuit of the others as swiftly as -his stiff knee would allow. He found them in a side hall with tiled or -brick floor, gathered about a water-soaked heap of charred red paper. - -“’Tis terrible!” announced Haley, “a bum for sure! a dinnermite -bum!”--fishing out something like a tin tomato can from the sodden mass. - -“Anyhow, _there_ goes the real thing,” observed the colonel coolly, as -a formidable explosion jarred the air. - -“If you blow us up, I kill you flist!” hissed the Jap, and his knife -flashed. - -“_Chito, Chito!_” soothed the colonel, lifting his revolver almost -carelessly. Simultaneously two brawny arms pinioned the Jap’s own arms -at his sides. - -“Shure, Mister Samurai, ’tis the ongrateful chap youse is,” -expostulated Haley. “I hate to reshtrain ye, but if ye thry any -jehujits on me ’twill be sahanara wid youse mighty quick.” - -“No understan’,” murmured the Jap plaintively. “Why you hult me?” - -“Come, put out the fire first,” said the colonel; “you know the house, -you go ahead.” - -The Jap darted on ahead so swiftly that they had some ado to follow; -which seemed necessary, since he might have clashed a bolt on them at -any turn. The colonel’s stiff leg kept him in the rear, but Haley was -never a hand’s-breadth behind the runner. - -They found smoke in two places, but they easily extinguished the tiny -flames. In both cases the bombs turned out to be no more dangerous -than a common kind of fireworks yielding a suffocating smoke in an -inclosure, but doing no especial damage on safe and fire-proof ground, -like a hearth. They were quickly extinguished. In their search they -passed from one luxurious room to another, the Jap leading, until he -finally halted in a spacious library hung in Spanish leather, with -ancient, richly carved Spanish tables and entrancing Spanish chairs of -turned wood and age-mellowed cane, and bookcases sumptuously tempting -a book-lover. But the colonel cared only for the soul of a book, not -its body; the richest and clearest of black letter or the daintiest -of tooling had left him cold; moreover, every fiber in him was strung -by his quest; and Haley, naturally, was immune; strangely enough, it -was the cheerful, vulgar little detective who gave a glance, rapid but -full of admiration, at the shelves and pile of missals on the table, -incongruously jostled by magazines of the day. - -Winter faced the Jap, who was sheathed again in his bland and impassive -politeness. “Where is Mr. Mercer?” said he. - -The Jap waved his hands in an eloquent oriental gesture. He assured the -honorable questioner that he did not know any Mr. Mercer. There was no -one in the house. - -The colonel had seated himself in a priceless arm-chair in Cordova -stamped leather; he no longer looked like an invalid. “Show your star, -please,” he commanded Birdsall, and the latter silently flung back the -lapel of his coat. - -“I ought to tell you,” continued Rupert Winter, “that the game is up. -It would do no good for you to run that poisoned bit of steel of yours -into me or into any of us; we have only to stay here a little too long -and the police of San Francisco will be down on you--oh, I know all -about what sort they are, but we have money to spend as well as you. -You take the note I shall write to Mr. Mercer, or whatever you choose -to call him, and bring his answer. We stay here until he comes.” - -Having thus spoken in an even, gentle voice, he scribbled a few words -on a piece of paper which he took out of his note-book. This he -proffered to the Jap. - -On his part, the latter kept his self-respect; he abated no jot of -his assurance that they were alone in the house; he insinuated his -suspicion that they were there for no honest purpose; finally he was -willing to search the house if they would stay where they were. - -“I am not often mistaken in people,” was the colonel’s rather oblique -answer, “and I think you are a gentleman who might kill me if you had -a chance, but would not break his word to me. If you will promise to -play fair with us, do no harm to my nephew, take this letter and bring -me an answer--if you find any one--on your word of honor as a Japanese -soldier and gentleman, you may go; we will not signal the police. Is it -a bargain?” - -The Jap gravely assented, still in the language of the East, “saving -his face” by the declaration of the absence of his principals. And -he went off as gracefully and courteously as if only the highest -civilities had passed between them. - -“Won’t he try some skin game on us?” the detective questioned; but -Winter only motioned toward the telephone desk. “Listen at it,” he -said, “you can tell if the wires are cut; and he knows your men are -outside hiding, somewhere; he doesn’t know how many. You see, we have -the advantage of them there; to be safe they don’t dare to let many -people into their secret. _We_ can have a whole gang. We haven’t many, -but they may _think_ we have.” - -Birdsall, who had lifted the receiver to his ear, laid it down with -an appeased nod. Immediately he proceeded to satisfy his professional -conscience by a search in every nook and cranny of the apartment. But -no result appeared important enough to justify the production of his -red morocco note-book and his fountain-pen. He had paused in disgust -when the colonel sat up suddenly, erect in his chair; his keener -ears had caught some sound which made him dart to all the windows in -succession. He called Haley (whom he had posted outside to guard the -door) and despatched him across the hall to reconnoiter. “I am sure it -was the sound of wheels,” he explained, “but Haley will be too late; we -are on the wrong side of the house.” - -As he spoke the buzz of an electric bell jarred their ears. “Somebody -is coming in the front door,” hazarded Birdsall. - -“Evidently,” returned the colonel dryly. “How can our absent friends -get in otherwise--at least how can they let us understand they have -come in? I think we are going to have the pleasure of an interview with -the elusive Mr. Mercer.” - -They waited. The colonel motioned Birdsall to a seat by the table, -within breathing distance of the telephone. He himself fluttered the -loose journals and magazines, his ironic smile creasing his cheek. -“Our Japanese friend reads the newspapers,” he remarked. “Here are -to-day’s papers; yes, _Examiner_ and _Chronicle_, unfolded and smoked -over. Cigar, too, not cigarette, for here is a stump--decidedly our -cherry-blossom friends are getting civilized!” - -“Oh, there is somebody _in_ here all right,” grunted Birdsall. “Say, -Colonel, you are sure Mrs. Winter has had no answer to her ad? No kind -of notice about sending money?” - -“I haven’t seen her for a few hours, but I saw Mrs. Melville Winter; -she was positive no word had come. She thought my aunt was more worried -than she would admit, and Miss Smith looked pale, although she seemed -hopeful.” - -“She didn’t really want to give me the letter, I thought,” said the -detective. The colonel gave him no reply save a black look. A silence -fell. A footfall outside broke it, a firm, in nowise stealthy footfall. -Birdsall slipped his hand inside his coat. The colonel rose and bowed -gravely to Cary Mercer. - -On his part, Mercer was not in the least flurried; he looked at the -two men, not with the arrogant suspicion which had stung Winter on the -train, but with the melancholy courtesy of his bearing at Cambridge, -three years before. - -“This, I think, is Colonel Winter?” he said, returning the bow, but not -extending his hand, which hung down, slack and empty at his side. - -“I am glad you recognized me this time, Mr. Mercer.” - -“I am sorry that I did not recognize you before,” answered Mercer. -“Will you gentlemen be seated? I am not the owner of the house nor his -son; I am not even a friend, only a casual acquaintance of the young -man, but I seem to be rather in the position of host, so will you be -seated, and may I offer you some Scotch and Shasta--Mr.--ah--” - -“Mr. Horatio Birdsall, of the Birdsall and Gwen Detective Agency,” -interposed Winter. Birdsall bowed. Mercer bowed. “Excuse me if I -decline for us both; our time is limited--no, thank you, not a cigar, -either. Now, Mr. Mercer, to come to the point, I want my nephew. I -understand he is in this house.” - -“You are quite mistaken,” Mercer responded with unshaken calm. “He is -not.” - -“Where is he, then?” - -“I do not know, Colonel Winter. What I should recommend is for you to -go back to the Palace, and if you do not find him there--why, come and -shoot us up again!” His eye strayed for a second to the blackened, -reeking mass on the great stone hearth. - -“Have you sent him home? Is that what you mean to imply?” - -“I imply nothing, Colonel; I don’t dare to with such strenuous fighters -as you gentlemen; only go and see, and if you do find the young -gentleman has had no ill treatment, no scare--only a little adventure -such as boys like, I hope you will come out here, or wherever I may be, -and have that cigar you are refusing.” - -The colonel was frankly puzzled. He couldn’t quite focus his wits on -this bravado which had nothing of the bravo about it, in fact had -a tinge of wistfulness in its quiet. One would have said the man -regretted his compulsory attitude of antagonism; that he wanted peace. - -Mercer smiled faintly. “You ought to know by this time when a man is -lying, Colonel,” he continued, “but I will go further. I may have done -plenty of wrong things in my life, some things, maybe, which the law -might call a crime; but I have never done anything which would debar -me from passing my word of honor as a gentleman; nor any one else from -taking it. I give you my word of honor that I have meant and I do mean -no slightest harm to Archie Winter; and that, while I do not _know_ -where he is at this speaking, I believe you will find him safe under -your aunt’s protection when you get back to the Palace.” - -“Call up the Palace Hotel, Mr. Birdsall,” was the colonel’s reply. “Mr. -Mercer, I do not distrust that you are speaking exactly, but you know -your Shakespeare; and there are promises which keep their word to the -ear but break it to the sense.” - -“I don’t wonder at your mistake; but you are mistaken, suh.” - -Birdsall was phlegmatically ringing up Mrs. Winter, having the usual -experience of the rash person who intrudes his paltry needs on the -complex workings of a great hotel system. - -“No, I don’t know the number, I haven’t the book here, but -_you_ know, Palace Hotel. Well give me Information, then--Busy? -Well, give me another Information, then--yes, I want the Palace -Hotel--P-a-l-a-c-e--yes, yes, Palace Hotel; yes, certainly. Yes? Mrs. -Archibald Winter. Yes--line busy? Well, hold on until it is disengaged. -Say, Miss Furber, that you? This is Birdsall and Gwen. Yes. Give me -Mrs. Winter, will you, 337? This Mrs. Winter? Oh! When will she be -back? Is Mrs. Melville Winter in? Well, Miss Smith in? She’s gone, -too? Has Master Archibald got back, yet, to the hotel? Hasn’t? Thank -you--eh?” in answer to the colonel’s interruption. “What say, Colonel?” - -“Tell her to call up this number,”--the colonel read it out of the -telephone book--“when Master Archie does get back, will you? I am -afraid, Mr. Mercer, that you will have to allow us to trespass on your -hospitality for a little longer.” - -He suspected that Mercer was annoyed, although he answered lightly -enough: “As you please, Colonel Winter. I am sure you will hear very -soon. Now, there is another matter, your machine; I understand you left -it outside. Will you ring for Kito, Colonel? Under the circumstances -you may prefer to do your own ringing. I will ask him to attend to the -car.” - -The colonel made proper acknowledgments. He was thinking that had -Mercer cared to confiscate the motor, he would have done it without -ringing; on the other hand, did he desire some special intercourse -with his retainer, wherein, under their very noses, he could issue his -orders--well, possibly they might get a whiff of the secret themselves -were he allowed to try. At present the game baffled him. Therefore he -nodded at Birdsall’s puckered face behind Mercer’s shoulder. And he -rang the bell. - -The Jap answered it with suspicious alacrity. - -“Kito,” said Mercer, “will you attend to General Winter’s car? Bring it -up to the court.” - -Absolutely harmless, to all appearances, but Birdsall, from his safe -position behind master and man, looked shrewd suspicion at the soldier. - -“Shall your man in the hall go with him?” asked Mercer. - -The colonel shook his head. “No,” he said quietly, “we have other -men outside if he needs help. Call Skid, please.” But when Birdsall -attempted to get Central there was no response. - -The colonel merely shrugged his shoulders, although Birdsall frowned -with vexation. “What a pity!” said Winter softly. “Now the fellows will -come when the time is up; we can’t call them off.” - -Mercer smiled faintly. “There are two more telephones in the house,” he -observed. “You can call off your dogs easily any time you wish. Also -you can hear from the Palace. Will you come up-stairs with me? I assure -you I have not the least intention to harm you or the honest sergeant.” - -“You take the first trick, Mercer,” said the colonel. “I supposed the -bell was your signal to have the wires cut. But about going; no, I -think we will stay here. There is a door out on the court which, if you -will open--thank you. A charming prospect! Excuse me if I send Haley -out there; and may I go myself?” - -Anticipating the answer, he stepped under the low mission lintel into -a fairy-like Californian court or _patio_ of pepper-trees and palms -and a moss-grown fountain. There was the usual colonnade with a stone -seat running round the wall. Mercer, smiling, motioned to one of them. -“I wish I could convince you, Colonel, that you are in no need of -that plaything in your hand, and that you are going to dine with your -boy--isn’t he a fine fellow?” - -The colonel did not note either his admission that he had seen Archie, -nor a curious warming of his tone; he had stiffened and grown rigid -like a man who receives a blow which he will not admit. He stole a -glance at the detective and met an atrocious smirk of complacency. -They both had caught a glimpse of a figure flitting into a door of the -court. They both had seen a woman’s profile and a hand holding a little -steel tool which had ends like an alligator’s nose. And both men had -recognized Miss Smith. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -THE AGENT OF THE FIRELESS STOVE - - -The time was two hours later. Rupert Winter was sitting on one of -the stone benches of the colonnade about the _patio_. The court was -suffused with the golden glow presaging sunset. Warm afternoon shadows -lay along the flags; wavering silhouettes of leafage or plant; blurred -reflections from the bold bas-reliefs of Spanish warriors and Spanish -priests sculptured between the spandrels of the arches. Winter’s dull -eyes hardly noted them: the exotic luxuriance of foliage, the Spanish -armor and Spanish cowls were all too common to a denizen of a Spanish -colony in the tropics, to distract his thoughts from his own ugly -problem. He had been having it out with himself, as he phrased it. And -there had been moments during those two hours, when he had ground his -teeth and clenched his fists because of the futile and furious pain in -him. - -When he recognized Janet Smith, by that same illuminating flash he -recognized that this woman who had been tricking him was the woman -that he loved. He believed that he had said his last word to love, but -love, after seeming to accept the curt dismissal, was lightly riding -his heart again. “Fooled a second time,” he thought with inexpressible -bitterness, recalling his unhappy married life and the pretty, weak -creature who had caused him such humiliation. Yet with her there had -been no real wrong-doing, only absolute lack of discretion and a -childish craving for gaiety and adulation. Poor child! what a woeful -ending for it all! The baby, the little boy who was their only living -child, to die of a sudden access of an apparently trifling attack of -croup, while the mother was dancing at a post ball! He was East, taking -his examination for promotion. The frantic drive home in the chill -of the dawn had given her a cold which her shock and grief left her -no strength to resist--she was always a frail little creature, poor -butterfly!--and she followed her baby inside of a month. Had she lived, -her husband might have found it hard to forgive her, for already a sore -heart was turning to the child for comfort; but she was dead, and he -did not let his thoughts misuse her memory. Now--here was another, so -different but just as false. Then, he brought himself up with a jerk; -he would be fair; he would look at things as they were; many a man had -been fooled by the dummy. He would not jump at conclusions because they -were cruel, any more than he would because they were kind. There was -such a thing, he knew well, as credulous suspicion; it did more harm -than credulous trust. Meanwhile, he had his detail. He was to find -Archie; therefore, he waited. They were in the house; it were only -folly to give up their advantage under the stress of any of Mercer’s -plausible lurings to the outside. - -Moreover, by degrees, he became convinced that Mercer, certainly to -some extent, was sincere in his profession of belief in Archie’s -absence and safety. This, in spite of hearing several times that Archie -was not returned. Mercer did all the speaking, but he allowed Birdsall -to hold the receiver and take the message from Mrs. Winter. - -The telephone was in an adjoining room, but by shifting his position -a number of times the colonel was able to catch a murmur of the -conversation. He heard Mercer’s voice distinctly. He had turned away -and was following the detective out of the room. “I don’t understand it -any more than you do, Mr. Birdsall,” he said; “you won’t believe me, -suh, but I am right worried.” - -“Of course I believe you,” purred the detective so softly that the -colonel knew he did not believe any more than Mercer suspected. “Of -course I believe you; but I don’t know what to do. It ain’t on the map. -I guess it’s up to you to throw a little light. I’ve called the boys -off twice already and told ’em to wait an hour or a half-hour longer. I -got to see the colonel.” - -“I can trust my intuitions, or I can trust the circumstantial -evidence,” thought the colonel. He jumped up and began to pace the -court. - -“Seems to be like a game of bridge before one can see the dummy,” he -complained; and as so often happens in the crises of life, a trivial -illustration struck a wavering mind with the force of an argument. His -thoughts reverted whimsically to the card-table; how many times had he -hesitated over the first lead between evenly balanced suits of four; -and how often had he regretted or won, depending solely upon whether -his card instinct had been denied or obeyed! It might be instinct, this -much-discussed “card instinct,” or it might be a summing up of logical -deductions so swift that the obscure steps were lost, and the reasoner -was unconscious of his own logical processes. “Now,” groaned Rupert -Winter, “I am up against it. She _looks_ like a good woman; she _seems_ -like a good woman; but I have only my impressions and Aunt Rebecca’s -against the apparent facts in the case. Well, Aunt Rebecca is a shrewd -one!” He sat down and thought harder. Finally he rose, smiling. He -had threshed out his problem; and his conclusion, inaudibly but very -distinctly uttered to himself, was: “Me for my own impressions! If that -girl is in with this gang, either what they are after isn’t so bad--or -they have made her believe it isn’t bad.” - -He looked idly about him at the arched doorway of the outer court. It -was carved with a favorite mission design of eight-pointed flowers with -vase-like fluting below. There was a tiny crack in one of the flowers, -the tiniest crack in the world. He looked at it without seeing it, or -seeing it with only the outer half of his senses, but--he could not -have told how--into his effort to pierce his own tangle there crept -a sudden interest, a sudden keenness of scrutiny of this minute, -insignificant crack in the stone. He became aware that the crack was -singularly regular, preserving the form of the flower and the fluting -beneath. Kito, the Japanese, who was sitting at the far end of the -court, conversing in amity with Haley, just here rose and came to this -particular pillar. The Irishman sat alone, rimmed by the sunset gold, -little spangles of motes drifting about him; for the merest second -Winter’s glance lingered on him ere it went to the Jap, who passed him, -courteously saluting. - -After he had passed, the colonel looked again at the column and the -crack--it was not there. - -“_Chito, chito!_” muttered the colonel. Carelessly he approached -the column and took the same posture as the Jap. Unobtrusively his -fingers strayed over the stone. He scratched the surface; not stone, -but cement. He tapped cautiously, keeping his hand well hidden by his -body; no hollow sound rewarded him; but all at once his groping fingers -touched a little round object under the bold point of an eight-pointed -flower. He didn’t dare press on it; instead he resumed his cautious -tapping. It seemed to him that the sound had changed. He glanced about -him. Save for Haley he was alone in the _patio_. He pressed on the -round white knob, and what he had half expected happened: a segment -of the column swung on inner hinges, disclosing the hollow center -of the engaged columns on either side. He looked down. Nothing but -darkness was visible, but while he stood, tensely holding his breath, -his abnormally sensitive auricular nerve caught distinctly the staccato -breath of that kind of sigh which is like a groan, and a voice said -more wearily than angrily: “Oh, damn it all!” - - * * * * * - -Almost simultaneously, he heard the faint footfalls of the men within; -he must replace his movable flower. The column was intact, and he was -bending his frowning brows on the stylobate of another when Birdsall -and Mercer entered together, Mercer, with a shrug of his shoulders at -the detective’s dogged suspicion, preceding the latter. - -“Well,” said the colonel, “did you get my aunt?” - -“Yes, suh, I got your aunt herself,” responded Mercer, with his -Virginian survival of the formal civility of an earlier generation. -“Yes, suh; but I regret to say Archie is not there.” - -“Where is he?” The soldier’s voice was curt. - -“Honestly,” declared Mercer, “I wish I knew, suh, I certainly _do_. -But--” Mercer’s jaw fell; he turned sharply at the soft whir of an -electric stanhope gently entering the _patio_ through the great arched -gateway. It stopped abreast of the group, and its only occupant, a -handsome young man, jumped nimbly out of the vehicle. He greeted them -with a polite removal of his cap, a bow, and a flashing smile which -made the circuit of the beholders. Birdsall and the colonel recognized -the traveling enthusiast of the Fireless Stove. - -The colonel took matters into his own hands. - -“I think you’re the young gentleman who took my nephew away,” said he. -“Will you kindly tell us where he is?” - -“And don’t get giddy, young gentleman,” Birdsall chimed in, “because -we know perfectly well that you are _not_ the agent of the Peerless -Fireless Stove.” - -“I’ve got one here on trial, and I’ve come back to see if they like -it,” explained the young man, in silken accents, but with a dancing -gleam of the eyes. - -“We are going to keep it,” said Mercer. “Kito,” calling the unseen Jap, -“fetch that Fireless Stove this gentleman left us, and show it to this -gentleman here.” - -“Oh, cut it out!” Birdsall waved him off. “It’s only ten minutes -before our fellows will come. You can put the police court wise with -all that. Try it on _them_; it don’t go with us.” - -“Where is the boy?” said the colonel. - -“Tell him, if you know,” said Mercer. “This gentleman,” he explained, -“left a stove with us to test. He was here about it this morning, and -we gave Archie to _him_ to take to the Palace Hotel.” - -“And he is there now,” said the young man. - -“Did you leave him there?” asked the colonel. - -“Yes, _did_ you?” insisted Mercer. - -The young man looked from Mercer to the other two men. There was no -visible appeal to the Southerner, but Winter felt sure of two things: -one, that the new-comer was Mercer’s confederate whom he was striving -to shield by pretending to disavow; the other, that for some reason -Mercer was as anxious for the answer as were they. - -“Why-y,” hesitated the stove promoter, “you see, Mr.--ah, gentlemen, -you see, I was told to take the boy to the Palace Hotel, and I set out -to do it. We weren’t going at more than an eight-mile-an-hour clip, -yet some foozler of a cop arrested us for speeding. It was perfectly -ridiculous, and I tried to shake him, but it was no use. They carried -us off to a police court and stuck me for ten dollars. Meanwhile my -machine and my passenger were outside. When I got outside I couldn’t -find them. I skirmished around, and finally did get the machine. I’d -taken the precaution to fix it so it couldn’t be run before I left -it--took the key out, you know--it must have been trundled off by -hand somewhere!--but I couldn’t find the boy. Naturally, I was a bit -worried; but after I had looked up the force and the neighborhood, it -occurred to me to ’phone to the Palace. I did, and I was told he was -there.” - -“Who told you?” The question came simultaneously out of three throats. - -“Why, Mrs. Winter--that’s what she called herself.” - -“But not three minutes ago Mrs. Winter told me that he wasn’t there,” -remarked Mercer coldly. “_When_ did you telephone?” - -“It was at least fifteen minutes ago,” the young man said dolefully. -“I say, wouldn’t you better call them up again? There may be some -explanation. I shouldn’t have come back without the kid if I hadn’t -been _sure_ he was safe.” - -“Was it Mrs. Melville or Mrs. Winter you got?” This came from the -colonel. “Did she by chance have an English accent, or was it -Southern?” - -“Oh, no, not Southern,” protested the young man. “Yes, I should say it -was English--or trying to be.” - -“It would be exactly like Millicent,” thought the colonel wrathfully, -“to try to fool the kidnappers, who had apparently lost Archie, by -pretending he was at the hotel!” - -He made no comment aloud, but he nodded assent to Mercer’s proposal to -telephone; and then he walked up to the stove man. - -“The game is up,” he said quietly. “We have a lot of men waiting -outside. If we signal, they will come any minute; if we don’t signal, -they will come in ten minutes. Give us a chance to be merciful to you. -This is no kind of a scrape for your father’s son--or for Arnold’s.” - -Shot without range though it was, Winter was sure that it went home -under all the young fellow’s assumed bewilderment. He continued, -looking kindly at him: - -“You look now, I’ll wager, about as you used to look in the office when -you called on the dean--by invitation--and were wondering just where -the inquiry was going to light!” - -The dimple showed in the young man’s cheek. “I admit,” he replied, -“that I didn’t take advantage as I should of my university -opportunities. Probably that is why I have to earn a strenuous -livelihood boosting the Only Peerless Fireless Stove. By the way, have -_you_ ever seen the Fireless in action? Just the thing for the army! -Fills a long-felt want. I should be very pleased to demonstrate. We -have a stove here.” - -The colonel grinned responsively. “You do it very well,” said he. -“Can’t you let me into the game?” - -There was the slightest waver in the promoter’s glance, although he -smiled brilliantly as he answered: “I’ll take it into consideration, -but--will you excuse me? I want to speak to Mr. Mercer about the stove.” - -The moment he had removed his affable young presence Birdsall -approached his employer. It had been a difficult quarter of an hour -with the detective. Vague instinct warned him not to touch the subject -of Miss Smith; he felt in no way assured about anything else. The -result had been that he had fidgeted in silence. But the accumulated -flood could no longer be held. - -“I’ve found out one thing,” exploded Birdsall, puffing in the haste of -his utterance. “The boy is on the premises.” - -“Think so?” was all the colonel’s answer. - -“I’m sure of it. Say, I overheard Mercer talking down a speaking-tube.” - -“What did he say?” - -“Talked French, damn him! But say, what’s _gorge_?” - -“Throat.” - -“What’s _cupillo gorge_?” - -“Sure he wasn’t talking of a carriage, or did he say _je le couperai la -gorge_?” - -“Maybe. I wouldn’t swear to it. I don’t _parlez français_ a little bit.” - -“Did you hear any other noises? Where were they?” - -Birdsall thought he had heard other noises, and that they were down -cellar. “And anyhow, Colonel, I’m dead-to-rights sure those guys are -giving us hot stuff to get us out of the house. I’m for getting our men -in now and rushing the house. It’s me for the cellar.” - -While the colonel was rolling Birdsall’s information around in his -mind, he heard the echo of steps on the flagging which preceded Mercer -and the other man. - -There was that in the bearing and the look of them that made the -watcher, used to the signs of decision on men’s faces, instantly sure -that their whole course of plans and action was changed. - -Mercer spoke first and in a low tone to the colonel. - -“I have no right,” said he, “to ask so much trust from you, but will -you trust me enough to step aside with this young man and me for a -moment only--out of ear-shot? I give you my word of honor I mean no -slightest harm to you. I want to be frank. I will go alone if you -desire.” - -The colonel eyed him intently for the briefest space. “I’ll trust you,” -said he. Then: “I think you have the key to this queer mix-up. At your -service. And let your friend come, too. He is an ingenuous sort, and he -amuses me.” - -Birdsall looked distinctly sullen over the request to wait, intimating -quite frankly that his employer was walking into a trap. “I won’t stand -here more than fifteen minutes,” he grumbled. “I’ve given those fellows -_poco tiente_ long enough.” But the colonel insisted on twenty minutes, -and reluctantly Birdsall acquiesced. - -Mercer conducted the others to the library. When they were seated he -began in his composed, melancholy fashion: - -“I earnestly beg of you to listen to me, and to believe me, for your -nephew’s sake. I am going to tell you the absolute truth. It is the -only way now. When you came, we handed him over to this gentleman, -exactly as we have said. I do not know why he should have been stopped. -I do not know why he left the machine--” - -“Might he not have been _carried_ away?” said Winter. - -“He might; but I don’t know what motive--” - -“What motive had _you_? You kidnapped him!” - -“Not exactly. We had no intention of harming him. He came accidentally -into the room between Mrs. Winter’s and Mr. Keatcham’s suites. Standing -in that room, trying to stanch the bleeding of a sudden hemorrhage of -the nose, he overheard me and my friend--” - -“_You?_” asked the colonel laconically of the young Harvard man. - -“I,” smilingly confessed the latter. “I am ready to own up. You are a -decent fellow, and you are shrewd. You ought to be on our side, not -fighting us. I tell you, you don’t want to have the boy turn up safe -and sound any more than I do. Mr. Mercer was talking to me, and the -kid overheard. We heard him and went into the room--” - -“How?” - -“Knocked on the door and he opened it. And we jumped on him. It was -life and death for us not to be blown on; so, as we didn’t wish to kill -the kid, and as we didn’t know the youngster well enough to trust him -_then_--although we might, for he is game and the whitest chap!--but -we didn’t know--why, we just told him he would have to stay with us a -while until our rush was over. That was all we meant; and we let him -’phone you.” - -“How about his great-aunt--the cruel anxiety--” - -“Anxiety nothing!” began the other man, but a glance from Mercer cut -him short. - -The Southerner took the word in his slow, gentle voice. “I tried to -reassure our aunt, Colonel Winter. I think I succeeded. She telephoned -and I told her it was all right. As for Archie, after we talked with -him, he was willing enough to go. He stole out with my friend inside -of five minutes, while you all were searching your rooms. It was _he_ -insisted on calling you up, lest you should be worried. He said you -were right afraid of kidnappers, and you would be sending the police -after us. You can call Mrs. Winter up and find out if I am not telling -you the exact facts.” - -“Very well, I _will_,” said Winter. They met the sullen detective at -the door. Cary Mercer, with his mirthless smile, led the way. Mercer -rang up the hotel for Winter, himself. To the colonel’s vast relief -Aunt Rebecca answered the call. - -“_Est-ce que c’est vous-même, mon neveu?