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+Project Gutenberg's The Avalanche, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Avalanche
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2004 [EBook #7863]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AVALANCHE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AVALANCHE
+
+                            _A MYSTERY STORY_
+
+                           BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+                                   1919
+
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+I
+
+Price Ruyler knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake
+and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of
+them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered
+pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a
+past of her own.
+
+That there was a secret of some sort he had been progressively convinced
+for quite six months. Moreover, he felt equally sure that this impalpable
+gray cloud had not drifted even transiently between himself and his wife
+during the first year and a half of their marriage. They had been
+uncommonly happy; they were happy yet ... the difference lay not in the
+quality of Hélène's devotion, enhanced always by an outspoken admiration
+for himself and his achievements, but in subtle changes of temperament
+and spirits.
+
+She had been a gay and irresponsible young creature when he married her,
+so much so that he had found it expedient to put her on an allowance and
+ask her not to ran up staggering bills in the fashionable shops; which
+she visited daily, as much for the pleasure of the informal encounter
+with other lively and irresponsible young luminaries of San Francisco
+society as for the excitement of buying what she did not want.
+
+He had broached the subject with some trepidation, for they had never had
+a quarrel; but she had shown no resentment whatever, merely an eager
+desire to please him. She even went directly down to the Palace Hotel and
+reproached her august parent for failing to warn her that a dollar was
+not capable of infinite expansion.
+
+But no wonder she had been extravagant, she told Ruyler plaintively. It
+had been like a fairy tale, this sudden release from the rigid
+economies of her girlhood, when she had rarely had a franc in her
+pocket, and they had lived in a suite of the old family villa on one
+of the hills of Rouen, Madame Delano paying her brother for their
+lodging, and dressing herself and Hélène with the aid of a half
+paralyzed seamstress with a fiery red nose. Ma foi! It was the
+nightmare of her youth, that nose and that croaking voice. But the
+woman had fingers, and a taste! And her mother could have concocted a
+smart evening frock out of an old window curtain.
+
+But the petted little daughter was never asked to go out and buy a spool
+of thread, much less was she consulted in the household economies. All
+she noticed was that her clothes were smarter than Cousin Marthe's, who
+had a real dressmaker, and was subject to fits of jealous sulks. No
+wonder that when money was poured into her lap out in this wonderful
+California she had assumed that it was made only to spend.
+
+But she would learn! She would learn! She would ask her mother that very
+day to initiate her into the fascinating secrets of personal economies,
+teach her how to portion out her quarterly allowance between her
+wardrobe, club dues, charities, even her private automobile.
+
+This last heroic suggestion was her own, and although her husband
+protested he finally agreed; it was well she should learn just what it
+cost to be a woman of fashion in San Francisco, and the allowance was
+very generous. His old steward, Mannings, ran the household, although as
+he went through the form of laying the bills before his little mistress
+on the third of every month, she knew that the upkeep of the San
+Francisco house and the Burlingame villa ran into a small fortune a year.
+
+"It is not that I am threatened with financial disaster," Ruyler had said
+to her. "But San Francisco has not recovered yet, and it is impossible to
+say just when she will recover. I want to be absolutely sure of my
+expenditures."
+
+She had promised vehemently, and, as far as he knew, she had kept her
+promise. He had received no more bills, and it was obvious that her
+haughty chauffeur was paid on schedule time, until, seized with another
+economical spasm, she sold her car and bought a small electric which she
+could drive herself.
+
+Ruyler, little as he liked his mother-in-law, was intensely grateful to
+her for the dexterity with which she had adjusted Hélène's mind to the
+new condition. She even taught her how to keep books in an elemental way
+and balanced them herself on the first of every month. As Hélène Ruyler
+had a mind as quick and supple as it was cultivated in _les graces_, she
+soon ceased to feel the chafing of her new harness, although she did
+squander the sum she had reserved for three months mere pocket money upon
+a hat; which was sent to the house by her wily milliner on the first day
+of the second quarter. She confessed this with tears, and her husband,
+who thought her feminine passion for hats adorable, dried her tears and
+took her to the opening night of a new play. But he did not furnish the
+pathetic little gold mesh bag, and as he made her promise not to borrow,
+she did not treat her friends to tea or ices at any of the fashionable
+rendezvous for a month. Then her native French thrift came to her aid and
+she sold a superfluous gold purse, a wedding present, to an envious
+friend at a handsome bargain.