_” said she dryly. - -“_Mais oui, ma tante._ Why are you speaking so formally in foreign -tongues? Is Millicent on deck?” - -“In her room,” came the answer, still in French. “Well, you have got us -in a pretty mess. Where is my boy?” - -“I only wish I knew! Tell me now, though, is Mercer’s story straight?” - -“Absolutely. You may trust him.” - -“What’s his real game, then? The one he was afraid Archie would expose?” - -“Ask him.” - -“But _you_ are in it, aren’t you?” - -“Enough to ask that you abandon the chase--immediately! Unless you wish -to ruin me!” - -“You’ll have to speak plainer. I’ve been kept in the dark as long as I -can stand in this matter.” - -But before he could finish the sentence. “_Pas ici, pas -maintenant--c’est trop de péril_,” she cried, and she must have -gone, for he could get no more from her. When he rang again, Randall -responded: - -“Mrs. Winter says, sir, will you please come up here as quick as you -can. She’s gone out. She thought she caught sight of Mr. Archie on the -street.” - -To the colonel’s demand, “Where, how did she see him?” he obtained no -answer, and on his vicious pealing of the bell there came, eventually, -mellow Anglican accents which asked: “Yes? Whom do you wish to see?” It -is an evidence of the undisciplined nature of the sex that the soldier -made a face and--hung up the receiver. - -He found himself--although this to a really open mind is no excuse--in -a muddle of conflicting impulses. He was on edge to get into the -street for the search after the boy; he was clutched in a vise by his -conviction that the clue to Archie’s whereabouts lay in Mercer’s hands, -and that the Southerner meant no harm to the lad. And all the while he -could feel Birdsall tugging at the leash. - -“It’s on the cards,” he grumbled, with a wry face, “quite on the cards -that he may bolt in spite of me, and do some foolish stunt of his own -that will make a most awful muddle.” - -Not nearly so composed as he looked, therefore, he turned to Mercer. -However, his ammunition was ready, and to Mercer’s inquiry, was he -satisfied? he replied calmly: “Well, not entirely. If Archie isn’t in -the house, _who_ is it whose throat you wish to cut? Who is hidden -here?” - -It could not have been an unexpected question or Mercer hardly had -answered so readily: “You know who it is,” said he. “It is Mr. -Keatcham.” - - - - -CHAPTER X - -THE SMOLDERING EMBERS - - -If Mercer’s avowal surprised the colonel, there was no trace of such -emotion in his face or his manner. “I rather thought it might be,” he -said. “And our young friend who is promoting Fireless Stoves with the -solemn energy he learned doing Dicky stunts?” - -“Mr. Endicott Tracy.” Mercer had the manner of a ceremonious -introduction. Tracy flavored the customary murmur of pleasure with his -radiant smile. - -“Pleased, I am sure,” said the colonel in turn, bowing. “Your father, -I suppose, is the president of the Midland; and Mr. Keatcham will, I -suppose, not be able to prevent his reëlection to-morrow. Is that the -game?” - -Mr. Tracy’s son admitted that it might be. - -“Ah, very clever,” said the colonel, “very. Any side-show, for example?” - -“I did not go into this for money.” Mercer’s level gaze did not relax, -and he kept his dreary eyes unflinchingly on Winter’s. A peculiar look -in the eyes recalled some tragic and alien memory, just what, Rupert -could not capture; it flitted hazily through his thoughts ere the -next words drove it off. “Nevertheless, it is true that if we win out -I shall have enough to pay back to all the people who trusted me the -money they lost when they were frightened into selling their stock in -the Tidewater, and your aunt and Mr. Tracy stand to make money.” - -“How do you expect to make it?” - -“The M. and S. stock is away down because of rumors Keatcham is likely -to control it. When it is settled it is not to be looted by him, the -stock will rise--we are sure of the ten points; we may make twenty--” - -“And my aunt has financed your scheme, has she?--paid all your -expenses?” - -The Harvard man laughed out. “Our _expenses_? Oh, yes, she has -grub-staked us, all right; but she has done a good deal more--she has -furnished more than half a million to us for our gamble.” - -The colonel considered; then: “But why did you keep him here so long -beforehand?” said he. - -“It was not long beforehand,” said Mercer. “The meeting was adjourned -for a day--we don’t know why--we fancy that his partners suspect -something. It is called for to-morrow, in spite of their efforts to -have it put off a week. But we want more; we want to induce Keatcham to -vote his own stock for us, and to call off his dogs himself.” - -“And you can’t force him to do it?” - -“We shall force him, easily enough,” returned Mercer, “but we don’t -trust him. We want his private code book to be sure he is playing fair. -In fact, we have to have it, because nothing gets any attention that -isn’t, so to speak, properly introduced.” - -“And he will not give it to you?” - -“Says he has lost it.” - -“Perhaps he _has_,” mused the soldier. “But now, all this is not my -concern, except that I have no right, as a soldier, even passively -to aid in breaking the laws. It is my duty to rescue and free Mr. -Keatcham.” - -But before he could speak further Mercer lifted a hand in apologetic -interruption. Would Colonel Winter excuse him, but he must ask Mr. -Tracy to go back to the _patio_ and have an eye on the detective. -Endicott only exchanged a single glance before he obeyed. Mercer’s eyes -followed him. “It was not to be helped,” he said, half to himself, “but -I have been sorry more than once that I had to take him into this.” - -Winter looked at him, more puzzled than he wanted to admit to himself; -indeed, he was rather glad to have the next word come from Mercer. - -“I have a few things I want to say to you; they go easier when we are -alone--but won’t you sit down?” When the colonel had seated himself he -went on: “I’d like to explain things a bit.” - -“I’d like to have you,” answered the soldier. “I think you have the -clue to Archie’s whereabouts and don’t recognize it yourself; so put me -wise, as the slang goes.” - -Then, without preface, in brief, nervous sentences, spoken hardly -with a quiver of a muscle or a wavering cadence of the voice, yet -nevertheless instinct with a deadly earnestness, Mercer began to talk. -He told of his struggling youth on the drained plantation, mortgaged -so that after the interest was paid there was barely enough to get -the meagerest living for his mother and sister and little brother; -of his accidental discovery of iron ore on the place; of his working -as a common laborer in the steel mills; of his being “rooster,” -“strand-boy,” “rougher,” “heater,” “roller,” during three years while -he was waiting for his chance; of his heart-draining toil; of his -solitary studies. - -“I never was the kind of fellow to make friends,” he said, in his soft, -monotonous voice, “so I expect I was the fonder of my own kin. I’d a -mighty good mother, sir, and sister; and there was Phil--my little -brother. We were right happy all together on the old place that’s -been in our family for a hundred years, and it was all we asked to -stay there; but it had every dollar of mortgage it could stand, and -the soil all worn-out, needing all kinds of things; and I wish you -could have seen the makeshifts we had for machines! I was blacksmith -and carpenter and painter--just sixteen, and not an especially bright -chap, but mighty willing to work; and my mother and Sis and I--we did -a heap. When I stumbled on the ore I couldn’t be sure, but I wrote to -Aunt Rebecca Winter. She sent a man down. He looked up things. It would -take a heap of money to work the mines, but it might be a big thing. -She paid off the mortgage and took another. First to last, she’s been -mighty kind to us. She would have done more had we let her. So I went -to Pittsburgh and learned my trade, and I made enough to pay interest, -and the people at home got a fairly good living. When I was twenty-one -I was back home, and got a company started and put up a mill. You -know how those things have to creep up. But there was ore, all right, -and I understood my business and taught the hands. We’d a right sweet -little mill. Well, I don’t want to take up your time, suh. Those next -ten or twelve years were right hard work, but they were happy, too. -We prospered; we helped the whole county prosper. We paid Aunt Becky. -We were in good shape. We went through ’93 paying our dividends just -as regular, and making them, too, though we didn’t much more--it was -close sailing. But we were honest; we made a mighty good article; and -everybody trusted us. Then came the craze for mergers, and a number -of us got together. Still we weren’t very big, but we were big enough -to be listed. I didn’t want it, but some of the men thought it was a -terrible fine thing to be ‘Iron Kings.’ That was how. Keatcham was -looking over the country for fish for his net; he somehow heard that -here was a heap of good ore and new mills. The first intimation we had -was his secretary coming as a Northern invalid--why, he stayed at our -house because we were so sorry for him, the hotel being in new hands -and not right comfortable. He seemed so interested in our mills, and -bought some stock, and sent presents to Phil and my mother after he -went.” - -“That was Keatcham’s private secretary, you say?” - -“Yes, suh, Atkins. You met him on the train--as sleek and deadly a -little scoundrel as ever got rich quick. Oh, he’s deep. Well, suh, -you know the usual process. Convinced of the value of the property, -Keatcham and one or two others set out to buy it. They got little -blocks of it here and there. Then Atkins wrote me in confidence that -some men were after the controlling interest and meant to squeeze us -all out--offered to lend me money to buy--of course, on a margin. And -I was plumb idiot enough to be tolled into his trap! I, who had never -speculated with a dollar before, I didn’t borrow _his_ money, but I -took all I could raise myself, and I bought enough to be sure I could -control the next election. Then--the slump came, and after the slump -the long, slow crumbling. I controlled the election all right, of -course, but before the next one came I was ruined, and Keatcham put -his own men in. I went desperately to New York. I didn’t know how to -fight those fellows; it was a new game. I didn’t find Atkins. Maybe -because that wasn’t his name when I had known him. I was so sure that -the property was good--as if that mattered! As if anything mattered -with these gamblers who play with loaded dice and dope the horses they -bet against! Phil had all his property in the mills; we all had. We -mortgaged the house; we had to, to protect our stock. You know how -the fight ended, and what happened at Cambridge. That isn’t all. My -wife--” He stood a little straighter, and the light went out of his -eyes. “I told you I don’t make friends easily, and I am not the kind of -man women take to; all the same, the loveliest girl in the South loved -me ever since I jumped over the mill-dam to save her rag doll, once, -when she was visiting her aunt near us. I’d married, when we seemed -prosperous. Now, understand me, I don’t say it was my ruin and Phil’s -death that killed her and the baby; she had pneumonia, and it may be -that seeing that paper by accident didn’t turn the scale; but I do say -that she had her last hours embittered by it. That’s enough for me. -When I got home with--with Phil, she was dead.” - -“Tough,” said the colonel. He began to revise his impressions of Mercer. - -“Wasn’t it?” the other asked, with a simplicity of appeal that affected -the listener more than anything he had heard. He jumped out of his -chair and began pacing the room, talking more rapidly. “You’re a _man_; -you know what I wanted to do.” - -“Kill somebody, I suppose. _I_ should.” - -“Just that. I ran Atkins to cover after a while through Endicott Tracy. -That boy is one of the noblest fellows that ever lived; yes, suh. He -was going to help poor Phil, Phil’s room-mate had told him. All those -boys--look a-here, Colonel Winter, if ever anybody talks to you about -Harvard fellows being indifferent--” - -“I shall tell him he can’t get under the American surface. A Harvard -boy will do anything on earth for his friends.” - -“They were mighty good to me. It was Endy found out about Atkins, just -from my description of him. I found out about Keatcham for myself. And -you are quite right--for a little while I wanted to kill them both. -Looked like I just naturally _had_ to kill them! But there was my -mother. There was nobody to take care of her but Sis and me, and a -trial for murder is terribly expensive. Of course, anybody can get off -who has got money and can spend it; but it takes such an awful heap -of money. And we were all ruined together, for what little was left -was all in the company, and that promptly stopped paying dividends. -I couldn’t risk it. I had to wait. I had to go to work to support -my mother, to pay Sis and her back, don’t you see? We came here. I -got a job, a well-paid one, too, through Endy’s father, reporting on -the condition of the mills--a kind of examiner. And the job was for -Keatcham.” - -“Why did you take it? I know, though. You did it to familiarize him -with your appearance, so that he would not be warned when your chance -came.” - -“How did you know that?” - -“A man I knew in the Philippines--a Filipino--was wronged by a white -man, who took his wife and threw her aside when he tired of her. The -girl killed herself. Her husband watched his chance for a year, found -it at last--thanks to that very fact that his victim wasn’t on guard -against him--and sent his knife home. He’d been that fellow’s servant. -I picked the dead man up. That Filipino looked as you looked a minute -ago.” - -“What became of the Filipino?” inquired his listener. - -The colonel had not told the story quite without intention. He argued -subconsciously, that if Mercer were a good sort under all, he would -have a movement of sympathy for a more cruelly wronged man than he; -if not, he would drive ahead to his purpose, whatever that might be. -His keen eyes looked a little more gentle as he answered: “He poisoned -himself. The best way out, I reckon. I should hate to have had him -shot after I knew the story. But there was really no option. But I’m -interrupting you. You did your work well and won Keatcham’s confidence?” - -“He isn’t a very confiding man. I didn’t see him often. My dealings -were with Atkins. He didn’t know that I had found him out; he thought -that he had only to explain his two names, and expected gratitude for -his warning, as he called it. He is slimy; but I was able to repay a -little of my score with him. I was employed by more than Keatcham, and -I saw a good many industrial back-yards. Just by chance, I came on a -clue, and Endy Tracy and I worked it up together. Atkins was selling -information to Keatcham’s enemies. We did not make out a complete -case, but enough of one to make Keatcham suspect him, and at the right -time. But that happened later--you see, I don’t know how to tell a -story even with so much at stake.” He pulled out his handkerchief, and -Winter caught the gleam of the beads on his sallow forehead. “It was -this way,” he went on. “At first I was only looking about for a safe -chance to kill him, and to kill that snake of an Atkins; but then it -grew on me; it was all too easy a punishment--just a quick death, when -his victims had years of misery. I wanted him to wade through the hell -_I_ had to wade through. I wanted him to know _why_ he was condemned. -Then it was I began to collect just the cases I knew about--just one -little section of the horrible swath of agony and humiliation and -poverty and sin he and his crowd had made--the one I knew every foot -of, because I’d gone over it every night I wasn’t so dead tired I _had_ -to sleep. God! do you know what it is to have the people who used to -be running out of their houses just to say howdy to you, curse you for -a swindler or a fool or turn out of one street and down the other not -to pass you? Did _you_ ever have a little woman who used to give you -frosted cake when you were a boy push her crape veil off her gray hair -and hand you the envelope with her stock, with your handwriting on the -envelope, and beg you--trying so hard not to cry, ’twas worse than if -she had--beg you to lend her just half her interest money--_and you -couldn’t do it_? Did you--never mind. I said I waded through hell. I -_did!_ Not I alone--that was the worst--all the people that had trusted -me! And just that some rich men should be richer. Why should _they_ -have the lion’s share? The lion’s share belongs to the lion. _They_ are -nothing but jackals. They’re meaner than jackals, for the jackals take -what the lion leaves, and these fellows steal the lion’s meat away from -him. We made honest money; we paid honest wages; folks had more paint -on their houses and more meat in their storehouses, and wore better -clothes Sunday, and there were more school-houses and fewer saloons, -and the negroes were learning a trade instead of loafing. The whole -county was the better off for our prosperity, and there isn’t a mill in -the outfit--and I know what I’m talking about--there isn’t a shop or a -mine that’s as well run or makes as big an output now as it did when -the old crowd was in. You find it that way everywhere; and that’s what -is going to break things down. We saw to all the little affairs; they -were _our_ affairs, don’t you know? But Keatcham’s new men draw their -salaries and let things slide. Yet Keatcham is a great manager if he -would only take the time; only he’s too busy stealing to develop his -businesses; there’s more money in stealing a railway than in building -one up. Oh, he isn’t a fool; if I could once get him where he would -_have_ to listen, I know I could make him understand. He’s pretty -cold-blooded, and he doesn’t realize. He only sees straight ahead, -not all round, like all these superhumanly clever thieves; they have -mighty stupid streaks. Well, I’ve got him now, and it is kill or cure -for him. He can’t make a riffle. I knew I couldn’t do anything alone; -I had to wait. I had to have stronger men than I am to help. By and by -they tried their jackal business on a real lion--on Tracy. They wanted -to steal _his_ road. I got on to them first. I see a heap of people -in a heap of different businesses--the little people who talk. They -notice all right, but they can see only their own little patch. I was -the fellow riding round and seeing the township. I pieced together the -plot and I told Endy Tracy. He wouldn’t believe me at first, because -his father had given Keatcham his first start and done a hundred things -for him. To be sure, his father has been obliged as an honest man to -oppose Keatcham lately, but Keatcham couldn’t mean to burn him out that -way. But he soon found that was precisely what Keatcham did mean. Then -he was glad enough to help me save his father. The old man doesn’t know -a thing; we don’t mean he ever shall know. We let him put up the best -sort of a fight a man can with his hands tied while the other fellow -is free. _My_ hands are free, too. I don’t respect the damned imbecile -laws that let me be plundered any more than they do; and since my poor -mother died last summer I am not afraid of anything; they _are_; that’s -where I have the choice of weapons. I tell you, suh, _nobody_ is big -enough to oppress a desperate man! Keatcham had one advantage--he had -unlimited money. But Aunt Rebecca helped us out there. Colonel, I want -you to know I didn’t ask her for more than the bare grub-stake; it was -she herself that planned our stock deal.” - -“She is a dead game sport,” the colonel chuckled. “I believe you.” - -“And I hope you don’t allow that I was willing to have her mix herself -in our risks. She would come; she said she wanted to see the fun--” - -“I believe you again,” the colonel assured him, and he remembered the -odd sentence which his aunt had used the first night of their journey, -when she expressed her hankering to match her wits against those of a -first-class criminal. - -“We didn’t reckon on your turning up, or the complication with Archie. -I wish to God we’d taken the boy’s own word! But, now you know all -about it, will you keep your hands off? That’s all we ask.” - -“Well,”--the colonel examined his finger-nails, rubbing his hands -softly, the back of one over the palm of the other--“well, you haven’t -quite told me all. Don’t, unless you are prepared to have it used -against you, as the policemen say _before_ the sweat-box. What did you -do to Keatcham to get him to go with you so like Mary’s little lamb?” - -“I learned of a little device that looks like a tiny currycomb and is -so flat and small you can bind it on a man’s arm just over an artery. -Just press on the spring and give the least scratch, and the man falls -down in convulsions. I showed him a rat I had had fetched me, and -killed it like a flash. He had his choice of walking out quietly with -me--I had my hand on his arm--or dropping down dead. He went quietly -enough.” - -“That was the meaning of his look at me, was it?” Winter thought. He -said only: “Did Endicott Tracy know about that?” - -“Of course not,” Mercer denied. “Do you reckon I want to mix the boy up -in this more than I have? And Arnold only knew I was trying some kind -of bluff game.” - -“I will lay odds, though,” the colonel ventured in his gentlest tone, -“that Mr. Samurai, as Haley calls him, knew more. But when did you get -rid of Atkins?” - -“Mr. Keatcham discharged him at Denver. I met Mr. Keatcham here; it was -arranged on the train. We had it planned out. If that plan had failed I -had another.” - -“Neat. Very neat. And then you became the secretary?” - -Mercer flushed in an unexpected fashion. “Certainly not!” he said with -emphasis. “Do you think I would take his wages and not do the work -faithfully? No, suh. I assumed to be his secretary in the office; that -gave me a chance to arrange everything. But I did it to oblige him. I -never touched a cent of his money. I paid, in fact, for our board out -of our own money. It would have burned my fingers, suh!” - -“And the valet? Was he in your plot? Don’t answer if you--” - -“He was not, suh,” replied Cary Mercer. “He is a right worthy fellow, -and he thought, after he had seen to the tickets--which he did very -carefully--and given them to me, he could go off on the little vacation -which came to him by his master through me.” - -“That’s a little bit evasive. However, I haven’t the right to ask you -to give away your partners, anyhow.” He was peering at Mercer’s face -behind his glasses, but the pallid, tired features returned him no clue -to the thoughts in the head above them. “What have you done with Mr. -Keatcham?” he concluded suddenly. - -The question brought no change of expression, and Mercer answered -readily: “I put him off by himself, where he sees no one and hears -nothing. I read a good deal about prisons and the most effectual way -of taming men, and solitary confinement is recommended by all the -authorities. His meals are handed to him by--by a mechanical device. He -has electric light some of the time, turned on from the outside. He has -a comfortable room and his own shower-bath. He has comfortable meals. -And he is supplied with reading.” - -“Reading?” repeated the colonel, his surprise in his voice. - -For the first time he saw Mercer smile, but it was hardly a pleasant -smile. “Yes, suh, reading,” he said. “I have had type-written copies -made of all the cases which I discovered in regard to his stealing our -company. I reasoned that when he would get absolutely tired of himself -and his own thoughts he would just naturally be _obliged_ to read, and -that would be ready for him. He tore up one copy.” - -“Hmn--I can’t say I wonder. What did you do?” - -“I sent him another. I expected he would do that way. After a while he -will go back to it, because it will draw him. He’ll hate it, but he -will want to know them all. I know his nature, you see.” - -“What are you going to do with him?” - -“Let him go, after he does what we want and promises never to molest -any of us.” - -“But can you trust him?” - -“He never breaks his word,” replied Mercer indifferently, “and besides, -he knows he will be killed if he should. He isn’t given to being -scared, but he’s scared of me, all right.” - -“What do you want him to do?” - -“Promise to be a decenter man and to let Mr. Tracy alone in future; -meanwhile, to send a wire in his secret code saying he has changed his -mind. It will not surprise his crowd. He never confides in them, and he -expects them to obey blindly anything in that code language. I reckon -other telegrams are just for show, and they don’t notice them much.” - -The colonel took a turn around the room to pack away this information -in an orderly fashion in his mind. Mercer waited patiently; he had said -truly that he was used to waiting. Perhaps he supposed that Winter was -trying the case in his own mind; but in reality Rupert was seeking -only one clue, as little diverted from his purpose as a bloodhound. He -began to understand the man whose fixed purpose had his own quality, -but sharpened by wrong and suffering. This man had not harmed Archie; -as much as his warped and fevered soul could feel softer emotions, -he was kindly intentioned toward the lad. Who had carried him away, -then? Or was he off on his own account, really, this time? Or suppose -Atkins, the missing secretary discharged at Denver, coming back for -another appeal to his employer, finding Keatcham gone, but, let one -say, stumbling on some trace of mystery in his departure; suppose him -to consider the chance of his having his past condoned and a rosy -future given him if his suspicions should prove true and _he_ should -release the captive--wouldn’t such a prospect spur on a man who was as -cunning as he was unprincipled? Mightn’t he have watched all possible -clues, and mightn’t he have heard about Archie and plotted to capture -the child, thinking he would be easily pumped? That would presuppose -that Atkins knew that Archie was at the Arnolds’ or--no, he might only -have seen the boy on the street; he knew him by sight; the colonel -remembered that several times Archie had been with him in Keatcham’s -car. It was worth considering, anyhow. He spoke out of his thoughts: -“Do you think Keatcham could have told the truth, and that code of -his be lost or stolen? Why couldn’t Atkins have stolen it? He had the -chance, and he isn’t hampered by principle, you say.” - -Mercer frowned; it was plain the possibility had its argument for him. -“He might,” he conceded, “but I doubt it. Why hasn’t he done something -with it? He hasn’t. They wouldn’t have postponed that meeting if he -had wired his proxy and his directions in the code. He’d have voted -his employer’s stock. He’s got too much at stake. I happen to know he -thought it a sure tip to sell short, and he has put almost all he has -on it. You see, Keatcham was banking on that; he knew it. He thought -Atkins wouldn’t dare give any of his secrets away or go against him in -this deal, because they were in the same boat.” - -“Still, I reckon I’ll have to see Keatcham.” - -Mercer shook his head, gently but with decision. “I hate to refuse you, -Colonel, but unless you promise not to interfere, it is impossible. But -I’ll gladly go with you to see if we can find any trace of Archie. I’ll -risk that much. And if you will promise--” - -“Such a promise would be impossible to an officer and a gentleman,” the -colonel urged lightly, smiling. “Besides, don’t you see I have all the -cards? I have only to call in my men. I’d hate to do it, but if you -force me, you would have no chance resisting.” - -“We shouldn’t resist, Colonel, no, suh; your force is overwhelming. But -it would do no good; you couldn’t find him.” - -“We could try; and we may be better sleuths than you imagine.” - -“Then it would be the worse for him; for if you find him, you will find -him dead.” - -There was something so chilling in his level tones that Winter broke -out sharply: “Are you fooling with me? Have you been such an incredible -madman as to kill him already?” - -Mercer’s faint smile made the colonel feel boyish and impetuous. “Of -course not, suh,” he answered. “I told you he was alive, myself. I -reckoned you knew when a man is lying and when he is telling the solemn -truth. You _know_ I have told you the truth and treated you on the -square. But, just the same, if you try to take that man away, you’ll -only have his dead body. He can’t do any more harm then, and a dead man -can’t vote.” - -The colonel, who had taken out his cigarette case, opened it and -meditatively fingered the rubber band. “Do you reckon,” he suggested, -in his most amiable voice, “do you reckon young Arnold and Endicott -Tracy will stand for such frills in warfare as assassination?” - -“I do not, suh,” replied Mercer gravely, and as he spoke he pushed back -the heavy tapestry hiding a window opposite the colonel’s head, “but -they can both prove an alibi. Mr. Arnold is in Pasadena, and there goes -Mr. Tracy now in his machine--to try to find Archie. Do you see?” - -The colonel saw. He inclined his head, at the same time proffering his -case. - -“I rather think, Mr. Mercer, that I was wrong. _You_ have the last -trump.” - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -THE CHARM OF JADE - - -It was no false lure to distract pursuit, that hurried sentence of -Randall’s which had met the colonel’s angry appeal for information. The -woman was not only repeating Mrs. Winter’s message; the message itself -described a fact. As she stood at her room telephone, Aunt Rebecca had -happened to glance at Randall, supplementing the perfunctory dusting of -the hotel maid with her own sanitary, dampened, clean cloth; Randall’s -eyes suddenly glazed and bulged in such startling transformation that, -instead of questioning her, Mrs. Winter stepped swiftly to the window -where she was at work, to seek the cause of her agitation. - -“Oh, Lord! Oh, Mrs. Winter!” gasped Randall. “Ain’t _that_ Master -Archie?” - -Mrs. Winter saw for herself; the face at a cab window, the waving of a -slim hand--Archie’s face, Archie’s hand. Brief as was the Space of his -passing (for the two horses in the cab were trotting smartly), she was -sure of both. “Give me my bonnet,” she commanded, “_any_ bonnet, _any_ -gloves! And my bag with some money!” - -It was as she flung through the door that she threw her message to the -colonel back exactly as Randall had submitted it. Miss Smith was coming -along the loggia. “Don’t stop me!” said Mrs. Winter sternly. “I’ve seen -Archie; I’m after him.” - -“Stop!” cried Miss Smith--but it was to the elevator boy who was -whizzing below them in his cage, not to her employer; and she boarded -the elevator with the older woman. “I’ll go with you,” she said. There -was no vibration in her even tones, although a bright red flickered up -in her cheek. - -But Rebecca Winter caught savagely at her breath, which was coming -fast. “It is not with the running; you needn’t think it, Janet,” -she panted sharply, in a second. “It was the sight of his face--so -suddenly; I never expected _any_ face would make my heart pump like -that again. All of which shows”--she was speaking quite naturally and -placidly again--“that women may grow too old for men to make fools of -them, but never for children. Come; it was a shabby sort of hack he -was in, drawn by two horses with auburn tails. Here’s the office floor.” - -Not a word did Janet Smith say; she was not a woman of words in any -case. Moreover, the pace which Mrs. Winter struck was too rapid for -comments or questions; it swept them both past the palm-shaded _patio_ -into the side hall, out on the noisy, dazzling, swaying street. Looking -before her, Miss Smith could see the dusty body of a hack a block away. -Mrs. Winter had stepped up to a huge crimson motor-car, in the front -seat of which lounged the chauffeur, his forehead and eyes hunched -under his leather visor. The machine was puffing, with the engine -working, ready to leap forward at a touch of the lever. - -“Twenty dollars an hour if you let me get in now!” said Mrs. Winter, -lightly mounting by his side as she spoke. - -“Hey, me? what!” gurgled the chauffeur, plucked out of a half-doze. -“Oh, say, beg your pardon, lady, but this is hired, it belongs--” - -“I don’t care to whom it belongs, I have to have it,” announced -Mrs. Winter calmly. “Whoever hired it can get another. I’ll make it -all right. You start on and catch that hack with the auburn-tailed -horses--” - -“_I’ll_ make it right with your fare!” Miss Smith cut in before the -chauffeur could answer. “It’s a case of kidnapping. You catch that -cab!” She was standing on the curb, and even as she spoke an elderly -man and his wife came out of a shop. They stared from her to the -automobile, and in their gaze was a proprietary irritation. This was -instantly transfused by a more vivid emotion. The woman looked shocked -and compassionate. “Oh, pa!” she gasped, “did you hear _that_?” - -The man was a country banker from Iowa. He had a very quick, keen eye; -it flashed. “Case of kidnapping, hey?” snapped he, instantly grasping -the character of the speakers and jumping at the situation. “Take the -auto, Madam. Get a move on you, Mr. Chauffeur!” - -“Oh, I’m moving, all right,” called the chauffeur, as he skilfully -dived his lower wheels under the projecting load of a great wagon and -obliquely bumped over the edge of a street-car fender, pursued by the -motorman’s curses. “I see ’em, lady; I see the red tails; I’ll catch -’em!” - -His boast most likely had been made good (since for another block they -bore straight on their course) but for an orange-wagon which had been -overturned. There was a rush of pursuit of the golden balls from -the sidewalk; a policeman came to the rescue of traffic and ordered -everything to halt until the cart was righted. The boys and girls in -the street chased back to the sidewalk. The episode took barely a -couple of minutes, but on the edge of the last minute the cab turned -a corner. The motor-car turned the same corner, but saw no guiding -oriflamme of waving red horsehair. The cross street next was equally -bare. They were obliged to explore two adjacent highways before they -came upon the hack again. This time it was in distant perspective, -foreshortened to a blur of black and a swish of red. And even as they -caught sight of it the horses swung round into profile and turned -another corner. In the turn a man wearing a black derby hat stuck his -arm and head out of the window in order to give some direction to the -driver. Then he turned half around. It was almost as if he looked back -at his pursuers; yet this, Mrs. Winter argued, hardly could be, since -he had not expected pursuit, and anyhow, the chances were he could not -know her by sight. - -It was a mean street, narrow and noisome, but full of shipping -traffic and barred by tramways--a heartbreaking street for a chase. -The chauffeur was a master of his art; he jumped his great craft at -every vacant arm’s-length; he steered it through incredibly narrow -lanes; he progressed sometimes by luffs, like a boat under sail when -the forward passage must be reached in such indirect fashion; but the -crowd of ungainly vehicles, loaded dizzily above his head, made the -superior speed of the motor of no avail. In spite of him they could -see the red tails lessening. Again and yet again, the hack turned; -again, but each time with a loss, the motor struck its trail. By now -the street was changed; the dingy two-story buildings lining it were -brightened by gold-leaf and vermilion; oriental arms and garbs and -embroidery spangled the windows and oriental faces looked inscrutably -out of doorways. There rose the blended odors of spice, sandalwood and -uncleanliness that announce the East, reeking up out of gratings and -puffing out of shops. - -“Ah,” said Mrs. Winter softly to herself, “Chinese quarter, is it? -Well.” Her eyes changed; they softened in a fashion that would have -amazed one who only knew the surface of Mrs. Winter, the eccentric -society potentate. She looked past the squalid, garish scene, past -the shining sand-hills and the redwood trees, beyond into a stranger -landscape glowing under a blinder glare of sun. Half mechanically she -lifted a tiny gold chain that had slipped down her throat under the -gray gown. Raising the yellow thread and the carven jade ornament -depending therefrom, she let it lie outside amid the white lace and -chiffon. - -“We’re making good now,” called the chauffeur. “Will I run alongside -and hail ’em, or what?” - -She told him quietly to run alongside. But her lips twitched, and when -she put up her hand to press them still, she smiled to discover that -the hand was bare. She had forgotten to pull on her glove. She began to -pull it on now. - -“The road is narrow,” said she. “Run ahead of the hack and block its -way. You can do it without hitting the horses, can’t you?” - -“Well, I guess,” returned the chauffeur, instantly accomplishing the -manœuver in fine style. - -But he missed his deserved commendation; indeed, he forgot it himself; -because, as he looked back at the horses rearing on the sudden check -and tossing their auburn manes, then ran his scrutiny behind them to -the hack, he perceived no life in it; and when his own passenger jumped -with amazing nimbleness from her seat and flung the crazy door wide -open, she recoiled, exclaiming: “Where are they? Where did you leave -them?” - -“Leave who?” queried the hackman. “Say, what you stoppin’ me fur? -Runnin’ into me with your devil-wagon! _Say!