+
+That was ancient history now. It was twenty months since Price had
+received a bill, and secret inquiries during the past two had satisfied
+him that his wife's name was written in the books of no shop in San
+Francisco that she would condescend to visit. Therefore, this maddening
+but intangible barrier had nothing to do with a change of habit that had
+not caused an hour of tears and sulks. Hélène had a quick temper but a
+gay and sweet disposition, normally high spirits, little apparent
+selfishness, and a naïve adoration of masculine superiority and strength;
+altogether, with her high bred beauty and her dignity in public, an
+enchanting creature and an ideal wife for a busy man of inherited social
+position and no small degree of pride.
+
+But all this lovely equipment was blurred, almost obscured at times, by
+the shadow that he was beginning to liken to the San Francisco fogs that
+drifted through the Golden Gate and settled down into the deep hollows of
+the Marin hills; moving gently but restlessly even there, like ghostly
+floating tides. He could see them from his library window, where he often
+finished his afternoon's work with his secretaries.
+
+But the fog drifted back to the Pacific, and the shadow that encompassed
+his wife did not, or rarely. It chilled their ardors, even their serene
+domesticity. She was often as gay and impulsive as ever, but with abrupt
+reserves, an implication not only of a new maturity of spirit, but of
+watchfulness, even fear. She had once gone so far as to give voice
+passionately to the dogma that no two mortals had the right to be as
+happy as they were; then laughed apologetically and "guessed" that the
+old Puritan spirit of her father's people was coming to life in her
+Gallic little soul; then, with another change of mood, added defiantly
+that it was time America were rid of its baneful inheritance, and that
+she would be happy to-day if the skies fell to-morrow. She had flung
+herself into her husband's arms, and even while he embraced her the eyes
+of his spirit searched for the girl wife who had fled and left this more
+subtly fascinating but incomprehensible creature in her place.
+
+
+II
+
+The morning was Sunday and he sat in the large window of his library that
+overlooked the Bay of San Francisco. The house, which stood on one of the
+highest hills, he had bought and remodeled for his bride. The books that
+lined these walls had belonged to his Ruyler grandfather, bought in a day
+when business men had time to read and it was the fashion for a gentleman
+to cultivate the intellectual tracts of his brain. The portraits that
+hung above, against the dark paneling, were the work of his mother's
+father, one of the celebrated portrait painters of his time, and were
+replicas of the eminent and mighty he had painted. Maharajas, kings,
+emperors, famous diplomats, men of letters, artists of his own small
+class, statesmen and several of the famous beauties of their brief day;
+these had been the favorite grandson's inheritance from Masewell Price,
+and they made an impressive frieze, unique in the splendid homes of the
+city of Ruyler's adoption.
+
+He had brought them from New York when he had decided to live in
+California, and hung them in his bachelor quarters. He had soon made up
+his mind that he must remain in San Francisco for at least ten years if
+he would maintain the business he had rescued from the disaster of 1906
+at the level where he had, by the severest application of his life,
+placed it by the end of 1908. Meanwhile he had grown to like San
+Francisco better than he would have believed possible when he arrived in
+the wrecked city, still smoking, and haunted with the subtle odors of
+fires that had consumed more than products of the vegetable kingdom.
+
+The vast ruin with its tottering arches and broken columns, its lonely
+walls looking as if bitten by prehistoric monsters that must haunt this
+ancient coast, the soft pastel colors the great fire had given as sole
+compensation for all it had taken, the grotesque twisted masses of steel
+and the aged gray hills that had looked down on so many fires, had
+appealed powerfully to his imagination, and made him feel, when wandering
+alone at night, as if his brain cells were haunted by old memories of
+Antioch when Nature had annihilated in an instant what man had lavished
+upon her for centuries. Nowhere, not even in what was left of ancient
+Rome, had he ever received such an impression of the age of the world and
+of the nothingness of man as among the ruins of this ridiculously modern
+city of San Francisco. It fascinated him, but he told himself then that
+he should leave it without a pang. He was a New Yorker of the seventh
+generation of his house, and the rest of the United States of America was
+merely incidental.