_”--then his wrath trailed -into an inarticulate mutter as he appreciated better the evident -quality of the gentlewoman before him. - -“You may be mixed up in a penitentiary offense, my man,” said she -placidly. “It is a case of kidnapping. Where did you leave that boy who -was in the cab? If you give us information that will find him, there’s -five dollars; if you fool us--well, I have your number. Where did you -leave the boy?” - -“Why, there was a cop with ’im--a cop and a gentleman. Ain’t you got -hold of the wrong party, lady?” - -“A brown-haired boy in a gray suit with a blue cravat--you know he was -in your cab. And how do you know it was a real policeman?” - -“Or he wasn’t helping on the deviltry if it was?” sneered the -chauffeur, who had now become a full-fledged partizan. “Ain’t you lived -in this burg long enough to find out how to make a little _mazuma_ -on the side? You’re too good for ’Frisco. Heaven is your home, my -Christian friend.” - -“Cut it out!” retorted the man. “I guess I know how to find my way -round as well as the next man--” - -“Certainly you do,” soothed Mrs. Winter, who was fingering a crisp new -five-dollar bank-note, “and you are no kidnapper, either; you made no -bargain with those men--” - -“Sure I didn’t,” agreed the hackman, “nor I ain’t standin’ for -kidnapping, neither. Why, I got kids of my own, and my woman she’d -broom me outer the house if I was to do them games. Say, I’ll tell you -all I knows. They got off, them three, at that there corner, and I was -to drive fast ’s I could three blocks ahead and then git home any old -way. And that’s God’s truth, I--” - -“You didn’t see where they went?” Mrs. Winter was quietly insistent. - -“No, I didn’t. I guess I was a dumb fool not ter notice, but they paid -me well, and I’d a bad thirst, and I was hiking to a place I know for -beer; and that’s--” - -“Did the boy seem willing?” - -“He didn’t do no kicking as I seen.” - -A few more questions revealed that the man had unpacked his full -kit of information. He had never seen either of the men before. The -gentleman--yes, he was sure he was a gentleman; he wasn’t no swell -confidence guy; he was the regular thing--gentleman engaged him to take -a party to the Chinese quarter; he’d tell where to stop; didn’t need -a guide; only wanted to make a few purchases, he said, and he knew -where the things was; yes, ma’am, that was all; only down there on -Market Street, or maybe--why, somewhere near by--he stuck his head out -and told him to turn the corner, and then he kept telling him to turn -corners, until finally he told him to stop and they got out. - -Mrs. Winter gave the man the bank-note, counseling him to keep his eyes -open for the two men and the boy, and to report to her at the Palace -Hotel, giving his number, should he see either man or boy. It would be -very well worth his while. - -The chauffeur did not interrupt, but he shook his head over the -departing hack. “He’d ought to have known it wan’t on the square, but -these hack drivers ain’t got good sense even when they’re, so to speak, -sober, which ain’t often,” he soliloquized. “Well, lady, if they’ve -took to the Chinese quarter, we’d better be looking up a Chink to help -us, I guess. I know a fairly decent one--” - -“I think I know a better,” interrupted Mrs. Winter, with a faint smile. -She had detected a suppressed pity in the man’s regard. “Motor slowly -along the street. There is a shop, if I can find it, where there ought -to be a man--” - -“Man you know? Say, lady, I guess I better go in with you, if you don’t -mind--” - -“No; stay in your car. You don’t know how safe I am. Not only my gray -hair protects me, but I have only to say a few words and any of these -men will fight for me if necessary. But this is in confidence--just -between us, you understand. You are not to repeat it, ever.” - -She looked at him with a frank smile, and involuntarily his hand went -up to his cap. “What you say goes, lady. But jest remember I’m right -here, spark going all the time, ready to throw her wide open when you -step in; and”--his voice sank--“I ain’t absolutely unprepared for a -scrap, either.” - -“I understand,” said she, looking at him keenly, and a few moments -later she stepped briskly into the shop before which he halted with -a little lightening of the heart because of this uncouth knight of -the lever. The shop itself was like any one of a score on the street, -crowded with oriental objects, bizarre carvings of ivory and jade, -daggers and strings of cash, swords, gorgeous embroidered robes of silk -and gold in a huddle over a counter or swinging and gleaming in the -dusky background, squat little green and brown gods with puffy eyelids, -smiling inscrutably amid shoes and fans and Chinese lanterns of glass -and bronze, glittering with beads--in all these, like the score about -it; yet the clean windows and a certain order within gave it a touch -out of the common. A man and a boy served the shop, both in the -American dress, with their pigtails tucked under visorless caps. Both -greeted her in the serene oriental fashion, bowing and smiling, their -obsequious courtesy showing no smallest sign of the surprise which the -sight of an unattended woman must have given them. - -Nevertheless, Mrs. Winter was aware that both, under their lowered -eyelids, took cognizance of that soft-carven disk of jade among the -laces on her breast. She asked the man if he had seen a lad and an -older man, or it might be two older men, one a policeman, come into -that or any other neighboring shop. She explained that the lad was -her grand-nephew and was lost (she eschewed the harsher word, for she -had no desire to set afloat a rumor which might bring the police upon -her). She named a sum large enough to kindle a sudden gleam in the -boy’s eyes, as the reward awaiting the lucky man who might put her on -the right track. But her words struck no responsive spark from the -Chinaman’s veiled gaze. In perfect English and a very soft voice he -avowed ignorance and sympathy with the same breath. - -And all the while she could feel his glance slant down at the jade -ornament. - -“Send the boy to look in the shop next door,” said she. As she -spoke she raised the charm between her thumb and first two fingers, -looking at him directly. Her tone was that of command, not request. -He frowned very slightly, making an almost imperceptible gesture, to -which she returned a single Chinese phrase, spoken so low that had he -not expected the words they had been indistinguishable to his ear. -Instantly he addressed the boy rapidly in their own language. The -boy went out. The master of the shop returned to Mrs. Winter. His -manner had utterly changed; the tradesman’s perfunctory deference was -displaced by an almost eager humility of bearing. He would have her -sit--there were a few cane-seated American arm-chairs, in grotesque -contrast to all their accompaniments--he prostrated himself before her; -he put himself at her service; still to her trained eye there was a -corner of his mind where incredulity wrestled with a stronger emotion. - -“Do not fear,” she said gently. “It is really my own, and he gave it -to me himself, almost thirty years ago. He was hardly thirty years old -himself then. You see, my husband had been so fortunate as to do him a -kindness. It was he who had it first. When he died it came to me, and -now for the second time in my life I am using it. I knew you belonged. -I saw the sign. Will you help me find my boy?” - -“Did your ladyship know _he_ is he’e, in San Flancisco?” - -If she had not already dissipated any doubt in his mind, her evident -relief blew the last shred away now. “Haven’t you such a thing as a -telephone somewhere?” cried Rebecca Winter. “Time is precious. Can’t -you speak to him--have him come here?” - -It appeared that there was a telephone, and in a moment she was put -into communication by the shopkeeper. He stood in an attitude of deep -respect while she talked. He heard with unsmiling attention her first -Chinese words; he listened as she returned to English, speaking very -quietly, but with a controlled earnestness, explaining that she was -Archibald Winter’s widow, giving dates and places, in nowise alluding -to the service which had won the charm about her neck. Yet as he -listened, insensibly the Chinaman grew certain that she had spoken the -truth. Presently she turned to him. “He wishes to speak to you,” she -said, and went back to the shop. She sighed as one sighs from whose -heart a great burden rolls. “To find him here, and still grateful!” she -was thinking. “What wonderful good fortune!” - -She sat down, and her face grew dreamy. She was no longer thinking -of Archie. Her vision was on another face, another scene, a time of -peril, when almost against her reason her instinctive woman’s recoil of -pity for a fellow-creature in danger of unthinkable torture had been -so intense that she had more than acquiesced in her husband’s plan -of risking both their lives to save him; she had impelled him to it; -she had overcome his terror of the risks on her account. “It is only -death we have to fear, at worst,” she had argued. “We have the means -to escape in a second, both of us, from anything else; and if we run -away and leave this poor wretch, who hasn’t done anything but love his -country, just as we love ours, and be too civilized for his trifling, -ornery, pusillanimous country-people to understand, to get slashed to -pieces by their horrible ling-ling--whatever they call it--Archibald -Winter, don’t you reckon we shall have nightmares as long as we live?” - -Thirty years ago--yet it seemed like yesterday. Distinctly she could -hear her husband’s voice; it had not come back to her with such reality -for years; it was more real than the cries of the street outside; and -her heart was beating faster for his words: “Becky, there never was a -woman like you! You could make a dead man hop up and fight, bless you!” - -“Your ladyship”--it was the shopkeeper back again; he had lived in -England, and he offered the most respectful western title of his -knowledge--“your ladyship may be chee’ful. All will be done of the -best. The young gentleman will be back fo’ to-night. If your ladyship -will now letu’n to the hotel.” - -[Illustration: It took only a moment to transfer a passenger. Page 211] - -Mrs. Winter bowed slightly; she was quite her self-possessed self -again. “I will go certainly,” she said, “but I shall hope to see you, -also, to-night; and meanwhile, will you accept, as a token from a -friend who trusts you, _this_?” She took a little gem-encrusted watch -from her fob and handed it to him. Her manner was that of a queen who -rewards her general. And she left him bowing low. She entered the -motor-car. It was no longer a lone motor. Another car steamed and -snorted near by, in which sat the amiable banker from Iowa, his wife -and Janet Smith. - -It took only a moment to transfer a passenger, to explain that she -hoped to find the boy who had been lost--no, she would not use such a -strenuous word as kidnapped--and would they complete their kindness -by not mentioning the affair to any one? One hated so to get into the -papers. And would they let her see them again to thank them? Then, as -she sank back on the cushions, she remarked, as much to the expectant -chauffeur as to Janet: “Yes, I think it is all right. I think we shall -see Archie to-night.” - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -A BLOW - - -There was no one but Mrs. Winter to welcome the colonel when, jaded, -warm and dusty, he tapped on Aunt Rebecca’s parlor door. Mrs. -Millicent was bristling with a sense of injury; one couldn’t touch her -conversationally without risk of a scratch. The colonel put up the -shield of his unsuitable appearance, his fatigue and his deplorable -need of a bath, and escaped into his own apartment. But he made his -toilet with reckless haste. All the time he was questioning his recent -experience, trying to sort over his theories, which had been plunged -into confusion by Mercer’s confession. “I suppose,” he reflected, “that -I had no right to give Mercer that hint at the door.” The hint had been -given just as they parted. It was in a single sentence: - -“By the way, Mercer, if that pillar in the _patio_ is of importance in -your combination, you would better keep an eye on it; it has a trick of -cracking.” - -“The devil it has!” grunted Mercer. Then he thanked him, with a kind -of reluctant admiration in his tone. - -“You are sure you don’t object to my detective’s staying?” questioned -the colonel. - -“No, suh; prefer to have him. You told him to have his men in and -overhaul the house?” - -“I did. I warned you I should have to. You promise there shall be no -racket? But I--I think I’ll take Haley.” - -“Thank you. That’s right kind of you, suh. Good-by, suh.” - -This had been the manner of their parting--assuredly a singular one, -after the sinister suspicions and the violent promises which the -soldier had made himself in regard to this very man. After leaving, -he had motored into town, down to the police courts, to discover no -records of the arrest and no trace of Archie. Thence, discouraged, -perplexed and more worried than he liked to admit, he had repaired -to the hotel. His aunt was gone, Miss Smith was gone, and Randall -could only relate how Mrs. Winter “had flewed like a bird, sir, into -a big red motor-car and gone off, and then Miss Smith and a lady and -gentleman had got into a white car and gone off in the same direction.” - -He was meditating on his next step, when Birdsall was announced below. -The detective looked as warm and as tired as the colonel had felt -an hour before. Rupert was not eager to see him, but neither was he -anxious for the tête-à-tête with Millicent which awaited him in the -parlor. Between the two he chose Birdsall. - -“Well,” he greeted him, “did you find any trace of the boy?” - -“Of course I did,” growled Birdsall. “They didn’t try to hide ’im. -They had him lodged in a dandy room with his own bath. Of course, he -left his tooth-brush. They’d got him some automobile togs, too, and -he’d left some leggings when he packed, and a letter begun on a pad to -Miss Smith--‘Dear Miss Janet,’ it begins, ‘I am having a bully time. I -can steer the machine, only I can’t back’--that’s all. Say, the young -dog has been having it fat while we were in the frying-pan for fear -somebody was bothering him.” - -“But he is not in the house now?” - -“No, nor nothing else.” - -“_Nobody_ hidden away? Where did the groans you heard come from?” -queried the colonel politely. - -Birdsall flushed. “I do believe that slick deceiver you call Mercer -put up a game on us out of meanness--just to git me guessing.” - -“That sort of thing looks more like the college boys.” - -“Say, it might have been. This thing is giving me nervous prostration. -Say, why didn’t you see the thing out with me?” - -The colonel shamelessly told the truth to deceive. “I was called here. -I was told that Mrs. Winter, my aunt, had seen Archie in the street.” - -“She was just getting out of a machine as I came up. Miss Smith was -with her, and they had their hands full of candy boxes. They were -laughing. I made sure the boy had been found.” - -“Not to my knowledge,” said the colonel. But in some excitement he -walked into the parlor. The ladies had arrived; they stood in the -center of the room while Randall took away the boxes. - -“Candy for Archie,” explained Aunt Rebecca, and these were the first -words to reach Rupert Winter’s ears. “I expect him to dinner.” - -“Aunt Rebecca,” proclaimed Millicent, “I never have been one -to complain, but there _are_ limits to human endurance. I am a -modern person, a civilized Episcopalian, accustomed to a regular -and well-ordered life, and for the last few days I seem to have -been living in a kind of medieval mystery, with kidnappers, and -blood-stains, and, for anything I know, somebody ready to stick a -knife into any one of us any time! You people may enjoy this sort of -thing--_you seem to_--but I don’t. And I tell you frankly that I am -going to apply to the police, not to any private detective inquiry -office, as like as not in league with the criminals”--thus ungratefully -did Mrs. Millicent slur the motives of her only truly interested -auditor--“but _real_ policemen. I shall apply--” - -She did not tell where she should apply, the words being snapped out of -her mouth by the sharp tinkle of the telephone bell. - -Aunt Rebecca responded to the call. “Send him up,” was her answer to -the inaudible questioner. - -She laid down the receiver. Then she put it back. Then she stood up, -her silver head in the air, her erect little figure held motionless. - -Janet Smith’s dark eyes sought hers; her lips parted only to close -firmly again. - -Even the detective perceived the electric intensity of the moment, and -Rupert shut his fists tight, with a quickened beating of the heart; but -emotional vibrations did not disturb Mrs. Melville Winter’s poise. She -continued her plaint. - -“This present situation is unbearable, unprecedented and -un--un--unexpected,” she declaimed, rather groping for a climax which -escaped her. Aunt Rebecca raised her hand. - -“Would you be so very kind, Millicent,” said she, “as to wait a moment? -I am trying to listen.” - -Like a response to her words, the knob of the door was turned, the door -swung, and Archie entered the room, smiling his odd little chewed-up -smile. - -Janet uttered a faint cry and took a single step, but, as if -recognizing a superior right, hung back while the boy put his arm about -his great-aunt’s waist and rather bashfully kissed her cheek. - -She received the salute with entire composure, except for a tiny splash -of red which crept up to each cheek-bone. “Is it really you, Archie?” -said she. “You are a little late for dinner day before yesterday, but -quite in time for to-day. Sit down and tell us where you have been.” - -“Quite so!” exclaimed Mrs. Millicent. “Good heavens! Do you know how we -have suffered? _Where_ have you been? _Why_ did you run away?” - -But Archie, who had surrendered one-half of him to be hugged by Miss -Smith and the other to be clapped on the shoulder by his uncle, seemed -to think a vaguely polite “How-de-do, Aunt Millicent; I’m sorry to have -worried you!” to be answer enough. Only when the question was repeated -by Mrs. Winter herself did he reply: “I’m awfully sorry, Aunt Rebecca, -but I’ve promised not to say anything about it. But, truly, I didn’t -mean to bother you.” - -Millicent exploded in an access of indignation: “And do you mean that -you expect us to accept such a ridiculous promise--after all we have -been through?” - -“Quite so,” remarked Aunt Rebecca, with a precise echo of her niece’s -most Anglican utterance--the gift of mimicry had been one of Mrs. -Winter’s most admired and distrusted social gifts from her youth. - -Rupert Winter hastened to distract Millicent’s attention by saying -decisively: “If the boy has promised, that ends it; he can’t break his -parole. Anyhow, they don’t seem to have hurt you, old son?” - -“Oh, they treated me dandy, those fellows,” said Archie. “Miss Janet, I -know how to run an electric motor-car, except backing.” - -“I’ll bet you do,” muttered the detective. - -Here the colonel came to the boy’s relief a second time and drew -Birdsall aside. “Best let me pump the chap a little. You get -down-stairs and see how he got here, who brought him. They’ll get clean -away. It is late for that as it is. You can report to-morrow.” - -It was the colonel, also, who eliminated Mrs. Millicent by the masterly -stratagem of suggesting that she pass the news to Mrs. Wigglesworth. He -artfully added that it would require tact to let the lady from Boston -understand that the lad had been found without in any way gratifying -her natural curiosity in regard to the manner of finding or the cause -of disappearance. “I’ll have to leave _that_ to you,” he concluded. -“Maybe you can see a way out; I confess my hands are in the air.” - -Millicent thus relegated to the ambassador’s shelf, the colonel -slipped comfortably into his pet arm-chair facing his nephew on the -lounge between Aunt Rebecca and Miss Smith. Miss Smith looked frankly, -charmingly happy. Aunt Rebecca looked rather tired. - -“Of course,” remarked he, “I understand, old man, that you have -promised secrecy to--well, to the Fireless Stove gang, as we’ll call -them; but the _other_ kidnappers, the crowd that held up your car -and then switched you off on a side track while young Fireless was -detained--they haven’t any hold on you?” - -“No, sir,” said Archie; “but--you see, that strange gentleman and Aunt -Millicent--I was scared lest I’d give something away.” - -“They’re not here now. All friends here. Suppose you make a clean -breast of your second kidnapping. It may be important you should.” - -Nothing loath, Archie told his story. Left outside while Tracy went -into the office with a policeman, to whom he gave his assumed name, he -remained for hardly two minutes before a gentleman and a “cop” came up -to him, and the latter ordered him to descend from the machine--but not -until they had found it impossible to move the vehicle. When they did -discover that the key was out and gone, the man in citizen’s clothes -hailed a cab and the officer curtly informed Archie that Gardiner -(Tracy’s traveling name) had been taken to another court and he was to -follow. He didn’t suspect anything beyond a collision with the speed -regulations of the city, but had he seen a chance to dive under his -escort’s arm the boy would have taken it. Such chance was not afforded -him, and all he was able to do was to lean out suddenly as they passed -the Palace and to wave at Randall. “I wanted them to stop and let me -get some one to pay my fine,” said Archie, “but they said I was only -a witness. They wouldn’t let me stop; they run down the curtain--at -least so far as it would run. It was like all those hack curtains, you -know--all out of order.” - -“Archie,” the colonel interjected here, “was one of the men a little -fellow, clean-shaven, with a round black head, blue eyes--one of his -eyes winks a little faster than the other?” - -“Yes, sir. How did you know?” - -“I didn’t know; I guessed. Well, get on; they wanted to pump you when -they got you safely out of sight?” - -“Yes,” Archie said, “they put me into the sweat-box, all right.” - -“Did you tell them anything?” asked Mrs. Winter. - -Archie looked at her reproachfully. Did she think that he had gone to -boarding-school for nothing? He explained that, being a stranger in -the town, he could not tell anything about where he’d been. There was -an agent at the house trying to sell stoves, and they let him take him -off back to the hotel. The man seemed to know all about who he (Archie) -was, and about his having gone away. The men asked him an awful lot of -questions about how he was taken away. He said he didn’t know, and he’d -promised not to tell. He couldn’t tell. They said he would have to go -to jail if he didn’t tell, because the men who had him were such bad -men. But he didn’t tell. - -“Did they try to frighten you--to make you tell?” said Mrs. Winter. - -“Oh, they bluffed a little,” returned Archie carelessly, yet the -keen eyes on him--eyes both worldly-wise and shrewd--noted that the -lad’s color shifted and he winced the least in the world over some -remembrance. - -“But they didn’t hurt you? They didn’t burn you or cut you or twist -your arms, or try any other of their playful ways?” Mrs. Winter -demanded; and Janet began feeling the boy’s arms, breathing more -quickly. The colonel only looked. - -“No, they didn’t do a thing. I knew they wouldn’t, too,” Archie assured -her earnestly. “I told them if they did anything, Uncle Rupert and you -would make them pay.” - -“And you weren’t frightened, away from every one--in that hideous -quarter?” cried Miss Smith. “Oh, my dear!” She choked. - -“Well, maybe I was a little scared. I kept thinking of a rotten yarn -of Kipling’s; something happened to _him_, down in the underground -quarter, in just such a hot, nasty-smelling hole, I guess, as I was -in; you remember, Miss Janet, about the game of cards and the Mexican -stabbing a Chink for cheating, and how Kipling jumped up and ran for -his life, never looked around; and don’t you remember that nasty bit, -how he felt sure they had dealt with the greaser their own way and he’d -never get up to the light again--” - -“I’ve been remembering that story all this afternoon,” answered Miss -Smith with a shudder. - -“Agreeable little tale,” said Aunt Rebecca dryly. “Archie, you must -have had a right nasty quarter of an hour; what stopped it?” - -“Why, a Chink came and called the little man off; and there was a lot -of talking which I couldn’t hear, and the cop was swearing; I think -they didn’t like it. But, in a minute the Chinaman--he was an awful -nice little feller--he came up to me and took me out, led me all sorts -of ways, not a bit like the way I came in, and got me out to the -street. The other fellows were very polite; they told me that they were -my friends and only wanted to find a clue to my kidnappers; and the -burning holes in me was only a joke to give me an excuse to break my -word under compulsion--why, _they_ wouldn’t hurt me for the world! I -pretended to be fooled, and said it was all right, and looked pleasant; -but--I’d like to scare them the same way, once, all the same.” - -The boy caught at his lip which was trembling, and ended with a shaky -laugh. Miss Smith clenched the fist by her side; but she dropped the -arm near Archie, and said in a matter-of-fact, sprightly tone: “Archie, -you really ought to go dress--and wash for dinner; excuse me for -mentioning it, but you have no idea how grimy you are.” - -The commonplace turn of thought did its errand. Archie, who had been -bracing himself anew against the horror which he remembered, dropped -back into his familiar habits and jumped up consciously. “It’s the -dust, motoring,” he offered bashfully. “I ought to have washed before I -came up. Well, that’s all; we came straight here. Now, may I go take a -bath?” - -Aunt Rebecca was fingering a curious jade locket on her neck. She -watched the boy run to the open door. - -“I wish you’d go into your room, Colonel,” said Miss Smith, “and see -that nothing happens to him. It’s silly, but I am expecting to see him -vanish again!” - -The sentence affected the colonel unpleasantly; why need she be -posing before him, as if that first disappearance had had any real -fright in it? Of course she didn’t know yet (although Aunt Rebecca -might have told her--she _ought_ to have told her and stopped this -unnecessary deceit) that he was on to the game; but--he didn’t like it. -Unconsciously, his inward criticism made his tone drier as he replied -with a little bow that he imagined Archie was quite safe, now, and he -would ask to be excused, as he had to attend to something before dinner. - -Was it his fancy that her face changed and her eyes looked wistful? -It must have been. He walked stiffly away. Hardly had he entered his -room and turned his mind on the changed situation before the telephone -apprised him that a gentleman, Mr. Gardiner, who represented the -Fireless Cook Stove, said that he had an appointment with Colonel -Winter to explain the stove; should he be sent up? - -Directly, Endicott Tracy entered, smiling. “Where’s the kid? I know -he’s back,” were his first words; and he explained that he had been -hunting the kidnappers to no purpose. “Except that I learned enough to -know they put up a job with the justice, all right; I got next to that -game without any Machiavellian exertions. But they got away. Who is it? -Any of Keatcham’s gang?” - -“Atkins,” said the colonel concisely. - -Tracy whistled and apologized. “It’s a blow,” he confessed. “That -little wretch! He has brains to burn and not an ounce of conscience. -You know he has been mousing round at the hotels after Keatcham’s -mail--” - -“He didn’t get it?” - -“No, Cary had covered that point. Cary has thought this all out very -carefully, but Atkins has got on to the fact that Cary was here in this -hotel with Keatcham. But he doesn’t know where we come in; whether -Keatcham’s gang is just lying low for some game of its own, or whether -_we’ve_ got him. At least, I don’t believe he knows.” - -“You ought not to be talking so freely to me; I haven’t promised you -anything, you know,” warned the colonel. - -“But you’ve got your nephew back all right; we have been on the square -with _you_; why should you butt in? I know you won’t.” - -“I don’t seem to have a fair call to,” observed the colonel. - -“And I think the old boy is going to give in; he has made signals of -distress, to my thinking. Wanted his mail; and wanted to write; and -informed Cary--he saw him for the first time to-day--that he had bigger -things on deck than the Midland; and wanted to get at them. We’re going -to win out all right.” - -“Unless Atkins gets at him to-night,” the colonel suggested. “You -oughtn’t to have come here, Gardiner. Don’t go home, now. Wait until -later, and let me rig you up in another lot of togs and give you my own -motor-car. Better.” - -Tracy was more than impressed by the proposal; he was plainly grateful. -He entered with enthusiasm into the soldier’s masquerade--Tracy had -always had a weakness for theatricals and some of his Hasty Pudding -_Portraits of Unknown People We Know_ had won him fame at Cambridge. -Ten minutes later, there sat opposite the colonel a florid-faced, -mustached, western commercial traveler whose plaided tweeds, being an -ill-advised venture of Haley’s which the colonel had taken off his -hands and found no subject of charity quite obnoxious enough to deserve -them, naturally did not fit the present wearer, but suited his inane -complacence of bearing and might pass for a bad case of ready-made -purchase. - -“Now,” said the adviser, “I’ll notify Haley to have my own hired -motor ready for you and you can slip out and take it after you’ve had -something to eat. Here’s the restaurant card. Haley will be there. -Leave it at the drug store on Van Ness Street--Haley will give you -the number--and get home as unobtrusively as possible. You can peel -off these togs in the motor if necessary. You’ve your own underneath -except your coat. Wrap that in a newspaper and carry it. I don’t know -that Atkins has any one on guard at the hotel, but I think it more than -likely he suspects some connection between our party and Keatcham’s. -But first, tell me about Atkins; what do you know about him? It’s an -American name.” - -“America can take all the glory of him, I fancy,” said Tracy. “He’s -been Keatcham’s secretary for six years. He seems awfully mild and -useful and timid. He’s not a bit timid. He’s full of resource; -he’s sidled suggestions into Keatcham’s ear and has been gradually -working to make himself absolutely necessary. I think he aimed at a -partnership; but Keatcham wouldn’t stand for it. I think it was in -revenge that he sold out some of Keatcham’s secrets. Cary got on to -that and has a score of his own to settle with him, besides. I don’t -know how he managed, but he showed him up; and Keatcham gave him the -sack in his own cold-blooded way. I know him only casually. But my -cousin, Ralph Schuyler, went to prep. school with him, so I got his -character straight off the bat. His father was a patent-medicine man -from Mississippi, who made a fair pile, a couple of hundred thousand -which looked good to that section, you know. I don’t know anything -about his people except that his father made the ‘Celebrated Atkins’ -Ague Busters’; and that Atkins was ashamed of his people and shook -his married sisters who came to see him, in rather a brutal fashion; -but I know a thing or two about him; he was one of those bounders who -curry favor with the faculty and the popular boys and never break -rules apparently, but go off and have sly little bats by themselves. -He never was popular, yet, somehow, he got into things; he knew where -to lend money; and he was simply sickeningly clever; in math. he was -a wonder. Ralph hated him. For one thing, he caught him in a dirty -lie. Atkins hated him back and contrived to prevent his being elected -class president, and when he couldn’t prevent Ralph’s making his senior -society the happy thought struck Atkins to get on the initiation -committee. They had a cheery little branding game to make the fellows -quite sure they belonged, you know, and he rammed his cigar stump into -Ralph’s arm so that Ralph had blood-poisoning and a narrow squeak for -his life. You see that I’m not prepossessed in the fellow’s favor. He’s -got too vivid an imagination for me!” - -“Seems to have,” acquiesced the colonel. - -“I think, you know”--Tracy made an effort to be just--“I think Atkins -was rather soured. Some of the fellows made fun of the ‘Ague Busters’; -he had a notion that the reason it was such uphill work for him in -the school, was his father’s trade. No doubt he did get nasty licks, -at first; and he’s revengeful. He hasn’t got on in society outside, -either--this he lays to his not being a university man. You see his -father lost some of his money and put him to work instead of in -college. He was willing enough at the time--I think he wanted to get -married--but afterward, when he was getting a good salary and piling up -money on his tips, he began to think that he had lost more than he had -bargained for. Altogether, he’s soured. Now, what he wants is to make a -thundering big strike and to pull out of Wall Street, buy what he calls -‘a seat on the James’ and set-up for a Southern gentleman. He’s trying -to marry a Southern girl, they say, who is kin to the Carters and the -Byrds and the Lees and the Carys--why, _you_ know her, she’s Mrs. -Winter’s secretary.” - -“Does--does she care for him?” The colonel suddenly felt his mouth -parched; he was savagely conscious of his mounting color. What a -fiendish trick of fate! he had never dreamed of this! Well, whether she -cared for him or not, the man was a brute; he shouldn’t get her. That -was one certainty in the colonel’s mind. - -“Why, Cary vows she doesn’t, that it was only a girlish bit of nonsense -up in Virginia, that time he was prospecting, you know. But I don’t -feel so safe. She’s too nice for such a cur. But you know what women -are; the nicest of them seem to be awfully queer about men. There’s no -betting on them.” - -“I’m afraid not,” remarked the colonel lightly. But he put his fingers -inside his collar and loosened it, as if he felt choked. - -Because he had a dozen questions quarreling for precedence in his head, -he asked not one. He only inquired regarding the situation; discovering -that both Mercer and Tracy were equally in the dark with himself as to -Atkins’ plans, Atkins’ store of information, Atkins’ resources. How he -could have waylaid Tracy and the boy without knowing whence they came -was puzzling; it was quite as puzzling, however, assuming that he did -know their whereabouts, to decide why he was so keen to interrogate the -boy. In fact, it was, as Tracy said, “too much like Professor Santa -Anna’s description of a German definition of metaphysics, ‘A blind man -hunting in a dark room for a black cat that isn’t there.’” - -“In any event, you would better keep away from _me_,” was the colonel’s -summing up of the situation; “I don’t want to be inhospitable, but -the sooner you are off, and out of the hotel, the safer for your -speculation.” - -“Friends will please accept the intimation,” said Tracy good-humoredly. -“Very well, it’s twenty-three for me. I’m hoping you’ll see your way -clear to run over as soon as the old man has surrendered; I’m going to -invite him to make us a proper visit, then, and see the country. I’m -always for letting the conquered keep their side-arms.” - -He went away smiling his flashing smile, and turned it up at the hotel -as he walked out; the colonel made no sign of recognition from the -window whence he observed him. Instead, he drew back quickly, frowning; -it might be a mere accident that only a hand’s-breadth of space from -the young Harvard man was a dapper little shape in evening clothes, a -man still young, with a round black head; if so, it was an accident not -to the colonel’s liking. - -“Damn you!” whispered Rupert Winter very softly. “What is your little -game?” - -At once he descended, having telephoned Haley to meet him at the court. -When he entered and sent his glance rapidly among the little tables, by -this time filled with diners, he experienced a disagreeable surprise. -It did not come from the sight of Sergeant Haley in his Sunday civilian -clothes, stolidly reading the _Call_; it came from a vision of Atkins -standing, bowing, animatedly talking with Janet Smith. - -Instead of approaching Haley, Winter fell back and scribbled a few -words on a page of his note-book, while safely shielded by a great -palm. The note he despatched to Haley, who promptly joined him. While -they stood, talking on apparently indifferent subjects, Miss Smith -passed them. Whether because he was become suspicious or because she -had come upon him suddenly, she colored slightly. But she smiled as she -saluted him and spoke in her usual tranquil tone. “You are going to -dine with us, aren’t you, Colonel?” said she. “I think dinner is just -about to be served.” - -The colonel would be with them directly. - -Haley’s eyes followed her; he had returned her nod and inquiry for his -wife and little Nora with a military salute and the assurance that they -were both wonderfully well and pleased with the country. - -“Sure, ain’t it remarkable the way that lady do keep names in her -mind?” cried he. “An’ don’t she walk foine and straight? Oi’ve been -always towld thim Southern ladies had the gran’ way wid ’em; Oi see now -’tis thrue.” The unusual richness of Haley’s brogue was a sure sign of -feeling. The colonel only looked grim. After he had taken Haley to a -safe nook for his confidence, a nook where there were neither ears nor -eyes to be feared, he would have made his way up-stairs; but half-way -down the office he was hailed by the manager. The manager was glad -to hear that the young gentleman was safely back. He let the faint -radiance of an intelligent, respectfully tactful smile illumine his -words and intimate that his listener would have no awkward questions to -parry from him. The colonel felt an ungrateful wrath, a reprehensible -snare of temper which did not show in his confidentially lowered -voice, as he replied: “Mighty lucky, too, we are; the boy’s all right; -but San Francisco is no place for an innocent kid even to take the -safest-looking walk. What sort of a police system have you, anyhow?” - -The manager shook his head. “I’m not bragging about it; nor about -the Chinese quarter, either. I confess I’ve felt particularly -uncomfortable, myself, the last day. Well--if you’ll excuse the -advice--least said, you know.” - -The colonel nodded. He proffered his cigar-case; the manager -complimented its contents, as he selected a cigar; and both gentlemen -bowed. A wandering, homesick Frenchman, who viewed their parting, -felt refreshed as by a breath from his own land of admirable manners. -Meanwhile, the colonel was fuming within: “Confound his insinuating -curiosity! but I reckon I headed him off. And who would have thought,” -he wondered forlornly, “that I could be going to dine with the boy safe -and sound and be feeling so like a whipped hound!” - -But none of this showed during the dinner at which Millicent was in -high good humor, having obtained information about most astounding -bargains in the Chinese quarter from Mrs. Wigglesworth. Her good humor -extended even to Miss Smith, who received it without enthusiasm, albeit -courteously; and who readily consented to be her companion for the -morning sally on the distressed Orientals, whose difficulties with the -customs had reduced them to the necessity of sales at any cost. Aunt -Rebecca listened with an absent smile, while Archie laughed at every -feeblest joke of his uncle in a boyish interest so little like his -former apathy that often Miss Smith’s eyes brightened and half timidly -sought the uncle’s, as if calling his attention to the change. Only a -few hours back, his would have brightened gratefully in answer; now, -he avoided her glances. Yet somehow, his heart felt heavier when they -ceased. For his part, he was thankful to have his aunt request his -company in a little promenade around the “loggia,” as she termed it, -overlooking the great court. - -She took him aside to tell him her afternoon experience, and to ask -his opinion of the enigmatical appearance of Atkins. He was strongly -tempted, in return, to question her frankly about Miss Smith, to tell -her of seeing the latter with Atkins only that evening. He knew that -it was the sensible thing to do--but he simply could not do it. To -frame his suspicions past or present of the woman he loved; to discuss -the chances of her affection for a man loathsomely unworthy of her; -worse, to balance the possibilities of her turning betrayer in her turn -and chancing any damage to her benefactress and her kinsman for this -fellow’s sake--no, it was beyond him. He had intended to discuss his -aunt’s part in the waylaying of Keatcham, with calmness and with the -deference due her, but unsparingly; he meant to show her the legal if -not moral obliquity of her course, to point out to her the pitfalls -besetting it, to warn her how hideous might be the consequences of a -misstep. Somehow, however, his miserable new anxiety about Miss Smith -had disturbed all his calculations and upset his wits; and he could not -rally any of the poignant phrases which he had prepared. All he was -able to say was something about the rashness of the business; it was -like the Filipinos with their bows and arrows fighting machine-guns. - -“Or David with his ridiculous little sling going against Goliath,” -added she. “Very well put, Bertie; only the good advice comes too late; -the question now is, how to get out with a whole skin. Surprising as it -may be, I expect to--with your help.” - -“Honored, I’m sure,” growled Bertie. - -“There is one thing I meant to ask you--I haven’t, but I shall now. -Instead of making it impossible for me to sleep to-night, as you -virtuously intended in order to clear your conscience before you tried -to pull me out of the trap I’ve set for myself, suppose you do me a -favor, right now.” - -“You put it so well, you make me ashamed of my moral sense, Aunt Becky; -what is it you want?” - -“Oh, nothing unbefitting a soldier and a gentleman, dear boy; just -this: Cary has to have some money. I meant to give it to Stoves, but -you hustled him off in such a rush that I didn’t get at him. You know -where he is, don’t you? You haven’t sent him straight back?” - -“I can find him, I reckon.” - -“Then I’ll give _you_ the money, at once.” - -How weak a thing is man! Here was an eminently cool-headed, reasonable -man of affairs who knew that paws which had escaped from the fire -unsinged had no excuse to venture back for other people’s chestnuts; -he had expressed himself clearly to this effect to young Tracy; now, -behold him as unable to resist the temptation of a conflict and the -chance to baffle Atkins as if he were a hot-headed boy in plain -shoulder-straps! - -“I’ll do better for you, Aunt Rebecca,” said he. “I’ll not only take -Fireless the money, I’ll go with him to the house. I can make a sneak -from here; and Atkins is safely down-stairs at this moment. He may be -shadowing Fireless; if he is, perhaps I can throw him off the track.” - -Thus it befell that not an hour later Rupert Winter was guiding the -shabby and noisy runabout a second time toward the haunted house. - -“Nothing doin’,” said the joyous apprentice to crime; “I called old -Cary up and got a furious slating for doing it; but he said there -wasn’t a watch-dog in sight; and the old man had surrendered. He was -going to let him into the library on parole.” - -“You need a guardian,” growled the colonel; “where did you telephone? -_Not_ in the drug store?” - -“Oh, dear, no, not in such a public place; I’ve a shrinking nature that -never did intrude its private, personal affairs on the curious world. -I used the ’phone of that nice quiet little restaurant where they gave -me a lovely meal but were so long preparing it, I used up all the -literature in sight, which was the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ and a tract -on the virtues of Knox’s Gelatine. When I couldn’t think of anything -else to do I routed out Cary--I’d smoked all my cigarettes and all my -cigars but one which I was keeping for after dinner. And Cary rowed me -good and plenty. There wasn’t a soul in the room.” - -“Has any one followed you?” - -“Not a man, woman or child, not even a yellow dog. I kept looking -round, too.” - -“It was a dreadfully risky thing to do; you don’t deserve to escape; -but perhaps you did. Atkins may have come to the Palace for some other -purpose and never have noticed you.” - -“My own father wouldn’t have got on to me in that dinky rig.” - -Winter was not so easy in his mind. But he hoped for the best, since -there was nothing else for him to do. They were in sight of the house -now, which loomed against the dim horizon, darker, grimmer than ever. -Where the upper stories were pierced with semicircular arches, the -star-sown sky shone through with an extraordinary effect of depth and -mystery. All the lighter features of the architecture, carving on -pediment or lintel or archivolt, delicate iron tracery of _rejas_, -relief of arcature and colonnade--all these the dusk blurred if it -did not obliterate; the great dark bulk of the house with its massive -buttresses, its pyramidal copings and receding upper stories, was the -more boldly silhouetted on the violet sky; yet because of the very -flatness of the picture, the very lack of shadow and projection, it -seemed unsubstantial, hardly more of reality than the giant shadow it -cast upon the hillside. Electric lights wavered and bristled dazzling -beams on either side of the street; not a gleam, red, white or yellow, -leaked through the shuttered windows of the house. In its blackness, -its silence, its determined isolation it renewed, but with a greater -force, the first sinister thrill which the sight of it had given the -man who came to rifle it of its secrets. - -“Lonesome-looking old shanty, isn’t it?” said the Harvard boy; “seems -almost indecorous to speak out loud. Here’s where we _cache_ the car -and make a gentle detour by aid of the shrubbery up the arroyo to the -north side of the _patio_. See?” - -He directed the colonel’s course through an almost imperceptible -opening in the hedge along sharp turns and oblique and narrow ways into -a small vacant space where the vines covered an adobe hut. Jumping -out, Tracy unlocked the door of this tiny building so that the colonel -could run the car inside; and after Winter had emerged again, he -re-locked the door. As there was no window, the purpose of the hut was -effectually concealed. - -“Very neat,” the colonel approved; whereat Tracy flashed his smile at -him in the moonlight and owned with ingenuous pride that he himself was -the contriver of this reticent garage. - -From this point he took the lead. Neither spoke. They toiled up the -hill, in this part of the grounds less of the nature of a hill than of -an arroyo or ravine through which rocks had thrust their rugged sides -and over which spiked semi-tropical cacti had sprawled, and purple -and white flowered vines had made their own untended tangle. Before -they reached the level the colonel was breathing hard, every breath -a stab. Tracy, a famous track man who had won his H in a wonderful -cross-country run, felt no distress--until he heard his companion gasp. - -“Jove! But that hill’s fierce!” he breathed explosively. “Do you mind -resting a minute?” - -“Hardly,”--the colonel was just able to hold his voice steady--“I have -a Filipino bullet in my leg somewhere which the X-ray has never been -able to account for; and I’m not exactly a mountain goat!” - -“Why, of course, I’m a brute not to let you run up the drive in the -machine. Not a rat watching us to-night, either; but I wanted you to -see the place; and you seem so fit--” - -“You oughtn’t to give away your secrets to me, an outsider--” - -“You’re no outsider; I consider you the treasurer of the band,” laughed -Tracy. They had somehow come to an unexpressed but perfectly understood -footing of sympathy. The colonel even let the younger man help him up -the last stiff clamber of the path. He forgot his first chill, as of -a witness approaching a tragedy; there was a smile on his lips when -the two of them passed into the _patio_. It lingered there as he stood -in the flower-scented gloom. It was there as Tracy stumbled to a -half-remembered push-button, wondering aloud what had become of Cary -and Kito that they shouldn’t have answered his whistle; it was there, -still, when Tracy slipped, and grumbled: “What sticky stuff has Kito -spilled on this floor?”--and instantly flooded the court with light. -Then--he saw the black, slimy pool and the long slide of Tracy’s nailed -sole in it; and just to one side, almost pressing against his own foot, -he saw a man in a gray suit huddled into the shape of a crooked U, with -his arms limp at his side and his head of iron-gray fallen back askew. -The light shone on the broad bald dome of the forehead. He had been -stabbed between the shoulders, in the back; and one side of the gray -coat was ugly to see. - -“Good God!” whispered Tracy, growing white. “It’s Keatcham! they’ve -killed him! Oh, why didn’t I come back before!” - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -WHOSE FEET WERE SHOD WITH SILENCE - - -“Get out your revolver,” ordered the colonel; “look sharp! there may be -some one here.” - -But there was not a sign of life revealed by the search. Meanwhile, -Winter was examining the body. His first thought was that Keatcham had -tried to escape and had been struck down in his flight. Kito would not -scruple at such a deed; nor for that matter, Mercer. But why leave the -man thus? Why not dispose of the body--unless, indeed, the assassins -had been interrupted. Anyhow, what a horrid mess this murder would make -of the affair! and how was he to keep the women out of it! All at once, -in the examination which he had been making (while a dozen gruesome -possibilities tumbled over one another in his mind) he stopped; he put -his ear to the man’s heart. - -“Isn’t he dead?” asked Tracy under his breath. - -“No, he is not dead, but I’m afraid he’ll never find it out,” returned -the colonel, shrugging his shoulders. “However, any brandy handy? And -get me some water.” - -“I know where there is some brandy--I’ll get it; there is some water in -the fountain right--_Cary!_” - -“What’s the matter?” demanded Cary Mercer in one of the arcade doorways -of the _patio_. “What’s happened? The devil! Who did this?” He strode -up to the kneeling soldier. - -“You are in a position to know much better than I,” said the colonel -dryly. “We came this moment; we found this.” - -“Cary, did _you_ do it?”--the young man laid his hand on Cary’s -shoulder; his face was ashy but his voice rang full and clear. “If you -did, I am sure you had a reason; but I want to know; we’re partners in -this thing to the finish.” - -“Thank you, boy,” said Cary gently, “that’s good to hear. But I didn’t -hurt him, Endy. Why should I? We’d got what we wanted.” - -“_Who did?_” asked the colonel. - -“I didn’t and Kito didn’t. He went away to see his only brother who is -sick. He hasn’t got back. I don’t know who did it; but whoever stabbed -him must have done it without warning him; for I didn’t hear a sound. -I was in the library.” - -“He’s breathing a little, I think,” murmured the young man, who was -sopping the gray mask of a face while Winter trickled brandy drop by -drop into the sagging mouth, “and--look! somebody has tried to rob him; -that’s a money belt!” - -The waistcoat was open and Winter could see, beneath, a money belt with -buttoned pockets, which had been torn apart with such haste that one of -the buttons had been wrenched off. - -“They seem to have been after money,” said he; “see! the belt is full -of bills; there’s only one pocket empty.” - -“Perhaps he was interrupted,” explained Mercer. “Push the brandy, -Colonel, he’s moving his eyelids, suh!” - -“We’ve got to do something to that hole in him, first,” said the -colonel. “Is there any doctor--” - -“I daren’t send for one.” - -“Tony Arnold might know one we could trust,” suggested Tracy. “I can -get him over the long distance.” - -“We want somebody _now_, this minute,” declared the colonel. - -“There’s Janet Smith,” said Mercer, “my sister-in-law; she’s Mrs. -Winter’s companion; she used to be a trained nurse and a mighty good -one; _she_ could be trusted.” - -Could she? And how the terms of his distrust had changed! He had -fought against an answer in the affirmative this morning; now his -heart was begging for it; he was cold with fear lest she wasn’t this -conspirator’s confederate. - -“Send for them both,” said he with no sign of emotion. - -“I’ll call up Aunt Rebecca,” said Mercer. “Isn’t he reviving? No? Best -not move him till we get the wound dressed, don’t you reckon, Colonel?” - -But the colonel was already making a rough tourniquet out of his -handkerchief and a pencil to stanch the bleeding. The others obeyed -his curt directions; and it was not until the still unconscious man -was disposed in a more comfortable posture on the cushions which Tracy -brought, that Winter sent the latter to the telephone; and then he -addressed Mercer. He took a sealed package from an inner pocket and -tendered it, saying: “You know who sent it. Whatever happens, you’re a -Southern gentleman, and I look to you to see that she--they are kept -out of this nasty mess--absolutely.” - -“Of course,” returned Mercer, with a trace of irritation; “what do you -take me for? Now, hadn’t I better call Janet?” - -“But if this were to be discovered--” - -“_She_ wouldn’t have done anything; she is only nursing a wounded man -whom she doesn’t know, at my request.” - -“Very well,” acquiesced the colonel, with a long sigh as he turned away. - -He sat down, cross-legged, like a Turk, on the flags beside the wounded -man. Mercer was standing a little way off. It was to be observed that -he had not touched Keatcham, nor even approached him close enough -to reach him by an outstretched hand. Winter studied his face, his -attitude--and suppressed the slightest of starts; Mercer had turned his -arm to light another electric bulb and the action revealed some crimson -spots on his cuff and a smear on his light trousers above the knee. The -lamp was rather high and he was obliged to raise his arm, thus lifting -the skirts of his coat which had previously hidden the stain. He did -not seem aware that his action had made any disclosure. He was busy -with the light. “That’ll be better,” said he; “I’ll go call up Sister -Janet.” - -How had those stains come? Mercer professed just to have entered. -Vainly Winter’s brain tried to labor through the crazy bewilderment of -it all; Mercer spoke like an honest man--but look at his cuffs! How -could any outside assassin enter that locked and guarded house?--yet, -if Mercer had not lied, some one must have stolen in and struck -Keatcham. Kito? But the Jap was out of the house--perhaps! And Janet -Smith, what was she doing talking to Atkins? Had she given that reptile -any clue? Could he--but it was his opportunity to rescue Keatcham, not -to murder him--what a confounded maze! - -And what business had he, Rupert Winter, who had supposed himself to -be an honorable man, who had sworn to support the Constitution and the -laws of the United States, what business had _he_ to help law-breakers -and murderers escape the just punishment of their deeds? He almost -ground his teeth. Oh, well, there was one way out, and that was to -resign his commission. He would do it this very night, he resolved; -and he swore miserably at himself, at his venerable aunt who must be -protected at such a sacrifice, at Atkins, at the feebly moaning wretch -whom he had not ceased all this while to ply carefully with drops of -brandy. “You everlasting man-eater, if you dare to die, I’ll _kill_ -you!” he snorted. - -Thereupon he went at the puzzle again. Before any answer could come to -the telephone calls, a low, mournful, inhuman cry penetrated the thick -walls. It was repeated thrice; on the third call, Tracy ran quickly -through the _patio_ to a side door, barred and locked like all the -entrances, released and swung it open and let in Kito. A few murmured -words passed between them. The Jap uttered a startled exclamation. “But -how can it to be? How? no one can get in! And who shall stab him? For -_why_?” - -He examined the wounded man, after a gravely courteous salute to -Winter; and frowned and sighed. “What did it?” said he; “did who -stabbed, take it ’way, he must give _stlong_ pull!” - -“Whoever did it,” said the colonel, “must have put a knee on the man’s -back and pulled a strong pull, as you say.” In speaking the words he -felt a shiver, for he seemed to see that red smear above Mercer’s knee. - -He felt the shiver again when Mercer returned and he glanced at him; -there was not a stain on his shining white cuffs; he had changed them; -he had also changed his suit of clothes and his shoes. His eyes met the -colonel’s; and Winter fancied there was a glint of defiance in them; he -made no comment, for no doubt a plausible excuse for the fresh clothes -was ready. Well, he (Winter) wouldn’t ask it. Poor devil! he had had -provocation. - -For the next half-hour they were all busy with Keatcham. - -“He is better,” pronounced the Jap; “he will not live, maybe, but he -will talk, he can say who hult him.” - -“If he can only do that!” cried Mercer. “It is _infernal_ to think any -one can get in here and do such a thing!” - -“Rotten,” Tracy moaned. - -The colonel said nothing. - -They were all still working over Keatcham when a bell pealed. Tracy -started; but Mercer looked a shade relieved. “They’ve come,” said he. - -“_They?_” repeated the colonel. He scrambled to his feet and gasped. - -Miss Smith was coming down the colonnade, but not Miss Smith alone. -Aunt Rebecca walked beside her, serene, erect and bearing a small -hand-bag. Miss Smith carried a larger bag; and Tracy had possessed -himself of a dress-suit case. - -“Certainly, Bertie,” remarked his aunt in her softest tone, “I came -with Janet. My generation believed in _les convenances_.” - -All the colonel could articulate was a feeble, “And Archie? and -Millicent?” - -“Haley is staying in your room with Archie. Millicent had retired; -if she asks for us in the morning we shall not be up. She has an -appointment with Janet, but it isn’t until half-past eleven. Randall -has her instructions.” - -“But--but--how did you get here?” - -Aunt Rebecca drew herself up. “I trust now, Bertie, you will admit -that I am as fit as any of you to rough it. If there is one mode of -transit I abominate, it is those loathsome, unsanitary, uncivil, joggly -street-cars; we came as far as the corner in the _street-cars_, then we -walked. Did we want to give the number to a cab-man, do you suppose? -Bertie, have you such a thing as a match about you? I think Janet wants -to heat a teaspoonful of water for a strychnine hypodermic.” - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -FROM MRS. MELVILLE’S POINT OF VIEW - - - The Palace Hotel, - San Francisco, March 24, 1906. - -My dear Husband: - -Although I sent you a postal yesterday, I am writing again to-day to -try to keep you in touch with our _extraordinary series_ of events. -Nothing has been heard from Archie except the letter--_if he wrote -it_--which tells nothing except that his kidnappers use the same kind -of writing paper as Miss Janet Smith. I grow more suspicious of her all -the time. You ask (but of course you wrote before the recent mysterious -and tragical occurrences) you ask do I like Miss Smith any better, -now that I am thrown with her so closely. No, Melville, _I_ have not -the _fatal credulity_ of the Winters! I distrust her _more_. She has, -I admit, an engaging personality; there is a superficial amiability -that would be dangerous to one not on her guard. But I am never off my -guard with her. I’m sorry to say, however, that your brother seems -deceived by her plausible ways. And, of course, our poor aunt is still -her blind dupe. Aunt Rebecca has failed a good deal this last year; -she is quite irritable with me, sometimes; and I suppose it is the -insensibility of age, but she does not appear to realize the full -horror of this kidnapping. Miss Smith actually seems to suffer more; -she looks pale and haggard and has no appetite. I do not think it _all -pretense_, either; I dare say much of it is _remorse_! The situation is -dreadful. Sometimes I think Aunt Rebecca will not yield to the demands -of these wretches who have our poor boy, and that he will be mutilated -or murdered; sometimes I think that they have murdered him already and -are writing forged letters to throw us off the track. You can imagine -how my nerves are shaken! I have seen hardly anything of the city; and -of course have not gone into society at all. Indeed, I have met only -one pleasant person; that was the secretary of the great financier, Mr. -Edwin Keatcham, who was here, next to us. The secretary is a pleasing -person quite _comme il faut_ in appearance. I met him here in the court -where he nearly knocked me over; and he apologized profusely--and -really very nicely, using my name. That surprised me, but he explained -that they had been on the train with us. Then I remembered him. His -name is Horatio Atkins; and he is very polite. He is on a two weeks’ -vacation and came here to see Mr. Keatcham, not knowing he was gone. He -was really most agreeable and so sympathetic about poor dear Archie. He -agreed with me that such a nervous temperament as Archie’s suffers much -more from unkindness. I could see, in spite of his assumed hopefulness, -that he shared my fears. He has met quite a number of our friends. He -may (through Mr. Keatcham) be a _most valuable_ acquaintance. Didn’t -you tell me, once, that Keatcham was the leading benefactor of the -university? - -He (Mr. Atkins) got his vacation on account of his health; and he is -going to Southern California. I don’t wonder. I have never suffered -more than in this land of sunshine! It is not so much the cold of -the air as the humidity! Do pray be cautious about changing to your -summer underwear. _Don’t do it!_ I nearly perished, in the bleak wind -yesterday, when I tried to visit a few shops. Be sure and take the -cough medicine _on the second shelf of our bath-room medicine closet_; -don’t mistake _rheumatism liniment_ for it; they are both on the same -shelf; you would better sort them out. You are _so_ absent-minded, -Melville, I haven’t a peaceful day when I’m away from you; and do for -Heaven’s sake try to bow to Mrs. Farrell and call her by her right -name! You certainly have been to the president’s house often enough -to know his wife on the street; and I don’t think that it was a good -excuse which you gave to Professor Dale for calling “Good morning, -Katy!” to Mrs. Dale (who was born a Schuyler and is _most_ punctilious) -_that you mistook her for our cook_! - -I miss you very much. Give my love to all our friends and be sure to -wear your galoshes (your _rubbers_, you know) when the campus is wet, -whether it is raining or not. - - Your aff. wife, - M. WINTER. - - -THE SAME TO THE SAME - - The Palace Hotel, March 25, ten P. M. - -My dear Husband: - -What do you think has happened? I am almost too excited to write. -_Archie is back!