+
+The business, a branch of the great New York firm founded in 1840 by an
+ancestor grown weary of watching the broad acres of Ruyler Manor
+automatically transmute themselves into the yearly rent-roll, and
+reverting to the energy and merchant instincts of his Dutch ancestors,
+had been conducted skillfully for the thirty years preceding the
+disaster by Price's uncle, Dryden Ruyler. But the earthquake and fire in
+which so many uninsured millions had vanished, had also wrecked men past
+the rebounding age, and Dryden Ruyler was one of them. He might have
+borne the destruction of the old business building down on Front Street,
+or even the temporary stagnation of trade, but when the Pacific Union
+Club disappeared in the raging furnace, and, like many of his old
+cronies who had no home either in the country or out in the Western
+Addition, he was driven over to Oakland for lodgings, this ghastly
+climax of horrors--he escaped in a milk wagon after sleeping for two
+nights without shelter on the bare hills behind San Francisco, while the
+fire roared its defiance to the futile detonations of dynamite, and his
+sciatica was as fiery as the atmosphere--had broken the old man's
+spirit, and he had announced his determination to return to
+Ruyler-on-Hudson and die as a gentleman should.
+
+There was no question of Price's father, Morgan Ruyler, leaving New
+York, even if he had contemplated the sacrifice for a moment; that his
+second son and general manager of the several branches of the great
+business of Ruyler and Sons--as integral a part of the ancient history
+of San Francisco as of the comparatively modern history of New
+York--should go, was so much a matter of course that Price had taken the
+first Overland train that left New York after the receipt of his uncle's
+despairing telegram.
+
+In spite of the fortune behind him and his own expert training, the
+struggle to rebuild the old business to its former standard had been
+unintermittent. The terrific shock to the city's energies was followed
+by a general depression, and the insane spending of a certain class of
+San Franciscans when their insurance money was paid, was like a brief
+last crackling in a cold stove, and, moreover, was of no help to the
+wholesale houses.
+
+But Price Ruyler, like so many of his new associates in like case, had
+emerged triumphant; and with the unqualified approval and respect of the
+substantial citizens of San Francisco.
+
+It was this position he had won in a community where he had experienced
+the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great
+city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared
+California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New
+York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he
+found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for
+a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a racing car, or
+tramp, for at least eight months of the year with no menace of sudden
+downpour, and hardly a change in the weight of his clothes.
+
+To-day the rain was dashing against his windows and the wind howled about
+the exposed angles of his house with that personal fury of assault with
+which storms brewed out in the vast wastes of the Pacific deride the
+enthusiastic baptism of a too confident explorer. All he could see of the
+bay was a mad race of white caps, and dark blurs which only memory
+assured him were rocky storm-beaten islands; mountain tops, so geological
+tradition ran, whose roots were in an unquiet valley long since dropped
+from mortal gaze.
+
+The waves were leaping high against the old forts at the entrance to the
+Golden Gate, and occasionally he saw a small craft drift perilously near
+to the rocks. But he loved the wild weather of San Francisco, for he was
+by nature an imaginative man and he liked to think that he would have
+followed the career of letters had not the traditions of the great
+commercial house of Ruyler and Sons, forced him to carry on the burden.
+
+The men of his family had never been idlers since the recrudescence of
+ancestral energy in the person of Morgan Ruyler I; it was no part of
+their profound sense of aristocracy to retire on inherited or invested
+wealth; they believed that your fine American of the old stock should die
+in harness; and if the harness had been fashioned and elaborated by
+ancestors whose portraits hung in the Chamber of Commerce, all the more
+reason to keep it spic and up to date instead of letting it lapse into
+those historic vaults where so many once honored names lay rotting. They
+were a hard, tight-fisted lot, the Ruylers, and Price in one secluded but
+cherished wing of his mind was unlike them only because his mother was
+the daughter of Masefield Price and would have been an artist herself if
+her scandalized husband would have consented. Morgan Ruyler IV had
+overlooked his father-in-law's divagation from the orthodox standards of
+his own family because he had been a spectacular financial success;
+bringing home ropes of enormous pearls from India in addition to the
+fantastic sums paid him by enraptured native princes. But while Morgan
+Ruyler believed that rich men should work and make their sons work, if
+only because an idle class was both out of place in a republic and
+conducive to unrest in the masses, it was quite otherwise with women.