_ Yes, back safe and sound, and absolutely -indifferent, to all appearances, to all our indescribable sufferings -on his account! He walked into the parlor about six or a little after, -grinning like an ape, as if to disappear from the face of the earth and -come back to it were quite the usual thing. And when we questioned him, -he professed to be on his word not to tell anything. And Bertie upheld -him in this ridiculous position! However, I was told by the detective -whom Bertie employed, rather a decent, vulgar, little man, that they -(Bertie and he) had cornered the kidnappers and “called their bluff,” -as he expressed it; but I’m inclined to think they got their ransom -from our unfortunate, victimized aunt who is too proud to admit it, and -that they probably managed it through Miss S--. I know they called up -the room to know if the boy was back; and I puzzled them well, I fancy, -by saying he _was_. I may have saved our poor aunt some money by that; -but I can’t tell, of course. Melville, I am almost _sure_ that Miss J. -S-- is at the bottom of it, whatever the mystery is. I am almost sure -that, not content with blackmailing and plundering auntie, Miss S-- is -now _making a dead set_ at poor, blind, simple-hearted Bertie! I have -reasons which I haven’t time to enumerate. Bertie will hardly bear a -word of criticism of her patiently; in fact, I have ceased to criticize -her to him or to Aunt Rebecca--ah, it is a lonely, lonely lot to be -clear-sighted; but _noblesse oblige_. But often during the last few -days I have thought that Cassandra wasn’t enough pitied. - - Your aff. wife, - M. - - -THE SAME TO THE SAME - - Casa Fuerte, San Francisco, Cal., - Wednesday. - -Dear Husband: - -This heading may surprise you. But we are making a visit to Mr. Anthony -Arnold (_the_ Arnold’s son) in his beautiful house in the suburbs of -the city. It was far more convenient for me at the Palace where I -found Mrs. Wigglesworth most attentive and congenial and found some -_great bargains_; but you know I can not be false to my _Trust_. To -watch Aunt Rebecca Winter (without seeming to watch, of course, for -the aged always resent the care which they need) is my chief object in -this trip; therefore when Mr. Arnold (whose father she knows, but the -old gentleman is traveling in Europe with his married daughter and her -family) when the young Arnold urged us all to come and spend a couple -of weeks with him, I could not very well refuse. Though a stranger -to me, he is not to Auntie or Bertie. The house is his own, left him -by his mother, who died not very long ago. At first, I remained at -the Palace with Bertie and Archie; Bertie seemed so disturbed at the -idea of my going and Aunt Rebecca was very liberal, insisting that I -was just as much her guest as before, it was only she who was running -away; and the end of it was (she has such a compelling personality, -you know) that she went with Randall and J. S. to Casa Fuerte (Strong -House--and you would call it well-named could you see it; it is a -massive structure!) while we others remained until Sunday. On account -of what I have hinted in regard to the designs of a certain lady I was -not sorry to have Bertie under another roof. He has a fortune of his -own, you know, and a reputation as well. Wealth and position at one -blow certainly would appeal to her, an obscure dependent probably of no -family (it is not a romantic name), and Bertie is very well-bred and -rather handsome with his black eyebrows and gray hair and aquiline -nose. I have been very, very worried, but I feel relieved as to -that. Melville, _she is flying at higher game_! In this house is a -multimillionaire, in fact the fourth richest man in the United States, -Edwin S. Keatcham. He is ill--probably with appendicitis which seems to -be the common lot. I asked the doctor--of course, very delicately--and -he said, “Well, not exactly, but--” and smiled very confidentially; and -begged me not to mention Mr. Keatcham’s illness or even that he was -in the house. “You know,” he said, “that when these great financiers -sneeze, the stock-market shakes; so absolute secrecy, please, my dear -madam.” Don’t mention it to a soul, will you? Of course I haven’t seen -the invalid; but I’ve seen his valet, who is very English; and I have -seen his nurse. Who do you suppose she is? Janet Smith! Yes; you know -she has been a trained nurse. Was there ever a more artful creature! -But Mr. K. is none of my affairs; he will have to save himself or be -lost. Once she is his wife we are safe from that designing woman. I am -quite willing to admit his danger and her fascination. Now, Melville, -for once admit that I can be just to a woman whom I dislike. - -This house is sumptuous; I’ve a lovely bath-room and a beautiful huge -closet with a window. It must have cost a mint of money. I have been -told that Arnold _père_ made a present of it to his wife; he let -the architect and her draw all the plans of it, but he insisted on -attending to the construction himself; he said he was not going to -have any contract work or “scamping,” such as I am reliably informed -has been common in these towering new buildings in San Francisco; he -picked out all the materials himself and inspected the inspector. It -has what they call “reinforced concrete” and all the beams, etc., are -steel and the lower story is enormously thick as to walls, in the -genuine Mission style. He said he built for earthquakes. The house -is all in the Spanish _hidalgo_ fashion. I wish you could see the -bas-reliefs and the carved furniture with cane seats of the seventeenth -century, _all genuine_; and the stamped leather and the iron grille -work--_rejas_ they call it--all copied from famous Spanish models from -Toledo; you know the ancient Spaniards were renowned for their _rejas_. -The pictures are fine--all Spanish; I don’t know half the names of the -artists, but they are all old and imposing and some of them wonderfully -preserved. The electric lights are all in the shape of lanterns. -The _patio_, as they call the court around which the house is built, -reminded me of the court in Mrs. Gardiner’s palace in Boston, only -it was not so crowded with _objets_ and the pillars are much thicker -and the tropical plants and vines more luxuriant--on account of the -climate, I suppose. It is all certainly very beautiful. - -There is a great arched gateway for carriages--which reminds me, do be -sure to send the horses into the country to rest, one at a time; and -have Erastus clean the stable properly while they are gone. You can -keep one horse for golf; but don’t use the brougham ever; and why not -send the surrey to be done over while I am gone? Is the piazza painted -yet? How does the new cook do? Insist upon her cooking you nourishing -food. You might have the Bridge Club of an evening--there are only the -four of you--and she might, with Emily’s help, get you a nice repast of -lobster à la Newburg, sandwiches and chicken salad; but be sure _you_ -don’t touch the lobster! You know what happened the last time; and I -shan’t be there to put on mustard-plasters and give you Hunyadi water. -If Erastus needs any more chamois skins Emily knows where they are, -but admonish him to be careful with them; I never saw mortal man go -through chamois skins the way he can; sometimes I think he gives them -to the horses to eat! - - Good-by, - Your aff. wife, - M. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -“THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS” - - -The changes which Mrs. Melville had accepted so philosophically, -the metamorphosis of the tragic and lonely house of mystery into -a luxurious country villa, the flinging open of the shutters, the -marshaling of servants, the turning, one may say, of the lime-light on -a rich man’s ordinary life--all this had occurred as swiftly and with -as little warning as a scene shifts on the stage. - -Mrs. Rebecca Winter may have the credit for this _bouleversement_ of -plans. By an astonishingly early hour, the next morning, she was awake -and down-stairs, where Kito and Tracy were making coffee, toasting -bread and admiring the oatmeal which had cooked, while they slept, in -the Fireless Stove. Tracy had planned a surprise of brown bread, but -through no fault of the Fireless, owing solely to his omitting what he -called “the pick-me-up,” commonly known as soda--an accident, as he -truly said, which might happen to any lady--the bread was “rather too -adhesive.” The breakfast, notwithstanding, was a cheerful one, because -Miss Smith reported the patient a shade better. She looked smiling, -although rather heavy-eyed. Mercer and the colonel had taken turns -sitting in the adjoining room to bring her ice or hot water or be of -service outside. - -The colonel had suggested calling a doctor, but Aunt Rebecca had -demurred: “Janet can do everything; it is just a question of his heart; -and she has digitalis and nitroglycerin and strychnine, the whole -outfit of whips. She has dressed the wound with antiseptics. To-morrow -will be soon enough for the medical talent.” It was she, however, -who, as soon as breakfast was over, took first Mercer and Tracy, then -the colonel apart, and proposed calling up Keatcham’s confidential -associates on the long-distance telephone. “Strike, but hear me, -nephew,” she said languidly, smiling at his bewilderment. “Our only -chance now is to exhaust trumps. Yesterday the game was won. Keatcham -had surrendered, he had told his partners in the deal to make no fight -on Tracy’s election; they could get what they wanted without the -Midland; he advised them to cover their shorts and get ready for a bull -market--” - -“How did he do all that when he had lost his private code book?” - -“How would _you_ do it? You would use the long distance telephone. -We caught them at Seattle, where his men had gone for the meeting. I -don’t understand why they needed me to suggest that. There the poor -man was, as your Harvard stove agent calls it, rubbering about the -library, trying to find _The Fortunes of Nigel_ in the edition Darley -had illustrated; of course, it wasn’t there. He had lost it just before -he came to the Palace, he thought. It seems his old cipher needs a -particular book, that kind. No doubt in my mind that your theory is -right and that Atkins stole it and perhaps thought he stole the key, -but didn’t get it. He took a memorandum of ciphers which looked like -a key. There Keatcham was, with millions hanging on his wires and his -modern substitute for the medieval signet-ring that would enforce the -message quite lost. What to do? Why, there was nothing to do but get -another cipher! They made up a temporary one, right in that library, -yesterday afternoon.” - -“But how could Mercer be sure Keatcham would not play a trick on him? -Did he hear the conversation?” - -“Certainly not. He took Keatcham’s word. Whatever his faults, Keatcham -has always kept his word. Mercer was sure he would keep it. He went out -of the room. He was in the library when Keatcham was stabbed.” - -The colonel drew a long, difficult breath. “Then you don’t believe -Mercer did it?” - -“I’m sure he didn’t. He didn’t hurt him. Why should he kill him after -he had surrendered? He had nothing to gain and considerable to risk, if -not to lose. We want that bull market.” - -“But who did then? Atkins? But he is trying to rescue him.” - -“Is he? How do we know? The rescue was only our supposition. I’m only -certain none of our crowd did it.” - -“Kito?” - -“No, Kito keeps absolutely within his orders; he knew how things stood -when he went away. Mercer saw him go. He couldn’t get in, either; he -had to signal to be let in. They were as careful as that. Now, assuming -they all are innocent, isn’t it the best plan to telephone to Seattle -to Keatcham’s next friend there?” - -“He hasn’t any family, has he? His wife died and there were no -children, I think.” - -“No, and if he ever had any brothers or sisters they died when -they were little; his business associates are the only people Cary -knows about. He is anxious to have word sent at once, because there -are important things to do in Keatcham’s own interest; he came -to California and he has employed Cary in a big Portland cement -investment; Cary has been working all the time on it for him--I beg -your pardon--” for the colonel had raised his hand with a little gasp. - -“Do you mean,” said he, “that Mercer has been acting as Keatcham’s -agent, working in _his interest_ all the time he was holding him a -prisoner and ready to kill him rather than let him go?” - -“Why not? Cary is a man of honor. This cement deal is a perfectly -fair one which will give a fair price to the present owners and make -a great business proposition. There are other schemes, too, very -large ones, which need the man at the wheel. Now, I have talked with -Cary and Endicott Tracy and my plan is to call up Warnebold, his next -friend, who knows Mercer has been employed by Keatcham and knows his -voice and knows he is a trusty man (for Mercer has done some inquiries -for him and saved him once from buying a water-logged steel plant) to -call _him_ up and--tell him the truth. We can say Mr. Keatcham was -mysteriously stabbed; we can ask what is best to do. By that time we -can report that we have the best medical assistance--young Arnold will -get his family physician, who can be trusted. Warnebold will instruct -Mercer, I reckon, to keep the fact of the assault a secret, not even -mention that Mr. Keatcham is ill; and very likely he or some one else -will come straight on here. Meanwhile, young Arnold can open the house, -hire some servants who won’t talk--I can get them for him; we all say -nothing of the magnate’s presence. And the bull market will come all -right.” - -After a little reflection the colonel agreed that the bold course would -be the safest. Thus it came about, with amazing rapidity, that the -haunted house was opened; that sleek, smiling Chinamen whisked brooms -and cleaning cloths at open windows; and Haley and Kito frankly told -any curious inquirers who hailed them over the lawn and the flower-beds -that young Mr. Arnold was coming home and going to have a house-party -of friends. The servants had been carefully selected by Mrs. Winter’s -powerful Chinese friend; they had no dread of white spooks, however -they might cringe before yellow ones. Mrs. Winter and Randall left -their hotel, after all the appropriate ceremonies, amid the lavish bows -and smiles of liberally paid bell-boys and porters. They gave out that -they were to visit friends; and the colonel, who remained, was to take -charge of their mail; hence, with no appearance of secrecy, the trail -took to water and was lost, since the motor-car which carried them was -supplied by Birdsall and driven by a safe man of his own. - -Regarding the detective, Rupert Winter had had what he called “a stiff -think;” he could not afford even the remote risk of his going with the -picturesque assortment of information which he had obtained about Casa -Fuerte and Mercer, into Atkins’ employ; therefore he hired him, still, -himself. He made a partial but absolutely truthful statement of the -case; he said frankly: “Birdsall, I’m not going to treat you fair, for -I’m not going to tell you all I know, because--well, for one thing, I -don’t feel sure how much I do know myself. But all I’m going to ask of -you is to watch the house, day and night, without seeming to watch it. -You will oblige Mr. Keatcham as well as me. There is a big game going -on, but it isn’t what you thought. Mr. Keatcham’s best helpers are -right in that house. Mercer and I and young Fireless and Arnold are -doing our best to guard him, not hurt him. Now, there is big money for -you if you will watch out for us.” - -Birdsall reflected a moment before he answered, but he did answer, -screwing up his face: “I don’t like these jobs in the dark; but I like -you, Colonel, and it’s a go.” - -Keatcham’s valet was next summoned from his vacation and became, in -Tracy’s phrase, “a dandy sub-nurse.” - -The Tracys’ family physician came twice a day. He was known to be -visiting one of the guests who had fallen ill. Mercer sent three -or four telegrams a day to Seattle and to New York, to Keatcham’s -associates. Several times he held a conversation of importance over -the telephone with the man who acted as distributer of intelligence. -Warnebold, himself, came on to San Francisco from Seattle, and was -received with every courtesy. He questioned Kito, questioned Mercer, -questioned the colonel. Tracy had effaced himself and was in Pasadena -for a day or two. - -The colonel was the star witness (at least this was young Arnold’s -verdict). His narrative was to the effect that he had gone out to see -Mercer, who was a family connection; no, he was not alone, he had a -young friend with him; confidentially, he would admit that the friend -was Mr. Tracy’s son; and, while he could not be sure, he had reason -to suspect that he, “young Tracy,” had been conducting some delicate -negotiations with Mr. Keatcham. At this point the interlocutor nodded -slightly; he was making the deductions expected and explaining to -himself Keatcham’s astonishing communication over the telephone. So, -he was surmising shrewdly, _that_ was the clue; the old man had been -making some sort of a deal with Tracy through the son; well, they were -protected, thanks to Keatcham’s orders. Likely as not they never would -know all the reasons for this side-stepping. - -“I understand, then,” he said, as one who holds a clue but has no -notion of letting it slip out of his own fingers, “you and young Tracy -got here and you found Mr. Keatcham? How did you get in? Did Mr. Mercer -let you in? How did it happen he didn’t discover Mr. Keatcham instead -of you, or did you come in on the side?” - -Mrs. Winter who was in the room had a diversion ready, but it was not -needed; the colonel answered unhesitatingly, with a frank smile: “No, -we came in ourselves; young Tracy had a key.” - -“Oh, he _had_, had he?” returned Warnebold with a shrug of the -shoulders. - -“He is a great friend of young Arnold’s; they were at Harvard together, -belonged to the same societies.” - -“Yes, I understand; well--” - -The rest of the interview was clear sailing. Mrs. Winter’s presence was -explained in her very own words. “Of course I was put out a good deal -at first,” added the colonel, “by the women getting mixed up in it; but -Miss Smith undoubtedly saved Mr. Keatcham’s life. I never saw any one -who seemed to think of so many things to do. Half a dozen times, that -first night, he seemed to be fading away; but every time she brought -him back. I was anxious to have a doctor called in; but Mercer seemed -opposed to making a stir--” - -“He knew his business thoroughly,” interjected Keatcham’s confidant, -“he undoubtedly had his instructions to keep Keatcham’s presence here a -secret.” - -“He _had_,” said Mrs. Winter; “besides, Miss Smith is his sister-in-law -and he knew that she could be trusted to do everything possible. And, -really, it didn’t look as if anything could help him. I hardly believed -that he could live an hour when I saw him.” - -“Nor I,” the colonel corroborated. - -Warnebold, plainly impressed by Mrs. Winter’s grand air, assured -them both that he felt that everything that could be done had been -done; Miss Smith was quite wonderful; and he would admit (of course, -confidentially) that Mr. Keatcham did have a heart trouble; Mr. Mercer -had recalled one or two fainting fits; there was some congestion; -and the doctor found a sad absence of reaction; he believed that -there had been a--er--syncope of some sort before the stabbing; Mr. -Keatcham himself, although he was still too weak to talk much, had no -recollection of anything except a very great faintness. Mr. Mercer’s -theory seemed to cover the ground. - -“Except as to who did the stabbing,” said the colonel. - -“Has Mr. Keatcham any bitter enemies?” asked Aunt Rebecca thoughtfully. - -“What man who has made a great fortune hasn’t?” demanded Warnebold with -a saturnine wrinkle of the lips. “But our enemies don’t stab or shoot -us, nowadays.” - -“They do out West,” said the colonel genially; “we’re crude.” - -“Are you in earnest?” - -“Entirely. I know a man, a mine superintendent, who got into a row with -his miners because he discharged a foreman, one of the union lights, -for stealing ore. In consequence he got a big strike on his hands, -found a dynamite bomb under his front piazza, and was shot at twice. -The second time he was too quick for them; he shot back and killed one -of them. He thought it was time to put a stop to so much excitement, so -he sent for the second assassin--” - -“And had him arrested?” - -“Oh, dear, no; he wasn’t in Massachusetts; I told you he wanted the -thing stopped. No, he sent for him and told him that he had no special -ill feeling toward _him_, but that the next time anything of the kind -happened he had made arrangements to have not him, or any other thug -who was doing the work, but the two men who were at the bottom of the -whole business, killed within twenty-four hours. They took the hint and -kind feeling now prevails.” - -Warnebold grunted; he declared it to be a beastly creepy situation; he -said he never wanted to sit down without a wall against his back; and -he intimated that the president of the United States was to blame for -more than he realized. “I hope you have some one watching the house,” -he fumed, “and that he--well, he doesn’t belong to the police force.” - -“No, he’s an honest mercenary,” said the colonel; “I’ll introduce him -to you.” - -“And you haven’t found any method of entering the house?” fumed the -financier. - -“No,” said Aunt Rebecca. - -“Yes,” said the colonel. - -He laughed as they both whirled round on him. - -“You speak first, my dear aunt,” he proposed politely; “I’ll explain -later.” - -Mrs. Winter said that a most careful examination had been made not only -by Mercer and the colonel together, but also by young Arnold. They -found everything absolutely secure; all the windows were bolted and all -the cellar gratings firm and impossible to open. - -“Now, you?” said Warnebold. - -“I only found out to-day,” apologized the colonel, “or I should have -spoken of it. I got to thinking; and it occurred to me that in a house -built, as I understood from Arnold, by a very original architect, -there might be some queer features, such as secret passages. With that -in my mind, I induced the young gentleman to hunt up the architect, -as he lives in San Francisco. He not only showed us some very pretty -secret passages about the house, but one that led into it. Shall I show -it to you?” - -On their instantly expressed desire to see the hidden way, the colonel -led them to the _patio_. He walked to the engaged column which once -before had interested him; he pressed a concealed spring under the -boldly carved eight-pointed flower; instantly, the entire side of the -columns swung as a door might swing. As they peered into the dusky -space below, the colonel, who had put down his arm, pressed an electric -button and the white light flooded the shaft, revealing an ingenious -ladder of cleats fitted into steel uprights. - -“Here,” said the colonel, “is a secret way from the _patio_ to the -cellar. The cellar extends a little beyond the _patio_ and there is a -way down from the yard to the cellar--I can quickly show you, if you -like.” - -“No, thank you,” replied Warnebold, who was a man of full habit and -older than the colonel, “I will take _your_ personal experience -instead.” - -“Then if you will go out into the yard with me I will show you where -a charming pergola ends in a vine-wreathed sun-dial of stone that you -may tug at and not move; but press your foot on a certain stone, the -whole dial swings round on a concealed turn-table such as they have in -garages, you know. You will have no difficulty in finding the right -stone, because an inscription runs round the dial: _Más vale tarde que -nunca_; and the stone is directly opposite _nunca_. When you have moved -away your dial you will see a gently inclining tunnel, high enough for -a man to walk in without stooping, wide enough for two, and much better -ventilated than the New York subway. That tunnel leads to a secret door -opening directly into the cellar, so skilfully contrived that it looks -like an air-shaft. This door is only a few feet from the shaft to the -_patio_. We have found a bolt and put it on this entrance, but there -wasn’t any before; nor did any one in the house know of the secret -passage.” - -The colonel went on to say that on questioning the architect he averred -that he had never mentioned the secret passage to his knowledge--except -that very recently, only a few days before, at a dinner, he had barely -alluded to it; and one of the gentlemen present, an Easterner, had -asked him where he got a man to make such a contrivance--it must take -skill. He had mentioned the name of the workman. The colonel had hunted -up the artisan mentioned, only to find that he had left town to take a -job somewhere; no one seemed to know where. Of course he had inquired -of everybody. The name of the Easterner was Atkins. - -“Atkins,” cried Warnebold, at this turn of the narrative, “Keatcham’s -secretary? Why, he’s the boldest and slyest scoundrel in the United -States! He started a leak in Keatcham’s office that made him a couple -of hundred thousands and lost us a million, and might have lost us more -if Mercer hadn’t got on to him. Keatcham wouldn’t believe he had been -done to the extent he was at first--you know the old man hates to own -to any one’s getting the better of him; it’s the one streak of vanity -I’ve ever been able to discover in him. Otherwise, he’s cold and keen -as a razor on a frosty morning. He was convinced enough, however, to -discharge Atkins; the next news I had, he was trying to send him to the -pen. Gave us instructions how to get the evidence. No allusion to his -past confidence in the fellow, simply the orders--as if we knew all -the preliminaries. Wonderful man, Mr. Keatcham, Colonel Winter.” - -“Very,” agreed the colonel dryly. - -By this time the warrior and the man of finance were on easy terms. -Warnebold remained three days. Before he left the patient had been -pronounced out of danger and had revived enough to give some succinct -business directions. Mercer had been sent to look out for the cement -deal; and Keatcham appeared a little relieved and brighter when he was -told that Mercer was on his way. - -“He will put it through if it can be put,” he had said weakly to -Warnebold; “he’s moderately smart and perfectly honest.” Such words, -Warnebold explained later to Mrs. Winter, coming from Keatcham might -be regarded almost as extravagant commendation. “Your cousin’s fortune -is made,” he pronounced solemnly; “he can get Atkins’ place, I make no -doubt.” - -Mrs. Winter thought that Mercer was a very valuable man. - -“Only always so melancholy; I’ve been afraid he had something serious -the matter with his digestion. It’s these abominable quick lunches that -are ruining the health of all our steady young men. I don’t know but -they are almost as bad as chorus girls and late suppers. Well, Mrs. -Winter, I’m afraid we shall not have another chance at bridge until -I see you in New York. But, anyhow, we stung the colonel once--and -with Miss Smith playing her greatest game, too. Pity she can’t induce -Mr. Keatcham to play; but he never touches a card, hardly ever takes -anything to drink, doesn’t like smoking especially, takes a cigarette -once in a while only, never plays the races or bets on the run of the -vessel--positively such icy virtue gives an ordinary sinner the cramps! -Very great man though, Mrs. Winter, and a man we are all proud to -follow; he may be overbearing; and he doesn’t praise you too much, but -somehow you always have the consciousness that he sees every bit of -good work you do and is marking it up in your favor; and you won’t be -the loser. There is no question he has a hold on his associates; but he -certainly is not what I call a genial man.” - -Only on the day of his departure did Warnebold, in young Arnold’s -language, “loosen up” enough to tell Arnold and the colonel a vital -incident. The night of the attack a telegram was sent to Warnebold in -Keatcham’s confidential cipher, directing the campaign against Tracy -to be pushed hard, ordering the dumping of some big blocks of stock -on the market and arranging for their dummy purchasers. The naming of -Atkins as the man in charge was plausible enough, presuming there had -been no knowledge of the break in his relations with Keatcham. The -message was couched in Keatcham’s characteristic crisp phraseology. -But for the receiver’s knowledge of the break and but for the previous -long-distance conversation, it had reached its mark. The associates of -Keatcham were puzzled. The hands were the hands of Esau but the voice -was the voice of Jacob. There had been a hurried consultation into -which the second long-distance telephone from San Francisco broke like -a thunderclap. It decided the hearers to keep to their instructions and -disregard the cipher despatch. - -“And didn’t you send any answer?” the colonel asked. - -“Oh, certainly; we had an address given, The Palace Hotel, Mr. John G. -Makers. We wired Mr. Makers--in cipher. ‘Despatch received. Will attend -to it,’ I signed. And I wired to the manager of the hotel to notice the -man who took the despatch. It wasn’t a man, it was a lady.” - -“A lady?” - -“Yes, she had an order for Mr. Makers’ telegrams. Mr. Makers gave the -order. Mr. Makers himself only stopped one night and went away in -the morning and nobody seemed to remember him particularly; he was a -nondescript sort of party.” - -“But the lady?” The colonel’s mouth felt dry. - -“The lady? She was tall, fine figure, well dressed, dark hair, the -telegraph girl thought, but she didn’t pay any special attention. She -had a very pleasant, musical voice.” - -“That doesn’t seem to be very definite,” remarked the colonel with a -crooked smile. - -It didn’t look like a clue to Warnebold, either; but he was convinced -of one thing, namely, that it would pay to watch the ex-secretary. - -“And,” chuckled he, “there’s a cheerful side to the affair. Atkins is -loaded to the guards with short contracts; and the Midland is booming; -if the rise continues, he can’t cover without losing about all he -has. By the way, we got another wire later in the day demanding what -we were about, what it all meant that we hadn’t obeyed instructions. -Same address for answer. This time we thought we had laid a nice trap. -But you can’t reckon on a hotel; somehow, before we got warning, Mr. -Makers had telephoned for his despatch and got it.” - -“Where did he telephone from?” - -“From his room in the Palace.” - -“I thought he had given up his room?” - -“He had. But--somebody telephoned to the telegraph office from -somewhere in the hotel and got Mr. Makers’ wire. You can get pretty -much everything except a moderate bill out of a hotel.” - -“I see,” said the colonel and immediately in his heart compared -himself to the immortal “blind man;” for his wits appeared to him to -be tramping round futilely in a maze; no nearer the exit than when the -tramp began. - -That night, after Warnebold had departed, leaving most effusive thanks -and expressions of confidence, Winter was standing at his window -absently looking at the garden faintly colored by the moonlight, while -his mind was plying back and forth between half a dozen contradictions. - -He went over the night of the attack on Keatcham; he summoned every -look, every motion of Janet Smith; in one phase of feeling he -cudgeled himself for a wooden fool who had been absolutely brutal to -a defenseless woman who trusted him; he hated himself for the way -he would not see her when she looked toward him; no wonder at last -she stiffened, and now she absolutely avoided him! But, in a swift -revulsion against his own softness he was instantly laying on the -blows as lustily because of his incredible, pig-headed credulity. How -absolutely simple the thing was! She _cared_ for this scoundrel of an -Atkins who had first betrayed his employer and then tried to murder -him. Very likely they had been half engaged down there in Virginia; and -he had crawled out of his engagement; it would be quite like the cur! -Later he found that just such a distinguished, charming woman, who had -family and friends, was what he wanted; it would be easy enough for -him to warm up his old passion, curse him! Then, he had met her and -run in a bunch of plausible lies that had convinced her that he had -been a regular angel in plain clothes; hadn’t done a thing to Cary or -to her. Atkins was such a smooth devil! Winter could just picture him -whining to the girl, putting his life in her hands and all that rot; -and making all kinds of a tool of her--why, the whole hand was on the -board! So she was ready to throw them all overboard to save Atkins from -getting his feet wet. That was why she looked so pale and haggard of a -morning sometimes, in spite of that ready smile of hers; that was why -her eyes were so wistful; she wasn’t a false woman and she sickened of -her squalid part. She loved Aunt Rebecca and Archie--all the same, she -would turn them both down for him; while as to Rupert Winter, late of -the United States army, a worn-out, lame, elderly idiot who had flung -away the profession he loved and every chance of a future career in -order to have his hands free to keep her out of danger--where were -there words blistering enough for such puppy-dog folly! At this point -in his jealous imaginings the pain in him goaded him into motion; he -began furiously pacing the room, although his lame leg, which he had -been using remorselessly all day, was sending jabs and twists of agony -through him. But after a little he halted again before the casement -window. - -The wide, darkening view; the great, silent city with its myriad -lights; the shining mist of the bay; the foot-hills with their -sheer, straw-colored streaks through the forests and vineyards; the -illimitable depths of star-sown, violet sky--all these touched his -fevered mood with a sudden calm. His unrest was quieted, as one whose -senses are cooled by a running stream. - -“You hot-headed Southerner!” he upbraided himself, “don’t get up in the -air without any real proof!” - -Almost in the flitting of the words through his brain he saw her. The -white gown, which was her constant wear in the sick-room, defined her -figure clearly against a clump of Japan plum-trees. Their purplish -red foliage rustled; and an unseen fountain beyond made a delicate -tinkle of water splashing a marble basin. Her face was hidden; only the -moonlight