+They were for men to shelter, and it was their sole duty to be useful in
+the home, and, wherever possible, ornamental in public. Nor had he the
+least faith in female talent.
+
+Marian Ruyler had yielded the point and departed hopefully for a broader
+sphere when her second and favorite son was eight. Morgan Ruyler married
+again as soon as convention would permit, this time carefully selecting a
+wife of the soundest New York predispositions and with a personal
+admiration of Queen Victoria; and he had watched young Price like an
+affectionate but inexorable parent hawk until the young man followed his
+brother--a quintessential Ruyler--into the now historic firm. However, he
+suffered little from anxiety. Price, too, was conservative, intensely
+proud of the family traditions, an almost impassioned worker, and
+unselfish as men go. Two sons in every generation must enter the firm. It
+was not in the Ruyler blood to take long chances.
+
+
+III
+
+Life out here in California had been too hurried for more than fleeting
+moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's
+perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had
+longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative
+training, the rigid traditions of his family, conventional,
+old-fashioned, Puritanical, as became the best stock of New York, a stock
+that in the Ruyler family had seemed to carry its own antidote for the
+poisons ever seeking entrance to the spiritual conduits of the rich, had
+left any place for that sentimental romantic tide in his nature which had
+swept him into marriage with a girl outside of his own class; a girl of
+whose family he had known practically nothing until his outraged father
+had cabled to a correspondent in Paris to make investigation of the
+Perrin family of Rouen, to which the girl's mother claimed to belong.
+
+The inquiries were satisfactory; they were quite respectable,
+bourgeois, silk merchants in a small way--although at least two strata
+below that haute bourgeoisie which now regarded itself as the real
+upper class of the République Française. A true Ruyler, however, would
+have fled at the first danger signal, never have reached the point
+where inquiries were in order.
+
+California was replete with charming, beautiful, and superlatively
+healthy girls; the climate produced them as it did its superabundance of
+fruit, flowers, and vegetables. But they had left Price Ruyler
+untroubled. He had been far more interested watching San Francisco rise
+from its ruins, transformed almost overnight from a picturesque but
+ramshackle city, a patchwork of different eras, into a staid metropolis
+of concrete and steel, defiant alike of earthquake and fire. He had liked
+the new experience of being a pioneer, which so subtly expanded his
+starved ego that he had, by unconscious degrees, made up his mind to
+remain out here as the permanent head of the San Francisco House; and in
+time, no doubt, marry one of these fine, hardy, frank, out-of-door,
+wholly unsubtle California girls. Moreover, he had found in San Francisco
+several New Yorkers as well as Englishmen of his own class--notably John
+Gwynne, who had thrown over one of the greatest of English peerages to
+follow his personal tastes in a legislative career--all of whom had
+settled down into that free and independent life from motives not
+dissimilar from his own.
+
+But he had ceased to be an untroubled spirit from the moment he met
+Hélène Delano. He had gone down to Monterey for polo, and he had
+forgotten the dinner to which he had brought a keen appetite, and stared
+at her as she entered the immense dining room with her mother.
+
+It was not her beauty, although that was considerable, that had summarily
+transposed his gallant if cool admiration for all charming well bred
+women into a submerging recognition of woman in particular; it was her
+unlikeness to any of the girls he had been riding, dancing, playing golf
+and tennis with during the past year and a half (for two years after his
+arrival he had seen nothing of society whatever). Later that evening he
+defined this dissimilarity from the American girl as the result not only
+of her French blood but of her European training, her quiet secluded
+girlhood in a provincial town of great beauty, where she had received a
+leisurely education rare in the United States, seen or read little of the
+great world (she had visited Paris only twice and briefly), her mind
+charmingly developed by conscientious tutors. But at the moment he
+thought that the compelling power lay in some deep subtlety of eye, her
+little air of lofty aloofness, her classic small features in a small
+face, and the top-heavy masses of blue black hair which she carried with
+a certain naïve pride as if it were her only vanity; in her general
+unlikeness to the gray-eyed fair-haired American--a type to which himself
+belonged. Her only point in common with this fashionable set patronizing
+Del Monte for the hour, was the ineffable style with which she wore her
+perfect little white frock; an American inheritance, he assumed after he
+knew her; for, as he recalled provincial French women, style was not
+their strong point.
+
+When he met her eyes some twenty minutes later, he dismissed the
+impression of subtlety, for their black depths were quick with an eager
+wonder and curiosity. Later they grew wistful, and he guessed that she
+knew none of these smart folk, down, like himself, for the tournament;
+people who were chattering from table to table like a large family. That
+some of his girl acquaintances were interested in the young stranger he
+inferred from speculative and appraising eyes that were turned upon her
+from time to time.
+
+Price, with some irony, wondered at their curiosity. The San Francisco
+girl, he had discovered, possessed an extra sense all her own. There was
+no lofty indifference about her. She had the worth-while stranger
+detected and tabulated and his or her social destiny settled before the
+Eastern train had disgorged its contents at the Oakland mole. And even
+the immense florid mother of this lovely girl, with her own masses of
+snow white hair dressed in a manner becoming her age, and a severe gown
+of black Chantilly net, relieved by the merest trifle of jet, looked the
+reverse of the nondescript tourist. The girl wore white embroidered silk
+muslin and a thin gold chain with a small ruby pendant. She was rather
+above the average height, although not as tall as her mother, and if she
+were as thin as fashion commanded, her bones were so small that her neck
+and arms looked almost plump. Her expressive eyes were as black as her
+hair, and her only large feature. Her skin was of a quite remarkably pink
+whiteness, although there was a pink color in her lips and cheeks. The
+older men stared at her more persistently than the younger ones, who
+liked their own sort and not girls who looked as if they might be "booky"
+and "spring things on a fellow."
+
+There was a ball in the evening and once more mother and daughter sat
+apart, while the flower of San Francisco--an inclusive term for the
+select circles of Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame, San Mateo, far San
+Rafael and Belvedere--romped as one great family. Newport, Ruyler
+reflected for the twentieth time, did it no better. To the stranger
+peering through the magic bars they were now as insensible as befitted
+their code. These two people knew nobody and that was the end of it.
+
+
+IV
+
+But Price noted that now the girl's eyes were merely wistful, and once or
+twice he saw them fill with tears. As three of the dowagers merely
+sniffed when he sought possible information, he finally had recourse to
+the manager of the hotel, D.V. Bimmer. They were a Madame and
+Mademoiselle Delano from Rouen, and had been at the hotel for a
+fortnight, not seeming to mind its comparative emptiness, but enjoying
+the sea bathing and the drives. The girl rode, and went out every morning
+with a groom.
+
+"But didn't they bring any letters?" asked Ruyler. "They are ladies and
+one letter would have done the business. That poor girl is having the
+deuce of a time."
+
+"D.V.," who knew "everybody" in California, and all their secrets, shook
+his head. "'Fraid not. The French maid told the floor valet that although
+the father was American--from New England somewheres--and the girl born
+in California, accidentally as it were, she had lived in France all her
+life--she's just eighteen--never crossed the ocean before. Can you beat
+it? Until last month, and then they came from Hong Kong--taking a trip
+round the world in good old style. The madame, who scarcely opens her
+month, did condescend to tell me that she had admired California very
+much when she was here before, and intended to travel all over the state.
+Perhaps I met her in that far off long ago, for I was managing a hotel in
+San Francisco about that time, and her face haunts me somehow--although
+when features get all swallowed up by fat like that you can't locate
+them. The girl, too, reminds me of some one, but of course she was in
+arms when she left and as I ain't much on cathedrals I never went to
+Rouen. Of course it's the old trick, bringing a pretty girl to a
+fashionable watering place to marry her off, but these folks are not
+poor. Not what we'd call rich, perhaps, but good and solid. I don't fall
+for the old lady; she's a cool proposition or I miss my guess, but the
+girl's all right. I've seen too many girls in this Mecca for adventurous
+females and never made a mistake yet. I wish some of our grand dames
+would extend the glad hand. But I'm afraid they won't. Terrible
+exclusive, this bunch."