gently drew the oval of her cheek. She was standing still, -except that one foot was groping back and forth as if trying to find -something. But, as he looked, his face growing tender, she knelt on the -sod and pulled something out of the ground. This something she seemed -to dust off with her handkerchief--he could not see the object, but he -could see the flutter of the handkerchief; and when she rose the white -linen partly hid the thing in her hand. Only partly, because when she -passed around the terrace wall the glow from an electric lantern, in an -arch, fell full upon her and burnished a long, thin blade of steel. - -He looked down on her from his unlighted chamber; and suddenly she -looked up straight at the windows of the room where she thought he was -sleeping; and smiled a dim, amused, weary, tender smile. Then she sped -by, erect and light of foot; and the deep shadow of the great gateway -took her. All he could see was the moonlight on the bluish green lawn; -and the white electric light on the gleaming rubber-trees and dusty -palms. - -He sat down. He clasped his hands over his knee. He whistled softly a -little Spanish air. He laughed very gently. “My dear little girl,” said -he, “I am going to marry you. You may be swindled into helping a dozen -murderers; but I am going to marry you!” - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -THE REAL EDWIN KEATCHAM - - -One Sunday after Mrs. Melville Winter and Archie came to Casa -Fuerte, Mr. Keatcham sent for the colonel. There was nothing -unusual in such a summons. From the beginning of his illness he had -shown a curious, inexpressive desire for the soldier’s company. -He would have him sit in the room, although too weak to talk to -him, supposing he wished to talk, which was not at all sure. “I -like-to-see-him-just-sitting-there,” he faltered to his nurse, -“can’t-he-read-or-play-solitaire-like-the-old-lady?” - -Sometimes Winter would be conscious that the feeble creature in the -bed, with the bluish-white face, was staring at him. Whether the glassy -eyes beheld his figure or went beyond him to unfinished colossal -schemes that might change the fate of a continent, or drifted backward -to the poverty-stricken home, the ferocious toil and the unending -self-denial of Keatcham’s youth on the Pacific slope, the dim gaze -gave no clue. All that was apparent was that it was always on Winter, -as he curled his legs under his chair, wrote or knitted his brow over -rows of playing-cards. - -At the very first, Keatcham’s mind had wandered; he used to shrink -from imaginary people who were in the room; he would try to talk to -them, distressing himself painfully, for he was so weak that his nurses -turned his head on the pillow; he would feebly motion them away. -In such aberrations he would sometimes appeal, in a changed, thin, -childish voice, to the obscure, toil-worn pioneer woman who had died -while he was a lad. “Mother, I _was_ a good boy; I always got up when -you called me, didn’t I? I helped you iron when the other boys were -playing--mother, please don’t let that old woman stay and cry here!” Or -he would plead: “Mother, tell her, say, _you_ tell her I didn’t know -her son would kill himself--I couldn’t tell--he was a damn coward, -anyhow--excuse me, mama, I didn’t mean to swear, but they make me so -awful mad!” There was a girl who came, sometimes, from whose presence -he shrank; a girl he had never seen; nor, indeed, had he ever known -in the flesh any of the shapes which haunted him. They had lived; but -never had his eyes fallen on them. Nevertheless, their presence was -as real to him as that of the people about him whom he could hear and -touch and see. It did not take Winter’s imagination long to piece -out the explanation of these apparitions: they were specters of the -characters in those dramas of ruthless conquest which Mercer had culled -out of newspaper “stories” and affidavits and court reports and forced -upon Keatcham’s attention. Miss Smith helped him to the solution, -although her own ignorance of Mercer’s method was puzzling. “How did -he ever know old Mrs. Ferris?” she said. “He called her Ferris and -he talks about her funny dress--she always did wear a queer little -basque and full skirt after all the world went into blouses--but how -did _he_ ever come across her? They had a place on the James that had -been in the family a hundred years and had to lose it on account of the -Tidewater; and Nelson Ferris blew his brains out.” - -“Don’t you know how?” asked the colonel. “Well, I’ll tell you my guess -sometime. Who is the girl who seems to make him throw a fit so?” - -“I’m not sure; I imagine it is poor Mabel Ray; there were two of them, -sisters; they made money out of their Tidewater stock and went to New -York to visit some kin; and they got scared when the stock fell and the -dividends stopped; and they sold out at a great loss. They never did -come back; they had persuaded all their kin to invest; and the stopping -of the dividends made it difficult for some of the poor ones--Mabel -said she couldn’t face her old aunts. She went on the stage in New -York. She was very pretty; she wasn’t very strong. Anyway, you can -imagine the end of the story. I saw her in the park last winter when -Mrs. Winter was in New York; she turned her face away--poor Mabel!” - -Through Janet Smith’s knowledge of her dead sister’s neighbors, Winter -got a dozen pitiful records of the wreckage of the Tidewater. “Mighty -interesting reading,” he thought grimly, “but hardly likely to make the -man responsible for them stuck on himself!” Then he would look at the -drawn face on the pillow and listen to the babblings of the boy who had -had no childhood; and the frown would melt off his brow. - -He did not always talk to his mother when his mind wandered; several -times he addressed an invisible presence as “Helen” and “Dear” with an -accent of tenderness very strange on those inflexible lips. When he -talked to this phantasm he was never angry or distressed; his turgid -scowl cleared; the austere lines chiseling his cheeks and brow faded; -he looked years younger. But for the most part, it was to no unreal -creature that he turned, but to Colonel Rupert Winter. He would address -him with punctilious civility, but as one who was under some obligation -to assist him, saying, for instance, “Colonel Winter, I must beg you -not to let those persons in the room again. They annoy me. But you -needn’t let Mercer know that. Please attend to it yourself, and get -them away. Miss Smith says you will. Explain to them that when I get up -I will investigate their claims. I’m too sick now!” - -Conscious and free from fever, he was barely able to articulate, but -when delirious fancies possessed him he could talk rapidly, in a good -voice. Very soon it was clear that he was calmer for the colonel’s -presence. Hence, the latter got into the habit of sitting in the -room. He would request imaginary ruined and desperate beings to leave -Keatcham in peace; he would gravely rise and close the door on their -departure. He never was surprised nor at a loss; and his dramatic nerve -never failed. Later, as the visions faded, a moody reserve wrapped the -sick man. He lay motionless, evidently absorbed by thought. In one way -he was what doctors call a very good patient. He obeyed all directions; -he was not restless. But neither was he ever cheerful. Every day he -asked for his pulse record and his temperature and his respiration. -After a consultation with the doctor, Miss Smith gave them to him. - -“It is against the rules,” grumbled the doctor, “but I suppose each -patient has to make his own rules.” On the same theory he permitted the -colonel’s visits. - -Therefore, with no surprise, Winter received and obeyed the summons. -Keatcham greeted him with his usual stiff courtesy. - -“The doctor says I can have the--papers--will you pick -out--the--one--day after I was stabbed.” - -Miss Smith indicated a pile on a little table, placed ready at hand. “I -kept them for him,” she said. - -“Read about--the Midland,” commanded the faint, indomitable voice. - -“Want the election and the newspaper sentiments?” asked the colonel; -he gave it all, conscious the while of Janet Smith’s compassionate, -perplexed, sorrowful eyes. - -“Don’t skip!” Keatcham managed to articulate after a pause. - -The colonel gave him a keen glance. “Want it straight, without a -chaser?” - -Keatcham closed his eyes and nodded. - -The colonel read about the virtually unanimous election of Tracy; the -astonishment of the outsiders among the supposed anti-Tracy element; -the composed and impenetrable front of the men closest to Keatcham; the -reticence and amiability of Tracy himself, in whose mien there could -be detected no hint either of hostility or of added cordiality toward -the men who had been expected “to drag his bleeding pride in the dust;” -finally of the response of the stock-market in a phenomenal rise of -Midland. - -Keatcham listened with his undecipherable mask of attention; there was -not so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle. All -he said was: “Now, read if there is anything about the endowment of the -new fellowships in some medical schools for experimental research.” - -“Who gives the endowment?” - -“Anonymous. In memory of Maria Warren Keatcham and Helen Bradford -Keatcham. Find anything?” - -The colonel found a great deal about it. The paper was full of this -munificent gift, amounting to many millions of dollars and filling -(with most carefully and wisely planned details) an almost absolute -vacuum in the American scheme of education. The dignity and fame of the -chairs and fellowships endowed were ample to tempt the best ability of -the profession. The reader grew enthusiastic as he read. - -“Why, it’s immense! And we have always needed it!” he exclaimed. - -“There are some letters about it, there,”--Keatcham feebly motioned -to a number of neatly opened, neatly assorted letters on a desk. “The -doctor said I might have the letters read to me. Miss Smith got him to. -For fear of exciting you, the doctors usually let you worry your head -off because you don’t know about things. I’ve got to carry a few things -through if it kills me. Don’t you see?” - -“I see,” said the colonel, “you shall.” - -The next time he saw the financier, although only a few days had -elapsed, he was much stronger; he was able to breathe comfortably, he -spoke with ease, in his ordinary voice; in fine, he looked his old self -again, merely thinner and paler. Hardly was the colonel seated before -he said without preface--Keatcham never made approaches to his subject, -regarding conversational road-making as waste of brains for a busy man: - -“Colonel, Miss Smith hasn’t time to be my nurse and secretary both. I -won’t have one sent from New York; will you help her out?” - -The colonel’s lips twitched; he was thinking that were Miss Smith -working for Atkins, she couldn’t have a better chance to make a -killing. “But I’ll bet my life she isn’t,” he added; “she may be trying -to save his life, but she isn’t playing his game!” - -He said aloud: “I will, Mr. Keatcham, if you will let me do it as part -of the obligation of the situation; and there is no bally rot about -compensation.” - -“Very well,” said Keatcham. He did not hesitate; it was (as the colonel -had already discovered) the rarest thing in the world for him to -hesitate; he thought with astonishing rapidity; and he formulated his -answer while his interlocutor talked; before the speech was over the -answer was ready. Another trait of his had struck the soldier, namely, -the laborious correctness of his speech; it was often formal and -old-fashioned; Aunt Rebecca said that he talked like Daniel Webster’s -speeches; but it had none of the homely and pungent savor one might -expect from a man whose boyhood had scrambled through miners’ camps -into a San Francisco stock office; who had never gone to school in his -life by daylight; who had been mine superintendent, small speculator -and small director in California until he became a big speculator and -big railway controller in New York. - -“You might begin on the morning mail,” Keatcham continued. “Let me sort -them first.” He merely glanced at the inscriptions on the envelopes, -opening and taking out one which he read rather carelessly, frowning a -little before he placed it to one side. - -A number of the letters concerned the endowments of the experimental -chairs at the universities. Keatcham’s attention was not lightened by -any ray of pleasure. Once he said: “That fellow has caught my idea,” -and once: “That’s right,” but there was no animation in his voice, no -interest in his pallid face. Stealing a furtive scrutiny of it, now and -then, Rupert Winter was impressed with its mystical likeness to that of -Cary Mercer. There was no physical similarity of color or feature; it -was a likeness of the spirit rather than the flesh. The colonel’s eyes -flashed. - -“I have it!” he exclaimed within, “I have it; they are fanatics, both -of them; Keatcham’s a fanatic of finance and Mercer is a fanatic of -another sort; but fanatics they both are, ready to go any length for -their principles or their ambitions or their revenge! _J’ai trouvé le -mot d’énigme_, as Aunt Becky would say--I wonder what she’ll say to -this sudden psychological splurge of mine.” - -“The business hour is up,”--it was Miss Smith entering with a bowl on a -white-covered tray; the sun glinted the lump of ice in the milk and the -silver spoon was dazzling against the linen--“your biscuit and milk, -Mr. Keatcham. Didn’t you have it when you were a boy?” - -“I did, Miss Janet,”--and Keatcham actually smiled. “I used to think -crackers and milk the nicest thing in the world.” - -“That is because you never tasted corn pone and milk; but you are going -to.” - -“When you make it for me. I’m glad you’re such a good cook. It’s one of -your ways I like. My mother was a very good cook. She could make better -dishes out of almost nothing than these mongrel chefs can make with -the whole world.” - -“I reckon she could,” said Miss Smith; she was speaking sincerely. - -“When my father didn’t strike pay dirt, my mother would open her bakery -and make pies for the miners; she could make bread with potato yeast or -‘salt-emptins’--can you make salt-rising bread?” - -“I can--shall I make you some, to-morrow?” - -“I’d like it. My mother used to make more money than my father; -sometimes when we children were low in clothes and dad owed a bigger -lot of money than usual, we had a laundry at our house as well as a -bakery. Yet, in spite of all the work, my mother found time to teach -all of us; and she knew how to teach, too; for she was principal of -a school when my father married her. She was a New Englander; so was -he; but they went West. We’re forty-niners. I saw the place where our -little cloth-and-board shack used to stand. After the big fire, you -know. It burned us all up; we had saved a good deal and my mother had a -nice bakery. She worked too hard; it killed her. Work and struggle and -losing the children.” - -“They died?” said Miss Janet. - -“Diphtheria. They didn’t know anything about the disease then. We -all had it; and my little sister and both my brothers died; but I’m -tough. I lived. My mother fell into what they called a decline. I was -making a little money then--I was sixteen; but I couldn’t keep her from -working. Perhaps it made no difference; but it did make a difference -her not having the--the right kind of food. Nobody knew anything about -consumption then. I used to go out in the morning and be afraid I’d -find her dead when I got back. One night I did.” He stopped abruptly, -crimsoning up to his eyes--“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” - -“I call that tough,”--as the colonel blurted out the words, he was -conscious of a sense of repetition. When had he said those very same -words before, to whom? Of all people in the world, to Cary Mercer. -“Mighty tough,” murmured he softly. - -“Yes,” said Keatcham, “it was.” He did not say anything more. Neither -did the colonel. Keatcham obediently ate his milk and biscuit; and very -shortly the colonel took his leave. - -The next morning after an uneventful hour of sorting, reading and -answering letters for Miss Smith to copy on the traveling type-writer, -Keatcham gave his new secretary a sharp sensation; he ordered in his -quiet but peremptory fashion: “Now put that trash away; sit down; tell -me all you know of Cary--real name is Cary Mercer, isn’t it?” - -The colonel said it was; he asked him if he wanted everything. - -“Everything. Straight. Without a chaser,” snapped Keatcham. - -The colonel gave it to him. He began with his own acquaintance; he told -about Phil Mercer; he did not slur a detail; neither did he underscore -one; Keatcham got the uncolored facts. He heard them impassively, -making only one comment: “A great deal of damage would be saved in this -world if youngsters could be shut up until they had sense enough not -to fool with firearms.” When Winter came to Mercer’s own exposition of -his motives and his design if successful in his raid on the kings of -the market, Keatcham grunted; at the end he breathed a noiseless jet of -a sigh. “You don’t think Mercer is at all”--he tapped the side of the -head. - -“No more than you are.” - -“Or you?” - -“Oh, well,” the colonel jested, “we all have a prejudice in favor of -our own sanity. What I meant was that Mercer is a bit of a fanatic; his -hard luck has--well, prejudiced him--” - -Keatcham’s cold, firm lips straightened into his peculiar smile, which -was rather of perception than of humor. - -One might say of him--Aunt Rebecca Winter did say of him--that he saw -the incongruous, which makes up for humor, but he never enjoyed it; -possibly it was only another factor in his contempt of mankind. - -“Colonel,” said Keatcham, “do you think Wall Street is a den of -thieves?” - -“I do,” said the colonel promptly. “I should like to take a machine gun -or two and clean you all out.” - -Keatcham did not smile; he blinked his eyes and nodded. “I presume a -good many people share your opinion of us.” - -“Millions,” replied the colonel. - -Again Keatcham nodded. “I thought so,” said he. “Of course you are all -off; Wall Street is as necessary to the commonwealth as the pores to -your skin; they don’t make the poison in the system any more than the -pores do; they only let it escape. And I suppose you think that big -financiers who control the trusts and the railways and--” - -“Us,” the colonel struck in, “well?” - -“You think we are thieves and liars and murderers and despots?” - -“All of that,” said the colonel placidly; “also fools.” - -“You certainly don’t mince your words.” - -“You don’t want me to. What use would my opinion be in a one-thousandth -attenuation? You’re no homeopath; and whatever else you may be, you’re -no coward.” - -“Yet, you think I surrendered to Mercer? You think I did it because I -was afraid he would kill me? I suppose he would have killed me if I -hadn’t, eh?” - -“He can speak for himself about that; he seems--well, an earnest sort -of man. But I don’t think you gave in because you were afraid, if that -is what you mean. You are no more afraid than he was! You wanted to -live, probably; you had big things on hand. The Midland was only a -trump in the game; you could win the odd trick with something else; you -let the Midland go.” - -“Pretty close,”--Keatcham really smiled--“but there is a good deal -more of it. I was shut up with the results of my--my work. He did -it very cleverly. I had nothing to distract me. There were the big -type-written pages about the foolish people who had lost their money, -in some cases really through my course, mostly because they got scared -and let go and were wiped out when, if they had had confidence in me -and held on, they would be very much better off, now. But they didn’t, -and they were ruined and they starved and took their boys out of -college and mortgaged their confounded homes that had been in their -families ever since Adam; and the old people died of broken hearts -and the girls went wrong and some of the idiotic quitters killed -themselves--it was not the kind of crowd you would want shut up with -you in the dark! I was shut up with them. He had some sort of way of -switching off the lights from the outside. I never saw a face or heard -a voice. I would have to sit there in the dark after he thought I had -read enough to occupy my mind. It--was unpleasant. Perhaps you suppose -that brought me round to his way of thinking?” - -The colonel meditated. “I’ll tell you honestly,” he said after a pause, -“I was of that opinion, or something of the kind, until I talked your -case over with my aunt--” - -“The old dame is not a fool; what did she say?” - -“She said no, he didn’t convert you; but he convinced you how other -people looked at your methods. You couldn’t get round the fact that a -majority of your countrymen think your type of financier is worse than -smallpox, and more contagious.” - -“Oh, she put it that way, did she? I wish she would write a prospectus -for me. Well, you think she was nearer right than you?” - -“I think _you_ do; I myself think it was a little of both. You’ve -got a heart and a conscience originally, though they have got pretty -well tanned out in the weather; you didn’t want to be sorry for those -people, but you are. They have bothered you a lot; but it has bothered -you more to think that instead of going down the ages as a colossal -benefactor and empire builder, you are hung up on the hook to see -where you’re at; and where you _will_ be if the people get thoroughly -aroused. You all are building bigger balloons when it ought to be you -for the cyclone cellar! But _you_ are different. You can see ahead. I -give you credit for seeing.” - -“Have you ever considered,” said Keatcham slowly, “that in spite -of the iniquitous greed of the men you are condemning, in spite of -their oppression of the people, the prosperity of the country is -unparalleled? How do you explain it?” - -“Crops,” said the colonel; “the crops were too big for you.” - -“You might give _us_ a little credit--your aunt does. She was here -to-day; she is a manufacturer and she comprehended that the methods of -business can not be revolutionized without somebody’s getting hurt. -Yet, on the whole, the change might be immensely advantageous. Now, -why, in a nutshell, do you condemn us?” - -“You’re after the opinion of the average man, are you?” - -“I suppose so, the high average.” - -The colonel crossed his legs and uncrossed them again; he looked -straight into the other’s eyes; his own narrowed with thought. - -“I’ll tell you,” said he. “I don’t know much about the Street or -high finance or industrial development. I’m a plain soldier; I’m -not a manufacturer and I’m not a speculator. I understand perfectly -that you can’t have great changes without somebody’s getting hurt in -the shuffle. It is beyond me to decide whether the new industrial -arrangements with the stock-jobber on top instead of the manufacturer -will make for better or for worse--but I know this; it is against the -fundamental law to do evil that good may come. And you fellows in Wall -Street, when, to get rich quick, you lie about stocks in order to buy -cheap and then lie another way to sell dear; when you make a panic out -of whole cloth, as you did in 1903, because, having made about all you -can out of things going up, you want to make all you can out of them -going down; when you play foot-ball with great railway properties and -insurance properties, because you are as willing to rob the dead as the -living; when you do all that, and when your imitators, who haven’t so -much brains or so much decency as you, when _they_ buy up legislatures -and city councils; and _their_ imitators run the Black Hand business -and hold people up who have money and are not strong enough, they -think, to hunt them down--why, not being a philosopher but just a plain -soldier, I call it bad, _rotten_ bad. What’s more, I can tell you the -American people won’t stand for it.” - -“You think they can help themselves?” - -“I know they can. You fellows are big, but you won’t last over night -if the American people get really aroused. And they are stirring in -their sleep and kicking off the bed-clothes.” - -“Yet you ought to belong to the conservatives.” - -“I do. That’s why the situation is dangerous. You as an old San -Franciscan ought to remember how conservative was that celebrated -Vigilance Committee. It is when the long-suffering, pusillanimous, -conservative element gets fighting mad that something is doing.” - -“Maybe,” muttered Keatcham thoughtfully. “I believe we can manage for -you better than you can for yourselves; but when the brakes are broken -good driving can’t stop the machine; all the chauffeur can do is to -keep the middle of the road. I like to be beaten as little as any of -them; but I’m not a fool. Winter, you are used to accomplishing things; -what is your notion of the secret?” - -“Knowing when to stop exhausting trumps, I reckon--but you don’t play -cards.” - -“It is the same old game whatever you play,” said the railway king. -He did not pursue the discussion; his questions, Winter had found, -invariably had a purpose, and that purpose was never argument. He lay -back on the big leather cushions of the lounge, his long, lean fingers -drumming on the table beside him and an odd smile playing about the -corners of his mouth; his next speech dived into new waters. He said: -“Have those men from New York got Atkins, yet?” - -“They couldn’t find him,” answered the colonel. “I have been having -him shadowed, on my own idea--I think he stabbed you, though I have no -proof of it; I take it you have proof of your matter.” - -“Plenty,” said Keatcham. “I was going to send him to the pen in -self-defense. It isn’t safe for me to have it creep out that my -secretary made a fortune selling my secrets. Besides, I don’t want to -be killed. You say they can’t find him?” - -“Seems to have gone to Japan--” - -“Seems? What do you mean?” - -“I am not sure. He was booked for a steamer; and a man under his name, -of his build and color, did actually sail on the boat,” announced the -colonel blandly. - -“Hmn! He’s right here in San Francisco; read that note.” - -Winter read the note, written on Palace Hotel note-paper, in a sharp, -scrawling, Italian hand. The contents were sufficiently startling. - - Dear friend Hoping this find you well. Why do you disregard a true - Warning? We did write you afore once for say you give that money or - we shal be unfortunately compel to kill you quick. No? You laff. God - knows we got have that twenty-five thousan dol. Yes. And now because - of such great expence it is fifty thousan you shall pay. We did not - mean kill you dead only show you for sure there is no place so secret - you can Hide no place so strong can defend you. Be Warn. You come - with $50000.00 in $100 bills. You go or send Mr. Mercer to the Red - Hat; ask for Louis. Say to Louis For the Black Hand. Louis will say - For the Black Hand. You follow him. No harm will come to you. You - will be forgive all heretobefores. Elseways you must die April 15-20. - _This is sure_. You have felt our dagger the other is worse. - - You well wishing Fren, - The Black Hand. - -“Sounds like Atkins pretending to be a Dago,” said the colonel dryly. -“I could do better myself.” - -“Very likely,” said Keatcham. - -“Does he mean business? What’s he after?” - -“To get me out of the way. He knows he isn’t safe until I’m dead. Then -he hasn’t been cleaned out, but he has lost a lot of money in this -Midland business. The cipher he has is of no use to him, there, or in -the other things which unluckily he knows about. With me dead and the -cipher in his hands, he could have made millions; even without the -cipher, if he knows I’m dead before the rest of the world, he ought to -make at least a half-million. I think you will find that he has put -everything he has on the chance. I told you he was slick. And unstable. -What do you anticipate he will do? Straight, with no chaser, as you -say.” - -“Well, straight with no chaser, I should say a bomb was the meanest -trick in sight, so, naturally, he will choose a bomb.” - -“I agree with you. You say the house is patrolled?” - -“The whole place. But we’ll put on a bigger force; I’ll see Birdsall -at once. Atkins would have to hire his explosive talent, wouldn’t he?” -questioned the colonel. - -“Oh, he knows plenty of the under-world rascals; and besides, for a -fellow of his habits, there is a big chance for loot. Mrs. Millicent -Winter tells me that your aunt has valuable jewels with her. If she -told me, she may have told other people, and Atkins may know. He will -use other people, but he will come, too, in my opinion.” - -“I see,” said the colonel; “to make sure they don’t foozle the bomb. -But he’ll have his alibi ready all right. Mr. Keatcham, did they send -you a previous letter?” - -“Oh, dear no; that’s only part of the game; makes a better story. So is -using the hotel paper; if it throws suspicion on anybody it would be -your party; you see Atkins knew Mercer had a grudge against me as well -as him. He was counting on that. I rather wonder that he didn’t fix up -some proof for you to find.” - -“By Jove!” cried the colonel; “maybe he did.” - -“And you didn’t find it?” - -“Well, you see I was too busy with you; the others must have overlooked -it. Hard on Atkins after he took so much trouble, wasn’t it?” - -“I told you he was too subtle. But it is not wise to underrate him, or -bombs either; we must get the women and those boys out of the house.” - -“But how? You are not really acquainted with my aunt, Mrs. Rebecca -Winter, I take it.” - -“You think she wouldn’t go if there was any chance of danger?” - -“You couldn’t fire her unless out of a cannon; but she would help get -Archie away; Mrs. Melville and Miss Smith--” - -“Well--ur--Miss Smith, I am afraid, will not be easy to manage; you -see, she knows--” - -“Knows? Did you tell her?” asked Colonel Winter anxiously. - -“Well, not exactly. As the children say, it told itself. There has been -a kind of an attempt, already. A box came, marked from a man I know in -New York, properly labeled with express company’s labels. Miss Smith -opened it; I could see her, because she was in the bath-room with the -door open. There was another box inside, wrapped in white tissue paper. -Very neatly. She examined that box with singular care and then she drew -some water in the lavatory basin, half opened the box and put the whole -thing under water in the basin. Then I thought it was time for me and -I asked her if it was a bomb. Do you know that girl had sense enough -not to try to deceive me? She saw that I had seen every move she had -made. She said merely that it was safe under water. It was an ingenious -little affair which had an electrical arrangement for touching off a -spark when the lid of the box would be lifted.” - -“Ah, yes. Thoughtful little plan to amuse an invalid by letting him -open the box, himself, to see the nice surprises from New York. Very -neat, indeed. What did you do with the box?” - -“Nothing, so far. It only came about an hour ago.” - -“Do you reckon some of the Black Hands are out on the street, rubbering -to see if there are any signs of anything doing?” - -“Perhaps; you might let Birdsall keep a watch for anything like that. -But they hear, somehow; there is a leak somewhere in our establishment. -It is not your aunt; she can hold her tongue as well as use it; the -boy, Archie, does not know anything to tell--” - -“He wouldn’t tell it if he did,” interrupted the colonel; and very -concisely but with evident pride he gave Archie’s experience in the -Chinese quarter. - -Keatcham’s comment took the listener’s breath away; so far afield was -it and so unlike his experience of the man; it was: “Winter, a son like -that would be a good deal of a comfort, wouldn’t he?” - -“Poor little chap!” said Winter. “He hasn’t any father to be proud of -him--father and mother both dead.” - -Keatcham eyed Winter thoughtfully a moment, then he said: “You’ve been -married and lost children, your aunt says. That must be hard. But--did -you ever read that poem of James Whitcomb Riley’s to his friend whose -child was dead? It’s true what he says--they were better off than he -‘who had no child to die.’” - -Rupert was looking away from the speaker with the instinctive -embarrassment of a man who surprises the deeper feelings of another. -He could see out of the window the lovely April garden and Janet Smith -amid the almond blossoms. Only her shining black head and her white -shoulders and bodice rose above the pink clusters. She looked up and -nodded, seeing him; her face was a little pale, but she was smiling. - -“I don’t know,” he said, “it’s hard enough either way for a man.” - -“I never lost any children”--Keatcham’s tone was dry, still, but it -had not quite the former desiccated quality--“but I was married, for a -little while. If it’s as bad to lose your children as it is to lose the -hope of having them, it must be hard. You lost your wife, too?” - -“Yes,” said Rupert Winter. - -At this moment he became conscious that Keatcham was avoiding his gaze -in the very manner of his avoiding of Keatcham’s a moment ago; and it -gave him a bewildering sensation. - -“I wanted to marry my wife for seven years before we were married,” -Keatcham continued in that carefully monotonous voice. “She was the -daughter of the superintendent of the mine where I was working. I -was only eighteen when I first saw her. I was twenty-five when we -were married. She used to give me lessons; she was educated and -accomplished. She did more than is easy telling, for me. Of course, her -parents were opposed at first because they looked higher for her, but -she brought them round by her patience and her sweetness and her faith -in me. Six months after we were married, she had an accident which left -her a helpless invalid in a wheeled chair, at the best; at the worst, -suffering--you’ve known what it is to see anybody, whom you care for, -in horrible pain and trying not to show it when you come near?” - -“I have,” said Winter; “merry hell, isn’t it?” - -“I have seen that expression,” said Keatcham; “I never recognized -its peculiar appropriateness before. Yes, it is that. Yet, Winter, -those two years she lived afterwards were the happiest of my whole -life. She said, the last night she was with me, that they had been -the happiest of hers.” The same flush which once before, when he had -seemed moved, had crept up to his temples, burned his hollow cheeks. -He was holding the edge of the table with the tips of his fingers and -the blood settled about the nails with the pressure of his grip. There -was an intense moment during which Winter vainly struggled to think of -something to say and looked more of his sympathy than he was aware; -then: “Cary Mercer needn’t think that he has had all the hard times in -the world!” said Keatcham in his usual toneless voice, relaxing his -hold and leaning back on his pillows. The color ebbed away gradually -from his face. - -“I don’t wonder you didn’t marry again,” said Winter. - -“You would not wonder if you had known Helen. She always understood. -Of course, now, at sixty-one, I could buy a pretty, innocent, young -girl who would do as her parents bade her, and cry her eyes out before -the wedding, or a handsome and brilliant society woman with plenty of -matrimonial experience--but I don’t want them. I should have to explain -myself to them; I don’t know how to explain myself; you see I can’t -half do it--” - -“I reckon I understand a little.” - -“I guess you do. You are different, too. Well, let’s get down to -business, think up some way of getting the women out of the house; and -get your sleuths after Atkins. It is ‘we get him, or he gets us!’” - -The amateur secretary assented and prepared to go, for the valet was -at the door, ready to relieve him; but opposite Keatcham, he paused a -second, made a pretense of hunting for his hat, picked it up in his -left hand and held out the right hand, saying, “Well, take care of -yourself.” - -Keatcham nodded; he shook the hand with a good firm pressure. “Much -obliged, Winter,” said he. - -“Well,” meditated the soldier as he went his way, “I never did think to -take that financial bucaneer by the hand; but--it wasn’t the bucaneer, -it was the real Edwin Keatcham.” - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -IN WHICH THE PUZZLE FALLS INTO PLACE - - -While the colonel was trying to decipher his tragical puzzle, while -Edwin Keatcham was busied with plans that affected empires and -incidentally were to save and to extinguish some human lives, while -Janet Smith had her own troubles, while Mrs. Rebecca Winter enjoyed -a game more exciting and deadly than Penelope’s Web, Mrs. Millicent -Winter and the younger people found the days full of joyous business. -The household had fallen into normal ways of living. Although the -secret patrol watched every rod of approach to the house, the espial -was so unobtrusive that guests came and went, tradesmen rattled -over the driveways; the policemen, themselves, slumbered by day and -loitered majestically by night without the Casa Fuerte portals, never -suspecting. Little Birdsall had his admirable points; they were now in -evidence. To all outward seeming, a pleasant house-party was enjoying -the lavish Californian hospitality of Casa Fuerte; and Black Care was -bundled off to the closet with the family skeleton, according to the -traditions of mannerly people. Arnold had opened his garage and his -stables. There was bridge of an evening; and the billiard-balls clinked -on the pool-table. Archie could now back the electric motor into almost -any predicament. The new Chinese chef was a wonder and Tracy was -initiating him into the possibilities of the Fireless, despite a modest -shrinking on the part of the oriental artist who considered it to be a -new kind of bomb. - -Millicent, encouraged by Arnold, had had Mrs. Wigglesworth and two -errant Daughters, whose husbands were state regents for Melville’s -university, to luncheon and to dinner; the versatile Kito donning a -chauffeur’s livery and motoring them back to the city in the Limousine, -on both occasions; all of which redounded to Millicent’s own proper -glory and state. - -Indeed, about this time, Millicent was in high good humor with her -world. Even Janet Smith was no longer politely obliterated as “the -nurse,” but became “our dear Miss Janet”; and was presented with -two of Mrs. Melville’s last year’s Christmas gifts which she could -not contrive to use; therefore carried about for general decorative -generosity. One was a sage-green linen handkerchief case, quite fresh, -on which was etched, in brown silk, the humorous inscription: “WIPE -ME BUT DO NOT SWIPE ME!” The other was a white celluloid brush-broom -holder bedecked with azure forget-me-nots enframing a complicated -monogram which might just as well stand for J. B. B. S. (Janet Byrd -Brandon Smith) as for M. S. W. (Millicent Sears Winter) or any other -alphabetical herd. These unpretending but (considering their source) -distinguished gifts she bestowed in the kindest manner. Janet was no -doubt grateful; she embroidered half a dozen luncheon napkins with Mrs. -Melville’s monogram and crest, in sign thereof; and very prettily, -she being a skilful needle-woman. On her part, Mrs. Mellville was so -pleased that she remarked to her brother-in-law, shortly after, that -she believed Cousin Angela’s sisters hadn’t been just to Miss Smith; -she was a nice girl; and if she married (which is quite possible, -insinuated Mrs. Melville archly), she meant to give a tea in her honor. - -“Now, that’s right decent of you, Millie,” cried the colonel; and he -smiled gratefully after Mrs. Melville’s beautifully fitted back. Yet a -scant five minutes before he had been pursuing that same charming back -through the garden terraces, in a most unbrotherly frame, resolved to -give his sister-in-law a “warning with a fog-horn.” The cause of said -warning was his discovery of her acquaintance with Atkins. For days -a bit of information had been blistering his mind. It came from the -girl at the telegraph office at the Palace, not in a bee-line, but -indirectly, through her chum, the girl who booked the theater tickets. -It could not be analyzed properly because the telegraph girl was gone -to Southern California. But before she went she told the theater girl -that the lady who received Mr. Makers’ wires was one of Mrs. Winter’s -party! This bit of information was like a live coal underfoot in the -colonel’s mind; whenever he trod on it in his mental excursions he -jumped. - -“Who else but Janet?” he demanded. But by degrees he became first -doubtful, then daring. He had Birdsall fetch the telegraph girl back -to San Francisco. A ten minutes’ interview assured him that it was his -brother’s wife who had called for Mr. Makers’ messages, armed with Mr. -Makers’ order. - -Aunt Rebecca was not nearly so vehement as he when he told her. She -listened to his angry criticism with a lurking smile and a little shrug -of her shoulders. - -“Of course she has butted in, as you tersely express it, in the -language of this mannerless generation; Millicent always butts in. How -did she get acquainted with this unpleasant, assassinating, poor white -trash? My dear child, _she_ didn’t probably; he made an acquaintance -with her. He pumped her and lied to her. We know he wanted to find -out Mr. Keatcham’s abode; he may have got his clue from her; she knew -young Arnold had been to see him. There’s no telling. I only know -that in the interest of keeping a roof over our heads and having our -heads whole instead of in pieces from explosives, I butted in a few -days ago when somebody wanted Mrs. Melville Winter on the telephone. -I answered it. The person asked if I was Mrs. Melville Winter; it -was a strange man’s voice. I don’t believe in Christian Science or -theosophy or psychics, but I do believe I felt in my bones that here -was an occasion to be canny rather than conscientious. You know I -can talk like Millicent--or anybody else; so I intoned through the -telephone in her silken Anglican accents, ‘Do you want Mrs. Melville -Winter or Aunt Rebecca, _Madam_ Winter?’ I hate to be called Madam -Winter, and she knows it, but Millicent is catty, you know, and she -always calls me Madam Winter behind my back. The fellow fell into the -trap at once--recognized the voice, I dare say, and announced that -it was Mr. Makers; Mr. Atkins, who had left for Japan, had not been -able to pay his respects and say good-by; but he had left with him an -embroidered Chinese kimono for Professor Winter, whom he had admired -so much; and if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for her to pay a visit -to her friend--one of those women she had to luncheon, who’s at the -St. Francis--he would like to show her several left by Mr. Atkins, for -her to select one. Then in the most casual way, he asked after Mr. -Keatcham’s health. I believed he was improving; had had a very good -night. I fancy it didn’t please him, but he made a good pretense. Then -he went off into remarks about its being such a pity Mr. Atkins had -left Mr. Keatcham; but he was so conscientious, a Southern gentleman -I knew; yet he really thought a great deal still of Mr. Keatcham, -who had many fine qualities; only on account of the unfortunate -differences--Atkins was so proud and sensitive; he was anxious to hear, -but not for the world would he have any one know that he had inquired; -so would I be very careful not to let any one know he had asked. Of -course I would be; I promised effusively; and said I quite understood. -I think I _do_, too.” - -“They are keeping tab on us through Millicent,” fumed the colonel. “I -dare say she gave it away that Arnold was visiting Keatcham at the -hotel; and it wouldn’t take Atkins long to piece out a good deal more, -especially if his spy overheard Tracy’s ’phone. Well, I shall warn -Millicent--with a fog-horn!” - -The way he warned Millicent has been related. But from Millicent he -deflected to another subject--the impulse of confession being strong -upon him. He freed his mind about the stains on Cary Mercer’s cuffs; -and, when at last he sought Millicent he was in his soul praising -his aunt for a wise old woman. After justice was disarmed by his -miscomprehension of Millicent’s words, he took out his cigarette case -and began pacing the garden walks, smoking and humming a little -Spanish love song, far older than the statehood of California. - - _La noche está serena, tranquilo el aquilon; - Tu dulce centinella te guarda el corazon. - Y en al as de los céfiros, que vagan par doquier, - Volando van mis suplicas, á ti, bella mujer! - Volando van mis suplicas, á ti, bella mujer!_ - - _De un corazon que te ama, recibe el tierno amor; - No aumentes mas la llama, piedad, á an trobador. - Y si te mueve á lastima eterno padecer, - Como te amo, amama, bellissima mujer! - Como te amo, amama, bellissima mujer!_[B] - -The words belonged to the air which he had whistled a weary week ago. -Young Tracy came along, and caught up the air, although he was innocent -of Spanish; he had his mandolin on his arm; he proffered it to the -colonel. - -“Miss Janet has been singing coon-songs to his nibs, who is really -getting almost human,” he observed affably; “well, a little patience -and interest will reveal new possibilities of the Fireless Stove! In -man or metal. Shall we get under his nibs’ window and give him the -_Bedouin Love Song_ and _I Picked Me a Lemon in the Garden of Love_ and -the Sextette from _Lucia_ and other choice selections? He seemed to be -sitting up and taking notice; let’s lift him above the sordid thoughts -of Wall Street and his plans for busting other financiers.” - -The soldier gave this persiflage no answer; his own thoughts were far -from gay. He stood drinking in the beauty of the April night. The air -was wonderfully hushed and clear; and the play of the moonlight on -the great heliotrope bushes and the rose-trees, which dangled their -clusters of yellow and white over the stone parapets of the balconies, -tinted the leafage and flickered delicately over the tracery of shadow -on the gray walls. Not a cloud flecked the vast aërial landscape--only -stars beyond stars, through unfathomable depths of dim violet, and -beneath the stars a pale moon swimming low in the heavens; one could -see it between the spandrels of the arches spanning the colonnade. - -“Looks like a prize night-scene on the stage, doesn’t it?” said Tracy. -“Jolly good shadows--and aren’t these walls bulging out at the bottom -bully? I used to know the right name for such architectural stunts -when I was taking Fine Arts Four--dreadful to neglect your educational -advantages and then forget all the little you didn’t neglect, ain’t it? -I say, get on to those balconies--that isn’t the right word for the -mission style, I guess; but never mind; aren’t they stunning? Do you -see the ladies up there? Is that Archie sniggering? What do you think -of the haunted house, _now_, Colonel?” - -Tracy’s gay eyes sought the other’s gaze to find it turn somber. -Winter couldn’t have told why; but a sudden realization of the hideous -peril dogging the warm, lighted, tenanted house, submerged him and -suffocated him like a foul gas. Let their guards be vigilant as fear, -let their wonderful new search-light flood rock and slope and dusky -Chaparral bush; and peer as it might through the forest aisles beyond; -yet--yet--who could tell! - -But he forced an equal smile in a second for the college boy; and -chatted easily enough as they climbed up the stepped arches to the -balcony and the little group looking seaward. - -Aunt Rebecca in black lace and jewels was tilting with the world in -general and Millicent Winter in particular; she displayed her most -cynical mood. She had demolished democracy; had planted herself firmly -on the basic doctrine that the virtues cultivated by slavery far -outnumber its inseparable vices; and that most people, if not all, -need a master; had been picturesquely and inaccurately eloquent on the -subject of dynamite (which she pronounced the logical fourth dimension -of liberty, fraternity and equality); had put the yellow rich where -they belonged; and the red anarchists mainly under the sod; and she -had abolished the Fourth of July to the last sputter of fire-cracker; -thence by easy transitions she had extolled American art (which -American patrons were too ignorant to appreciate), deplored American -music (“The trouble isn’t that it is _canned_,” says she, “but that it -was spoiled before they canned it!”) and was now driving a chariot of -fire through American literature; as for the Academics, they never said -what they thought, but only what they thought they ought to think; and -they always mistook anemia for refinement, as another school mistook -yelling and perspiring for vigor. - -Just as Winter modestly entered the arena, no less a personage than -Henry James was under the wheels. Janet Smith had modestly confessed to -believing him a consummate artist; and Millicent in an orotund voice -declared that he went deep, deep down into the mysteries of life. - -“I don’t deny it; he _ought_ to get down deep,” returned Aunt Rebecca -in her gentlest, softest utterance; “he’s always boring.” - -Mrs. Melville’s suppressed agitation made her stays creak. - -“Do you really think that James is not a great artist?” she breathed. - -“I think he is not worth while.” - -“Wow!” cried Tracy. “Oh, I say--” - -“Aunt Rebecca; you can not mean--” this was Mrs. Melville, choking with -horror. - -“His style,” repeated the unmoved iconoclast, “his style has the -remains of great beauty; all his separate phrases, if you wish, are -gems; and he is a literary lapidary; but his sentences are so subtle, -so complex, so intricately compounded, and so discursive that I get a -pain in the back of my neck before I find out what he _may_ mean; and -then--I don’t agree with him! Now is it worth while to put in so much -hard reading only to be irritated?” - -“I beg pardon,” Winter interposed, with masculine pusillanimity evading -taking sides in the question at issue, “I thought we were going to have -some music; why don’t you boys give us some college songs? Here is a -mandolin.” - -Aunt Rebecca’s still luminous eyes went from the speaker to Janet -Smith in the corner. She said something about hearing the music better -from the other side of the balcony. Now (as Mrs. Millicent very truly -explained) there was not a ha’pennyworth’s difference in favor of one -side over the other; but she followed in the wake of her imperious aunt. - -The colonel drew nearer to Janet Smith; in order to sink his voice -below disturbing the music-lovers he found it necessary to sit on a -pile of cushions at her feet. - -“Did you know Mercer will be back to-night?” he began, a long way from -his ultimate object. He noticed that leaning back in the shadow her -ready smile had dropped from her face, which looked tired. “I want to -tell you a little story about Mercer,” he continued; “may I? It won’t -take long.” - -He was aware, and it gave him a twinge of pain to see it, that she -sat up a little straighter, like one on guard; and oh, how tired her -face was and how sweet! He told her of all his suspicions of her -brother-in-law; of the blood-stains and the changing of clothes; she -did not interrupt him by a question, hardly by a motion, until he told -of the conversation with Keatcham and the note signed “The Black Hand.” -At this her eyes lighted; she exclaimed impetuously: “Cary Mercer never -_did_ send that letter!” She drew a deep intake of breath. “I don’t -believe he touched Mr. Keatcham!” - -“Neither do I,” said the colonel, “but wait!” He went on to the theater -girl’s report of the receiver of the telegrams. Her hands, which -clasped her knee, fell apart; her lips parted and closed firmly. - -“Did I think it was you?” said he. “Why, yes, I confess I did fear it -might be and that you might be trying to shield Atkins.” - -“I!” she exclaimed hotly; “that detestable villain!” - -“_Isn’t_ he?” cried the colonel. “But--well, I couldn’t tell how he -might strike a lady,” he ended lamely. - -“I reckon he _would_ strike a lady if she were silly enough to marry -him and he got tired of her. He is the kind of man who will persecute a -girl to marry him, follow her around and importune her and flatter her -and then, if he should prevail, never forgive her for the bother she -has given him. Oh, I never _did_ like him; I’m afraid of him--awfully.” - -“Not you?”--the colonel’s voice was cheerful, as if he had not shivered -over his own foreboding vision. “I’ve seen you in action already, you -know.” - -“Not fighting bombs. I hate bombs. There are so many pieces to hit you. -You can’t run away.” - -“Well, you’ll find them not so bad; besides, you _did_ fight one this -very morning, and you were cool as peppermint!” - -“That was quite different; I had time to think, and the danger was more -to me than to any one else; but to think of Mrs. Winter and Archie and -y-- all of you; that scares me.” - -“Now, don’t let it get on your nerves,” he soothed--of course it is -necessary to take a girl’s hand to soothe her when she is frightened. -But Miss Smith calmly released her hand, only reddening a little; and -she laughed. “Where--where were we at?” she asked in her unconscious -Southern phraseology. - -“Somewhere around Atkins, I think,” said the colonel; he laughed in his -turn,--he found it easy to laugh, now that he knew how she felt toward -Atkins. “You see, after I talked with Keatcham I couldn’t make anything -but Atkins out of the whole business. But there were those stained -cuffs and his changing his clothes--” - -“Yes,” said she. - -“How explain? There was only one explanation: that was, that perhaps -Mercer had discovered Keatcham before we did, unconsciously spotted -his cuffs, been alarmed by our approach and hidden, lest it should be -the murderers returning. He might have wanted a chance to draw his -revolver. Say he did that way, he might foolishly pretend to enter -for the first time. If he made that mistake and then discovered the -condition of his cuffs and the spots on his knee, what would be his -natural first impulse? Why, to change them, trusting that they hadn’t -been noticed. Maybe, then, he would wash them out--” - -“No,” murmured Miss Smith meekly, with a little twinkle of her eye; -“_I_ did that; he hid them. How ridiculous of me to get in such a -fright! But you know how Cary hated Mr. Keatcham; and you--no, you -don’t know the lengths that such a temperament as his will go. I did -another silly thing: I found a dagger, one of those Moorish stilettoes -that hang in the library; it was lying in the doorway. When no one -was looking I hid it and carried it off. I stuck it in one of the -flower-beds; I stuck it in the ferns; I have stuck that wretched thing -all over this yard. I didn’t dare carry it back and put it in the empty -place with the others because some one might have noticed the place. -And I didn’t dare say anything to Cary; I was right miserable.” - -“So was I,” said the colonel, “thinking you were trying to protect the -murderer. But do you know what I had sense to do?” - -“Go to Mrs. Winter? Oh, I _wanted_ to!” - -“Exactly; and do you know what that dead game sport said to me? She -said she found those washed and ironed cuffs and the trousers neatly -cleaned with milka--what’s milka?--and the milka cleaned the spots so -much cleaner than the rest that she had her own suspicions started. But -says she, ‘Not being a plumb idiot, I went straight to Cary and he told -me the whole story--’” - -“Which was like _your_ story?” - -“Very near. And you see it would be _like_ Atkins to leave -incriminating testimony round loose. That is, incriminating testimony -against Mercer and Tracy. The dagger, Tracy remembers, was not in the -library; it was in the _patio_. Right to hand. Atkins must have got in -and found Mr. Keatcham on the floor in a faint. Whether he meant to -make a bargain with him or to kill him, perhaps we shall never know; -but when he saw him helpless before him he believed his chance was come -to kill him and get the cipher key, removing his enemy and making his -fortune at a blow, as the French say. _Voilà tout!_” - -“Do you think”--her voice sank lower; she glanced over her -shoulder--“do you reckon _Atkins_ had anything to do with that train -robbery? Was it a mere pretext to give a chance to murder Mr. Keatcham, -fixing the blame on ordinary bandits?” - -“By Jove! it might be.” - -“I don’t suppose we shall ever know. But, Colonel Winter, do you mind -explaining to me just what Brother Cary’s scheme with Mr. Keatcham was? -Mrs. Winter told me you would.” - -“She told _me_,” mused the colonel, “that you didn’t know anything -about this big game which has netted them millions. They’ve closed -out their deals and have the cash. No paper profits for Auntie! She -said that she would not risk your being mixed up in it; so kept you -absolutely in the dark. I’m there, too. Didn’t you know Mercer had -kidnapped Archie?” - -“No; I didn’t know he was with Mr. Keatcham at the hotel. It would have -saved me a heap of suffering; but she didn’t dare let me know for fear, -if anything should happen, I would be mixed up in it. It was out of -kindness, Colonel Winter, truly it was. Afterward when she saw that I -was worried she gave me hints that I need not worry, Archie was quite -safe.” - -“And the note-paper?” - -“I suppose she gave it to them,” answered Miss Smith. - -“And the voice I heard in the telephone?” He explained how firmly she -had halted the conversation the time Archie would have reassured him. -“You weren’t there, of course?” said he. - -“No, I was down-stairs in the ladies’ entrance of the court in -the hotel; I had come in a little while before, having carried -an advertisement to the paper; I wonder why she--maybe it was to -communicate with them without risking a letter.” - -“But how did _your_ voice get into my ’phone?” he asked. - -She looked puzzled only a second, then laughed as he had not heard her -laugh in San Francisco--a natural, musical, merry peal, a girlish laugh -that made his heart bound. - -“Why, of course,” said she, “it is so easy! There was a reporter who -insisted on interviewing Mrs. Winter about her jewelry; and I was -shooing him away. Somehow the wires must have crossed.” - -“Do you remember--this is very, very pretty, don’t you think? Just like -a puzzle falling into place. Do you remember coming here on the day -Archie was returned?” - -“I surely do; my head was swimming, for Mrs. Winter sent me and I began -then to suspect. She told me Brother Cary was in danger; of course I -wanted to do anything to help him; and I carried a note to him. I -didn’t go in, merely gave the note and saw him.” - -“_I_ saw you.” - -“You? How?” - -“Birdsall and I; we were here, in the _patio_; we, my dear Miss Janet, -were the Danger! You had on a brown checked silk dress and you were -holding a wire clipper in your hand.” - -“Yes, sir. I saw it on the grass and picked it up.” - -She laughed a little; but directly her cheeks reddened. “What must you -have thought of me!” she murmured under her breath; and bit the lip -that would have quivered. - -“I should like to tell you--_dear_,” he answered, “if you will--O Lord, -forgive young men for living! If they are not all coming back to ask me -to sing! But, Janet, dear, let me say it in Spanish--yes, _yes_ if you -really won’t be bored; throw me that mandolin.” - -Aunt Rebecca leaned back in the arm-chair, faintly smiling, while the -old, old words that thousands of lovers have thrilled with pain and -hopes and dreams beyond their own power of speech and offered to their -sweethearts, rose, winged by the eternal longing: - - “_Y si te mueve á lastima mi eterno padecer, - Como te amo, amame, bellissima mujer! - Como te amo, amame, bellissima mujer!_” - -“And what does it mean in English, Bertie?” said Mrs. Melville. “Can’t -you translate it?” - -“Shall I?” said the colonel, his voice was careless enough, but not so -the eyes which looked up at Janet Smith. - -“Not to-night, please,” said she. “I--I think Mr. Keatcham is expecting -me to read to him a little. Good night. Thank you, Colonel Winter.” - -She was on her feet as she spoke; and Winter did not try to detain her; -he had held her hand; and he had felt its shy pressure and caught a -fleeting, frightened, very beautiful glance. His dark face paled with -the intensity of his emotion. - -Janet moved away, quietly and lightly, with no break in her composure; -but as she passed Mrs. Winter she bent and kissed her. And when Archie -would have run after her a delicate jeweled hand was laid on his arm. -“Not to-night, laddie; I want you to help me down the steps.” - -With her hand on the boy’s shoulder she came up to Rupert, and inclined -her handsome head in Janet’s direction. “I think, by rights, that kiss -belonged to you, _mon enfant_,” said she. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -CASA FUERTE - - -Winter would have said that he was too old a man to stay awake all -night, when he had a normal temperature; yet he saw the stars come -out and the stars fade on that fateful April night. He entered his -room at the hour when midnight brushes the pale skirts of dawn and -misguided cocks are vociferating their existence to an indifferent -world. Before he came there had been a long council with Mercer and -his aunt. Mercer, who had been successful in his mission, had barely -seen his chief for a moment before a gentle but imperious nurse ordered -him away. Winter caught a queer, abrupt laugh from the financier. The -latter beckoned to him. “See you are as obedient as I am when your time -comes,” he chuckled; and he chuckled again when both the soldier and -Miss Smith blushed over his awkward jocoseness. Yet, the next moment -he extended his hand with his formal, other-generation courtesy and -took Miss Janet’s shapely, firm fingers in his own lean and nervous -grasp. “Allow me to offer you both my sincere congratulations,” began -he, and halted, his eyes, which seemed so incurious but were so keen, -traveling from the woman’s confusion to the man’s. “I beg your pardon; -I understood--Archie who was here, gave me to understand--and I heard -you singing; you will hardly believe it, but years ago _I_ sang that to -my wife.” - -“So far as I am concerned, it _is_ settled,” said the colonel steadily. - -“We are all,” Keatcham continued, no longer with any trace of -embarrassment, as he touched the hand which he still held with his -own other hand, “we are all, as you know, my dear young lady, in -considerable personal peril; I regret that it should be on my account; -but it really is not my fault; it is because I will not relax my -pursuit of a great scoundrel who is dangerous to all decent people. But -being in such danger, I think you will be glad afterward if you are -generously frank, and give up something of the sex’s prerogative to -keep a lover on the anxious seat. Excuse me if--if I presume on my age -and my privileges as a patient.” - -Janet lifted her sweet eyes and sent one glance as fleeting and light -as the flash of a bird’s wing. “I--I--reckon it is settled,” murmured -she; but immediately she was the nurse again. “Mr. Keatcham, you are -staying awake much too late. Here is Colvin, who will see to anything -you want. Good night.” - -It was then that Mr. Keatcham had taken the colonel’s breath away by -kissing Janet’s hand; after which he shook hands with the colonel with -a strange new cordiality, and watched them both go away together with a -look on his gaunt face unlike any known to Colvin. - -Only three minutes in the hall, with the moon through the arched -window; and his arm about her and the fragrance of her loosened hair -against his cheek and her voice stirring his heartstrings with an -exquisite pang. Only time for the immemorial questions of love: “Are -you sure, dear, it is really _I?_” and “When did you first--” To this -last she had answered with her half-humorous, adorable little lilt of -a laugh. “Oh, I reckon it was--a--little--all along, ever since I read -about your saving that poor little Filipino boy, like Archie; the one -who was your servant in Manila, and going hungry for him on the march -and jumping into the rapids to save him--when you were lame, too--” - -Here the colonel burst in with a groan: “Oh, that monstrous newspaper -liar! The ‘dear little Filipino boy’ was a married man; and I didn’t go -hungry for him, and I didn’t jump into the river to save him. It wasn’t -more than wading depth--I only swore at him for an idiot and told him -to _walk_ out when he tipped over his boat and was floundering about. -And he _did_! He was the limit as a liar--” - -To his relief, the most sensible as well as the most lovable woman in -the world had burst into a delicious fit of laughter; and returned: -“Oh, well, you _would_ have jumped in and saved him if the water had -been deep; it wasn’t _your_ fault it was shallow!” And just at this -point Mercer and Aunt Rebecca must needs come with a most unusual -premonitory racket, and Janet had fled. - -Afterward had come the council. All the coil had been unraveled. -Birdsall appeared in person, as sleek, smiling and complacent over his -blunders as ever. One of his first sentences was a declaration of trust -in Miss Smith. - -“I certainly went off at half-cock there,” said he amiably; “and just -because she was so awful nice I felt obliged to suspect her; but I’ve -got the real dog that killed the sheep this time; it’s sure the real -Red Wull!” It appeared that he had, of a verity, been usefully busy. -He had secured the mechanic who had given Atkins a plan of the secret -passages of Casa Fuerte. He had found the policeman who had arrested -Tracy (he swore because he was going too fast) and the magistrate -who had fined him; and not only that, he had captured the policeman, -a genuine officer, not a criminal in disguise, who had been Atkins’ -instrument in kidnapping Archie. This man, whom Birdsall knew how to -terrify completely, had confessed that it was purely by chance that -Atkins had seen the boy, left outside in the motor-car. Atkins, so -he said, had pretended that the boy was a tool of some enemies of -Keatcham’s, whose secretary he was, trading, not for the only time, on -his past position. In reality, Birdsall had come to believe Atkins knew -that Keatcham was employing Mercer in his place. - -“Why, he knew the old gentleman was just off quietly with Mr. Mercer -and some friends; knew they were all friendly, just as well as you -or me,” declared Birdsall. He had seen Archie on the train, for, as -the colonel remembered, he had been in the Winters’ car on the night -of the robbery. Somehow, also, Atkins had found out about Archie’s -disappearance from the hotel. - -“I can’t absolutely put my finger on his information,” said Birdsall; -“but I _suspect_ Mrs. Melville Winter; I know she was talking to him, -for one of my men saw her. The lady meant no harm, but she’s one of the -kind that is always slamming the detectives and being took in by the -rascals.” - -He argued that Mrs. Winter and Miss Smith knew where the boy was; for -some reason they had let him go and were pretending not to know where -he was. “Ain’t that so?” the detective appealed to Aunt Rebecca, who -merely smiled, saying: “You’re a wonder, Mr. Birdsall!” According to -Birdsall’s theory, Atkins was puzzled by Archie’s part in the affair. -But he believed could he find the boy’s present hosts he would find -Edwin Keatcham. It would not be the first time Keatcham had hidden -himself, the better to spin his web for the trapping of his rivals. -That Mercer was with his employer the ex-secretary had no manner of -doubt, any more than he doubted that Mercer’s scheme had been to -oust him and to build his own fortunes on Atkins’ ruin. He knew both -Tracy and young Arnold very well by sight. When he couldn’t frighten -Archie into telling anything, probably he went back to his first plan -of shadowing the Winter party at the Palace. He must have seen Tracy -here. He penetrated his disguise. (“He’s as sharp as the devil, I tell -you, Colonel.”) He either followed him himself or had him followed; -and he heard about the telephone. (“Somebody harking in the next room, -most likely.”) Knowing Tracy’s intimacy with Arnold it was not hard -for so clever and subtle a mind as Atkins’ to jump to the conclusion -and test it in the nearest telephone book. (“At least that is how _I_ -figure it out, Colonel.”) Birdsall had traced the clever mechanic who -was interrogated by the Eastern gentleman about to build; this man -had given the lavish and inquisitive Easterner a plan of the secret -passages--to use in his own future residence. Whether Atkins went alone -or in company to the Casa Fuerte the detective could only surmise. He -couldn’t tell whether his object would be mere blackmail, or robbery -of the cipher, or assassination. Perhaps he found the insensible man -in the _patio_ and was tempted by the grisly opportunity; victim and -weapon both absolutely to his hand; for it was established that the -dagger had been shown Tracy by Mercer as a curio, and left on the -stone bench. - -Perhaps he had not found the dagger, but had his own means to make -an end of his enemy and his own terror. Birdsall believed that he -had accomplices, or at least one accomplice, with him. He conceived -that they had lain in ambush watching until they saw Kito go away. -Then an entry had been made. “Most like,” Birdsall concluded, “he -jest flung that dagger away for you folks to find and suspect the -domestics, say Kito, ’cause he was away.” But this was not all that -Birdsall had to report. He had traced Atkins to the haunts of certain -unsavory Italians; he had struck the trail, in fine. To be sure, it ran -underground and was lost in the brick-walled and slimy-timbered cellars -of Chinatown which harbored every sin and crime known to civilization -or to savagery. What matter? By grace of his aunt’s powerful friend -they could track the wolves even through those noisome burrows. - -“Yes,” sighed the colonel, stretching out his arms, with a resonant -breath of relief, “we’re out of the maze; all we have to do now is to -keep from being killed. Which isn’t such a plain proposition in ’Frisco -as in Massachusetts! But I reckon we can tackle it! And then--then, my -darling, I shall dare be happy!” - -He found himself leaning on his window-sill and staring like a boy on -the landscape, lost in the lovely hallucinations of moonlight. It was -no scene that he knew, it was a vision of old Spain; and by and by from -yonder turret the princess, with violets in her loosened hair and her -soft cheek like satin and snow, would lean and look. - - _Y si te mueve á lastima mi eterno padecer. - Como te amo, amame, bellissima mujer!