+
+Ruyler scowled and walked back to the ballroom. The exclusiveness of this
+young society on the wrong side of the continent sometimes made him
+homesick and sometimes made him sick. He saw little chance for this poor
+girl to enjoy the rights of her radiant youth if her mother had not taken
+the precaution to bring letters. France was full of Californians. Many
+lived there. Surely she must have met some one she could have made use
+of. It was tragic to watch a pathetic young thing staring at two or three
+hundred young men and maidens disporting themselves with the natural
+hilarity of youth, and but few of them too ill-natured to welcome a young
+and lovely stranger if properly introduced.
+
+He experienced a desperate impulse to go up to the mother and offer
+her the hospitality of the evening, ask her to regard him as her host.
+But Madame Delano had a frozen eye, and no doubt orthodox French ideas
+on the subject of young girls. A moment later his eye fell on Mrs.
+Ford Thornton.
+
+"Fordy" was many times a millionaire, and his handsome intelligent wife
+lived the life of her class. But she was far less conservative than any
+woman Price had met in San Francisco. Although she was no longer young he
+had more than once detected symptoms of a wild and insurgent spirit, and
+an impatient contempt for the routine she was compelled to follow or go
+into retirement. She was always leaving abruptly for Europe, and every
+once in a while she did something quite uncanonical; enjoying wickedly
+the consternation she caused among the serenely regulated, and betraying
+to the keen eyes of the New Yorker an ironic appreciation of the immense
+wealth which enabled her to do as she chose, answerable to no one. Her
+husband was uxorious and she had no children. She had seemed to Price
+more restless than usual of late and showing unmistakable signs of abrupt
+departure. (He was sure she dusted the soles of her boots as she locked
+the door of drawing-room A.) Perhaps to-night she might be in a
+schismatic mood.
+
+She was standing apart, a tall, dark, almost fiercely haughty woman, but
+dressed with a certain arrogant simplicity, without jewels, her hair in a
+careless knot at the base of her head. There were times when she was
+impeccably groomed, others when she looked as if an infuriated maid had
+left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous
+woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had
+experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once
+too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation
+in cheating them.
+
+It was evident to Price that she had been snubbing somebody, for a group
+of matrons, flushed and drawn apart, were whispering resentfully. Price
+Ruyler stood in no awe of her. He could match her arrogance, and he liked
+and admired her more than any of his new friends. They quarreled
+furiously but she had never snubbed him.
+
+He walked over to her, his cool gray eyes lit with the pleasure in seeing
+her that she had learned to expect. "Good evening, oh, Queen of the
+Pacific," he said lightly. "You are looking quite wonderful as usual. Are
+you standing alone almost in the middle of the room to emphasize
+the--difference?"
+
+"I am in no mood for compliments, satiric or otherwise." She looked him
+over with cool penetration. "I may not massage or have my old cuticle
+ripped off. If I choose to look my age you must admit that it gives me
+one more claim to originality."
+
+"You should have let the world know long since just how original you are,
+instead of settling down into the leadership of San Francisco society--"
+
+He enjoyed provoking her. Her dark narrow eyes opened and flashed as they
+must have done in their unchastened youth. "Don't dare call me the leader
+of this--this!"
+
+"Granted. But the fact remains that your word alone is law. Therefore I
+am about to ask you to forget that I am a bungling diplomat and do a kind
+act. For once you would be able to be both kind and original."
+
+"I did not know you went in for charities. I am sick of shelling out."
+
+"My only part in charities is shelling out."
+
+"Well, come to the point. What do you want?"
+
+"I want you to go over to that lady--Madame Delano, her name is--sitting
+beside that beautiful girl, and introduce yourself and then me. They are
+strangers and I'd like to give them a good time."
+
+"How disinterested of you!" She looked the isolated couple over. "The
+girl is all right, but I don't like the mother. She is well dressed--oh,
+correct from tip to toe--but not quite the lady."
+
+Ruyler's cool insolent gaze swept the dado of amiable overfed ladies who
+fanned themselves against the wall.
+
+"None of that! You know that I do not tolerate the New York attitude.