_ - -“Ah, no, little girl,” he muttered with a shake of the head, “I like -it better to have you a plain, American gentlewoman, as Aunt Becky -would say, who could send me to battle with a nice little quivery -smile--_sweetheart_! Oh, I’m not good enough for you, my dear, my -dear.” He felt an immense humility as he contrasted his own lot with -the loneliness of Keatcham and Mercer and the multitude of solitaries -in the world, who had lost, or sadder still, had never possessed, the -divine dream that is the only reality of the soul. As such thoughts -moved his heart, suddenly in the full tide of hope and thankfulness, -it stood still, chilled, as if by the glimpse of an iceberg in summer -seas. Yet how absurd; it was only that he had recalled his stoical -aunt’s most unexpected touch of superstition. Quite in jest he had -asked her if she felt any presentiments or queer things in her bones -to-night. He expected to be answered that Janet had driven every other -anxiety out of her mind; and how was she to break it to Millicent?--or -with some such caustic repartee. Instead, she had replied testily: -“Yes, I _do_, Bertie. I feel--horrid! I feel as if something out of the -common awful were going to happen. It isn’t exactly Atkins, either. Do -you reckon it could be the _I Suey When_, that bamboo-shoots mess we -had for dinner?” - -Although they spent a good twenty minutes after that, joking over -superstitions, and he had repeated to her some of Tracy’s and Arnold’s -most ingenious “spooky stunts,” to make the neighborhood keep its -distance from Casa Fuerte, and they had laughed freely, she as heartily -as he, nevertheless he divined that her smile was a pretense. Suddenly, -an unruly tremor shook his own firm spirits. Looking out on the stepped -and lanterned arches of the wing, he was conscious of the same tragic -endowment of the darkened pile, which had oppressed him that night, -weeks before, when he had stood outside on the crest of the hill; -and the would-be murderers might have been skulking in the shadows of -the pepper-trees. He tried vainly to shake off this distempered mood. -Although he might succeed for a moment in a lover’s absorption, it -would come again, insidiously, seeping through his happiness like a -fume. After futile attempts to sleep he rose, and still at the bidding -of his uncanny and tormenting impulse he took his bath and dressed -himself for the day. By this time the ashen tints of dawn were in his -chamber and on the fields outside. He stood looking at the unloveliest -aspect of nature, a landscape on the sunless side, before the east -is red. The air felt lifeless; there were no depths in the pale sky; -the azure was a flat tint, opaque and thin, like a poor water-color. -While he gazed the motionless trees, live-oaks and olives and palms, -were shaken as by a mighty wind; the pepper plumes tossed and streamed -and tangled like a banner; the great elms along the avenue bent over -in a breaking strain. Yet the silken cord of the Holland window-shade -did not so much as swing. There was not a wing’s breath of air. But -gradually the earth and cloud vibrated with a strange grinding noise -which has been described a hundred times, but never adequately; a -sickening crepitation, as of the rocks in the hills scraping and -splintering. Before the mind could question the sound, there succeeded -an anarchy of uproar. In it was jumbled the crash of trees and -buildings, the splintering crackle of glass, the boom of huge chimneys -falling and of vast explosions, the hiss of steam, the hurling of -timbers and bricks and masses of stone or sand, and the awful rush of -frantic water escaping from engine or main. - -“’Quake, sure’s you’re born!” said the colonel softly. - -Now that his invisible peril was real, was upon him, his spirits leaped -up to meet it. He looked coolly about him, noting in his single glance -that the house was standing absolutely stanch, neither reeling nor -shivering; and that the chimney just opposite his eye had not misplaced -a brick. In the same instant he caught up his revolver and ran at his -best pace from the room. The hall was firm under his hurrying feet. As -he passed the great arched opening on the western balcony he saw an -awful sight. Diagonally across from Casa Fuerte was the great house of -the California magnate who did not worry his contractor with demands -for Colonial honesty of workmanship as well as Colonial architecture. -The stately mansion with its beautiful piazzas and delicate harmony of -pillar and pediment, shone white and placid on the eye for a second; -then rocked in ghastly wise and collapsed like a house of cards. -Simultaneously a torchlike flame streamed into the air. A woeful din of -human anguish pierced the inanimate tumult of wreck and crash. - -“Bully for Casa Fuerte!” cried the soldier, who now was making a -frenzied speed to the other side of the house. He cast a single glance -toward the door which he knew belonged to Janet’s room; and he thought -of the boy, but he ran first to his old aunt. He didn’t need to go the -whole way. She came out of her door, Janet and Archie at her side. -They were all perfectly calm, although in very light and semi-oriental -attire. Archie plainly had just plunged out of bed. His eyes were -dancing with excitement. - -“This house is a dandy, ain’t it, Uncle Bertie?” he exclaimed. “Mr. -Arnold told me all about the way his father built it; he said it -wouldn’t bat its eye for an earthquake. It didn’t either; but that -house opposite is just kindling-wood! Say! here’s Cousin Cary; -and--look, Uncle Bertie, Mr. Keatcham has got up and he’s all dressed. -Hullo, Colvin! Don’t be scared. It’s only a ’quake!” Colvin grinned a -sickly grin and stammered, “Yes, sir, quite so, sir.” Not an earthquake -could shake Colvin out of his manners. - -“Are you able to do this, Mr. Keatcham?” young Arnold called -breathlessly, plunging into the _patio_ to which they had all -instinctively gravitated. Keatcham laughed a short, grunting laugh. -“Don’t you understand, this is no little every-day ’quake? Look out! Is -there a way you can look and not see a spout of flame? I’ve got to go -down-town. Are the machines all right?” - -“We must find Randall; the poor soul has a mortal terror of ’quakes--” -Aunt Rebecca’s well-bred accents were unruffled; she appeared a thought -stimulated, nothing more; danger always acted as tonic on Winter -nerves--“Archie, you go put your clothes on this minute, honey. And I -suppose we ought to look up Millicent.” - -The colonel, however, had barely set foot on the threshold when Mrs. -Melville appeared, propelling Randall, whom she had rescued from the -maid’s closet where she was cowering behind her neat frocks, momently -expecting death, but decently ready for it in gown and shoes. Mrs. -Melville herself, in the disorder of the shock, had merely added her -best Paris hat and a skeleton bustle to her dainty nightgear. She had -not forgotten her kimono; she had only forgotten to don it; and it -draggled over her free arm. But her dignity was intact. The instant she -beheld her kindred she demanded of them, as if they were responsible, -whether _this_ was a sample of the Californian climate. Keatcham -blushed and fled with Colvin and the giggling Arnold and Archie, who -were too polite to giggle. - -Mrs. Winter put on her eye-glasses. “Millicent,” said she in the -gentlest of tones, “your bustle is on crooked.” - -One wild glance at the merciless mirror in the carved pier-glass did -Mrs. Melville give, and, then, without a word, she fled. - -“Randall,” said Mrs. Winter, “you look very nice; come and help me -dress. There will most likely be some more shocks.” - -Randall, trembling in every limb, but instinctively assuming a composed -mien, followed the undaunted old lady. - -The colonel was going in another direction, having heard a telephone -bell. He was most anxious to put himself into communication with -Birdsall, because not even during the earthquake had he forgotten an -uglier peril; and it had occurred to him that Atkins was of a temper -not to be frightened by the convulsions of order; but rather to make -his account of it. Nor did the message through the telephone tend to -reassure him. - -The man at the other end of the telephone was Birdsall. No telling how -long the telephone service would keep up, he reported; wires were down -around the corner; worse, the water mains were spouting; and from where -he stood since he felt the first shock he had counted thirty-six fires. -Ten of them were down in the quarter where some of his men had homes; -and a field-glass had shown that the houses were all tossed about -there; he couldn’t keep his men steady; it seemed inhuman to ask them -to stay when their wives and children might be dying; of course it was -his damn luck to have all married men from down there. - -“Well, I reckon you will have to let them go; but watch out,” begged -the colonel, “for you know the men we are after will take advantage of -general disorder to get in their dirty work. Now is the most dangerous -time.” - -Birdsall knew it; he had had intimations that some men were trying to -sneak up the hill; they had been turned back. They pretended to be -some wandering railway workers; but Birdsall distrusted them. He--No -use to ring! Vain to tap the carriage of the receiver! The telephone -was dead, jarred out of existence somewhere beyond their ken. - -By this time the cold sunlight of the woefulest day that San Francisco -had ever seen was spread over the earth. The city was spotted with -blood-red spouts of flames. The ruin of the earthquake had hardly been -visible from their distance, although it was ugly enough and of real -importance; but, even in the brief space which they in Casa Fuerte -had waited before they should set forth, fires had enkindled in all -directions, most dreadful to see; nor did there seem to be any check -upon them. - -Tracy had waked the domestic staff, and, dazed but stoical, they were -getting breakfast. But Keatcham could not wait; he was in a cold fury -of haste to get to the town. - -He had consented to wait for his breakfast under Miss Smith’s -representation that it would be ready at once and her assurance that he -couldn’t work through the day without it. - -“Happily, Archie,” explained Tracy, whose unquenchable college -levity no earthquake could affect, “happily my domestic jewel has -been stocked up with rice and oatmeal, two of the most nutritious of -foods; and Miss Janet is making coffee on her traveling coffee pot for -the Boss. That’s alcohol, and independent of gas-mains. Lucky; for -the gas-range is out of action, and we have to try charcoal. Notice -one interesting thing, Archie? Old Keatcham, whom we were fighting -tooth and nail three weeks ago, is now bossing us as ruthlessly as a -foot-ball coach; and Cousin Cary is taking his slack talk as meek as -a freshman. Great old boy, Keatcham! And--oh, I say! has any one gone -to the rescue of the Rogerses? I saw Kito speeding over that way from -the garage and Haley hiking after him. I hope the nine small yellow -domestics are not burned at the stake with Rogers; the bally fire-trap -is blazing like a tar-barrel!” - -As it happened, the colonel had despatched a small party to their -neighbor’s aid. Haley and Kito were not among them; they were to guard -the garage which was too vital a point in their household economy to -leave unprotected. Nevertheless, Haley and Kito did both run away, -leaving a Mexican helper to watch; and when they returned they were -breathless and Haley’s face was covered with blood. He was carefully -carrying something covered with a carriage-robe in his hand. - -“I’ve the honor to report, sir,” Haley mumbled, stiff and straight in -his military posture, a very grimy and blood-stained hand at salute, -“I’ve the honor to report, sor, that Private Kito and me discovered two -sushpicious characters making up the hillside by the sekrut road. We -purshooed thim, sor, and whin they wu’dn’t halt we fired on thim, sor, -ixploding this here bum which wint off whin the hindmost man tumbled.” - -Kito smilingly flung aside the carriage-robe, disclosing the still -smoking shell of an ingenious round bomb, very similar to those used in -fireworks. - -The colonel examined it closely; it was an ugly bit of dynamite craft. - -“Any casualties, Sergeant?” the colonel asked grimly. - -“Yes, sor. The man wid the bum was kilt be the ixplosion; the other -man was hit by Private Kito and wounded in the shoulder but escaped. I -mesilf have a confusion on me right arrum, me ankle is sprained; and -ivery tooth in me head is in me pockit! That’s all.” - -“Report to Miss Smith at the hospital, Sergeant. Any further report?” - -“I wu’d like to riccommind Private Kito for honorable minshun for -gallanthry.” - -“I shall certainly remember him; and you also, Sergeant, in any report -that I may make. Look after the garage, Kito.” - -Kito bowed and retired, beaming, while Haley hobbled into the house. -The consequences of the attack made on the garage did not appear at -once. One was that young Arnold had already brought the touring-car -into the _patio_ in the absence of Haley and Kito. Another was that -he and Tracy and Kito all repaired to the scene of the explosion to -examine the dead man’s body. They returned almost immediately, but for -a few moments there was no one of the house in the court. The colonel -went to Keatcham in a final effort to dissuade him from going into -the city until after he himself had gone to the Presidio and returned -with a guard. He represented as forcibly as he could the danger of -Keatcham’s appearance during a time of such tumult and lawlessness. - -“We are down to the primeval passions now,” he pleaded. “Do you suppose -if it had been Haley instead of that dago out there who was killed -that we could have punished the murderer? Not unless we did it with -our own hands. They are maybe lying in wait at the first street-corner -now. If you will only wait--” - -Keatcham chopped off his sentence without ceremony, not irritably, but -with the brusquerie of one whose time is too precious for dilatory -amenities. - -“Will the _fire_ wait?” he demanded. “Will the thieves and toughs and -ruffians whom we have to crush before they realize their strength, -will _they_ wait? This is _my_ town, Winter, the only town I care a -rap for; and I propose to help save it. I can. Danger? Of course there -is danger; there is danger in every battle; but do you keep out of -battles where you belong because you may get killed? This is my affair; -if I get killed it is in the way of business, and I can’t help it! No, -Arnold, I won’t have your father’s son mixed up in my fights; you can’t -go.” - -“Somebody has to run the machine, sir,” insinuated young Arnold with a -coaxing smile; “and I fancy I shouldn’t be my father’s son if I didn’t -look after my guest--not very long; he’d cut me out. Tracy is going, -too, he’s armed--” - -“You are not both going,” said the colonel; “somebody with a head on -him must stay here to guard the ladies.” - -He would have detailed both Tracy and Mercer; but Mercer could really -help Keatcham better than any one in any business arrangements which -might need to be made. And Keatcham plainly wished his company. Had -not the situation been so grimly serious Winter could have laughed -at the grotesque reversal of their conditions; Tracy and Arnold did -laugh; they were all taking their orders from the man who had been -their defeated prisoner a little while back. Mercer alone kept his -melancholy poise; he had obtained the aim of years; he was not sure but -his revenge was subtler and completer than he had dared to hope. Being -a zealot he was possessed by his dreams. Suppose he had converted this -relentless and tremendous power to his own way of faith; what mightn’t -he hope to accomplish? Meanwhile, so far as the business in hand was -concerned, he believed in Keatcham and in Keatcham’s methods of help; -he bowed to the innate power of the man; and he was as simply obedient -and loyal as Kito would have been to his feudal lord. - -In a very brief time all the arrangements were made; the four men went -into the _patio_ to enter the touring-car. They walked up to the -empty machine. The colonel stepped into the front seat of the machine. -Something in the noise of the engine which was panting and straining -against its control, some tiny sibilant undertone which any other ear -would have missed, warned his; he bent quickly. A dark object gyrated -above the heads of the other two just mounting the long step; it landed -with a prodigious splash in the fountain, flying into a multitude of -sputtering atoms and hurling a great column of water high up in air. -Unheeding its shrieking clamor, the soldier sprang over the side of -the car, darted through the great arched doorway out upon the terrace -toward a clump of rubber-trees. He fired; again he fired. - -In every catastrophe the spectators’ minds lose some parts of the -action. There are blanks to be supplied by no one. Every one of the -men and women present on that fatal morning had a different story. -Colvin was packing; he could only remember the deafening roar and -the shouting; and when he got down-stairs and saw--he turned deadly -sick; his chief impression is the backs of people and the way their -hands would shake. Janet Smith, inside, dressing Haley’s wounds, was -first warned by the tumult and cries; she as well as Archie and Haley -who were with her could see nothing until they got outside. All Mrs. -Melville saw was the glistening back of the car and Mercer stepping -into the car and instantly lurching backward. The explosion seemed -to her simultaneous with Mercer’s entering the car. But Mrs. Rebecca -Winter, who perhaps had the coolest head of all, and who was standing -on the dais of the arcade exactly opposite the car, distinctly saw -Keatcham with an amazing exertion of vigor for a man just risen from a -sick-bed, and with a kind of whirling motion, literally hurl Mercer out -of the car. She is sure of this because of one homely little detail, -sickening in its very homeliness. As he clutched Mercer Keatcham’s -soft gray hat dropped off and the light burnished the bald dome of his -head. In the space of that glance she heard a crackle and a roar and -Kito screamed in Japanese, running in from the carriage side. She can -not tell whether Tracy or Arnold reached the mangled creature on the -pavement first. Arnold only remembers how the carriage-robe flapped in -Tracy’s shaking hands before he flung it over the man. Tracy’s fair -skin was a streaky, bluish white, and his under jaw kept moving up and -down like that of a fish out of water, while he gasped, never uttering -a sound. - -Young Arnold was trembling so that his hands shook when he would have -raised the wounded man. Mercer alone was composed although deathly -pale. He had the presence of mind to throw the harmless fragments of -the bomb into the fountain and to examine the interior of the car lest -there should be more of destruction hidden therein. Then he approached -the heap on the flags; but Keatcham was able to motion him away, saying -in his old voice, not softened in the least: “Don’t you do that! I’m -all in. No use. They got me. But it won’t do them any good; you boys -know that will you witnessed; it gives a fifty thousand for the arrest -and conviction or the killing of Atkins; his own cutthroats will betray -him for that. But--where’s Winter? You damn careless fools didn’t let -_him_ get hurt?” - -“Shure, sor, he didn’t let himsilf git hurted,” Haley blurted out; he -had run in after Miss Smith, brandy bottle in hand; “’tis the murdering -dagoes is gettin’ hurted off there behind the big rubber-trees; I kin -see the dead legs of thim, this minnit. ’Tis a grand cool shot the -colonel is, sor.” - -“Bring him in, let them go; they were only tools,” panted Keatcham -weakly; but the brandy revived him; and his lips curled in a faint -smile as Janet Smith struck a match to heat the teaspoonful of water -for her hypodermic. “Make it good and strong, give me time to say -something to Mercer and Winter--there he comes; good runners those boys -are!” - -[Illustration: He kept death at bay by the sheer force of his will. -Page 368] - -Tracy and Arnold, acting on a common unspoken impulse, had dashed after -Winter and were pushing him forward between them. Keatcham was nearly -spent, but he rallied to say the words in his mind. He kept death at -bay by the sheer force of his will. When Winter knelt down beside him, -with a poignant memory of another time in the same place when he had -knelt beside a seemingly dying man, and gently touched the unmarred -right hand lying on the carriage-robe, he could still form a smile -with his stiff lips and mutter: “Only thing about me isn’t in tatters; -of course you touched it and didn’t try to lift me where I’m all in -pieces. You always understood. Listen! You, too, Mercer. Winter knows -the things I’m bound to have go through. I’ve explained them to him. -You’ll be my executors and trustees? A hundred thousand a year; not too -big a salary for the work--you can do it. It’s a bigger job than the -army one, Winter. Warnebold will look after the other end. He’s narrow -but he is straight. I’ve made it worth his while. Some loose ends--it -can’t be helped now. Maybe you’ll find out there are more difficulties -in administering a big fortune than you fancied; and that it isn’t the -easiest thing in the world helping fools who can’t ... help themselves. -There are all those Tidewater idiots ... made me read about ... you’ll -have to attend to them, Mercer ... old woman in the queer clothes ... -chorus girl ... those old ladies who had one egg between them for -breakfast ... you’ll see to them all?” - -“Yes,” said Mercer, looking down on the shrunken features with a look -of pain and bewilderment. “Yes, suh, I’ll do my best.” - -“And--we’re even?” - -“I reckon I am obliged to call it so, suh,” returned Mercer with a -long, gasping sigh, “but--my Lord! you’d better have let _me_ go!” - -“Very likely,” said Keatcham dryly, “the city needs me. Well, Winter, -you must look after that. I’ve been thinking why a man throws his life -away as I did; he _has_ to, unless he’s a poltroon. He can’t count -whether he’s more useful than the one he saves ... he has simply _got_ -to save him ... you were a good deal right, Winter, about not doing the -evil thing to get the good. No, it’s a bad time for me to be taken; but -it’s an honorable discharge.... Helen will be glad ... you know I’m not -a pig, Winter ... do what I tried to do ... where’s my kind nurse?” -Janet was trying by almost imperceptible movements to edge a pillow -under his shoulders; he was past turning his head, but his eyes moved -toward her. “I’ve left you ... a wedding gift ... if I lived ... given -to you; but made it safe, anyhow. Mercer?” - -His voice had grown so feeble and came in such gasps from his torn -and laboring chest that Mercer bent close to his lips to hear the -struggling sentences. “Mercer,” he whispered, “I want ... just ... to -tell you ... _you didn’t convert me_!” - -Thus, having made amends to his own will, having also, let us humbly -hope, made amends to that greater and wiser Will which is of more -merciful and wider vision that our weakness can comprehend, Edwin -Keatcham very willingly closed his eyes on earth. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -EXTRACT FROM A LETTER - - -From Mrs. Rebecca Winter to Mrs. John S. G. Winslow, - - Fairport, Iowa. - - * * * * * - -And it was delightful to discover that you were so distressed about -me. I must be getting a trifle maudlin in my old age, for I have had a -lump in my throat every time I have thought of Johnny and you actually -starting out to find me; I am thankful my telegram (Please, Peggy, do -not call it a _wire_ again--to me! I loathe these verbal indolences) -reached you at Omaha in time to stop you. - -Really, we have not had hardships. Thanks to Israel Putnam Arnold! -I have a very admiring gratitude for that man! In these days of -degeneracy he builded a stanch enduring house. With union labor, too! I -don’t see how he contrived to do it. Generally, when they build houses -here, they scamp the underpinning and weaken the joists and paint over -the dirt instead of washing it off; and otherwise deserve to be killed. -The unfortunate man opposite had just that kind of house, which tumbled -down and burned up, at once; but, alas! it killed some of the people in -it, not the guilty masons and carpenters. - -Our chimneys have been inspected and we are now legally as well as -actually sound; but we did not suffer. We cooked out on the sidewalk, -and supplemented our cooking with young Tracy’s stove. - -I told you of Janet’s engagement. Confidentially, my dear Peggy, I -am a bit responsible. They met by chance on the train; and I assure -you, although chance might have parted us, I did not let it. I clung -to Nephew Bertie. I’m sure he wondered why. I knew better than to let -him suspect. But a success you can’t share is like a rose without a -smell. So I confess to you, _I_ have made this match. But when you see -Millicent she will tell you that _she_ helped things along. She has -abused Janet like a pickpocket; but now, since she has discovered Janet -didn’t draw the Daughters’ caricature of her, she regards her as one of -the gems of the century. - -We are recovering from the terrible events of which we wrote. It -is certainly a relief that Atkins is killed. He was one of the two -scoundrels who sneaked into the _patio_ and put the bombs into the -automobile. Bertie shot him. You have no doubt heard all about Mr. -Keatcham’s death. He was killed by the man whose wickedness he had -unconsciously fostered. He did not know it, but I make no doubt his -swollen fortune and the unscrupulous daring of its acquiring had a -great influence in corrupting his secretary. - -And his corruption was his master’s undoing. I must say I sympathize -with young Tracy, who said last night: “I feel as if I had been put -to soak in crime! That bomb was the limit. In future, me for common -or garden virtue; it may be tame but I prefer tameness to delirium -tremens!” - -I used to think that I should like to match my wits against a -first-class criminal intellect; God forgive me for the wish! I have -been matching wits for the last month; and never putting on my shoes -without looking in them for a baby bomblet or feeling a twinge of -indigestion without darkly suspecting the cook--who is really the -best creature in the world, sent Mr. Arnold by a good Chinese friend -of mine. (I had a chance to do a good turn to my friend, by the way, -during the earthquake and thus repay some of his to me.) - -Archie is well and cheerful. Isn’t it like the Winter temperament -to lose its melancholy in such horrors as we have seen? Archie is -distinctly happier since he came to California. As for Janet and -Rupert--oh, well, my dear, you and Johnny _know_! The house has been -full of people, and we have had several friends of our own for a day -or two. I got a recipe for a delicious tea-cake from Mrs. Wigglesworth -of Boston. She didn’t save anything but her furs and her kimono and a -bridge set, besides what she had on; she packed her trunk with great -care and nobody would take it down-stairs. Of course she saved her bag -of jewels, which reminds me that poor Mr. Keatcham left Janet some -pearls--that is, the money for them. He was very much attached to her. - -We buried him on the crest of the hill; later, when more settled times -shall come, he may take another and last journey to that huge mausoleum -where his wife and mother are buried. Poor things! it is to be hoped -they had no taste living or else that they can’t see now how hideous -and flamboyant is their last costly resting place. But if Keatcham -hadn’t a taste for the fine arts he had compensating qualities. I shall -never forget the night of his burial. It was a “wonderful great night -of stars,” as Stevenson says. A poor little tired-out clergyman, in a -bedraggled surplice, who had been reading prayers over people for the -last ten hours and was fit to drop, hurried through the service; and -the town the dead man loved was flaming miles beyond miles. About the -grave was none of his blood, none of his ancient friends, but the men -I believe he would have chosen--men who had fought him and then had -fought for him faithfully. They were haggard and spent with fighting -the fire; and they went from his burial back to days and nights of -desperate effort. He had fought and lost and yet did not lose at the -last, but won, snatching victory out of defeat as he was wont to do -all his life. The heavy burdens which have dropped from his shoulders -these others whom he chose will carry, maybe more humbly, perhaps not -so capably, but quite as courageously. And it is singular how his -influence persists, how it touches Kito and Haley, as well as the -others. - -“Shure,” said honest Haley (whose wit you are likely to sample in the -near future, for he has elected to be the Rupert Winters’ chauffeur; -they don’t know it yet, but they _will_ when it is time); “shure,” says -he, “whin thot man so mashed up there ye cudn’t move him for fear ye’d -lose the main parrt of him, whin _he_ was thinkin’ of the town and -nothin’ else, I hadn’t the heart to be complainin’ for the loss of a -few teeth and a few limps about me! An’ I fair wu’ked like the divil. -So did Kito, who’s a dacint Jap gintleman and no haythin at all.” - -Poor Keatcham, he had no childhood and his wife died too soon to -revive the fragrance of his youth; but I can’t help but think he had -a reticent, awkward, shy sort of heart somewhere about him. Well, he -was what Millicent would call “a compelling personality.” I use plain -language and I call him a great man. He won the lion’s share because -he was the lion. And yet, poor Lion, his share was a lonely life and a -tragic death. - - -THE END - - -FOOTNOTES: - - -[A] Of course, no allusions are made to any real M. 20139. - -[B] So still and calm the night is, - The very winds asleep, - My heart’s so tender sentinel - His watch and ward doth keep. - And on the wings of zephyrs soft - That wander how they will, - To thee, O woman fair, to thee - My prayers go fluttering still. - - Oh, take the heart’s love to thy heart - Of one that doth adore! - Have pity, add not to the flame - That burns thy troubadour! - And if compassion stirs thy breast - For my eternal woe, - Oh, as I love thee, loveliest - Of women, love me so! - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LION'S SHARE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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