+At least we know who ours are; they came into their own respectably,
+and with no uncertain touch. Of course it is stupid of them to get fat.
+Naturally it makes them look _bourgeoise_. But this is a lazy climate.
+As to that woman: there is something about her I do not like. She is
+aggressively not massaged, not made up. Only a woman of assured
+position can afford to be mid-Victorian. It is now quite the smart
+thing to make up."
+
+"No doubt her position is assured in her own provincial town. It will be
+easy enough to drop her if she doesn't go down. You can't deny that the
+girl is all right--and a sweet pathetic figure."
+
+"If the girl marries one of our boys--and no doubt that is what she was
+brought here for--we shall not be able to get rid of the mother. We've
+tried that and failed."
+
+At that moment Ruyler's eyes met those of the girl. They flashed an
+irresistible appeal. He drew a short breath. How different she looked!
+She radiated a subtle promise of perfect companionship. Price Ruyler did
+what all men will do until the end of time. He made up his mind that he
+had found his woman and without vocal assistance.
+
+Mrs. Thornton, who had been watching the unusual mobility of his face,
+met his eyes with a satirical smile in her own, her thin red curling lips
+drawn almost straight for a moment. She had played with the fancy, before
+anger banished it, that if she had been twenty years younger.... Men had
+fallen madly in love with her in her own day.... She detected the
+symptoms in this man at once. Her savage will compelled her to accept
+accumulating years without a concession. But she had forgotten nothing.
+
+Ruyler may have read her thoughts.
+
+"You know," he said, with an attempt at lightness, although the coast
+wind tan, which was his only claim to coloring, had paled a little, "that
+girl reminds me so much of you that I have made up my mind to marry her.
+I don't care who she is. If you don't help me to meet her conventionally
+I'll manage somehow, but I should hate to practice any subterfuges on the
+woman I intend to make my wife."
+
+For a moment he had the sensation of being pinned to the wall by that
+narrow concentrated gaze. Then Mrs. Thornton swung on her heel. "I'll do
+it," she said.
+
+She walked across the room with the supple grace her slender figure had
+never lost and sat down beside the older woman. In a moment the
+astonished dowagers who had "suffered from her fiendish temper all
+evening," saw her talking with spontaneous graciousness to both the
+strangers. Madame Delano was at first more distant and reserved than Mrs.
+Thornton had ever been, manifestly betraying all the suspicion and
+unsocial instincts of her class; but she thawed, and the two women
+chatted, while once more the girl's eyes wandered to the dancers.
+
+When Mrs. Thornton had tormented Ruyler for quite fifteen minutes she
+beckoned to him imperiously. A moment later he was whirling the girl down
+the ball room and thrilling at her contact.
+
+
+V
+
+The wooing had been as headlong as his falling in love. Hélène Delano had
+a deep sweet voice, which completed the conquest during the hour they
+spent in the grounds under the shelter of a great palm, until hunted down
+by a horrified parent.
+
+Hélène talked frankly of her life. Her mother had been visiting relatives
+in a small New England town--Holbrook Centre, she believed it was called,
+but hard American names did not cling to her memory--she loved the soft
+Latin and Indian names in California--and there she had met and married
+her father, James Delano. They were on their way to Japan when business
+detained him in San Francisco much longer than he had expected and she
+was born. She believed that he had owned a ranch that he wanted to sell.
+He died on the voyage across the Pacific and her mother had returned to
+live among her own people in Rouen--very plain bourgeois, but of a
+respectability, Oh, là! là!
+
+"But it was a tiresome life for a young girl with American blood in her,
+monsieur." Her mother's income from her husband's estate was not large,
+but they lived in a wing of the old house and were very comfortable. From
+her window there was a lovely view of the Seine winding off to Paris.
+"Oh, monsieur, how I used to long to go to Paris! America was too far. I
+never even dreamed of it. But Paris! And only two little glimpses of
+it--the last when we spent a fortnight there before sailing, to get me
+some nice frocks...."
+
+She had studied hard--but hard! She knew four languages, she told Ruyler
+proudly. "I had no _dot_ then, you see. It was possible I might have to
+teach one day. A governess in England, Oh, là! là!"
+
+But six months ago a good old uncle had died and left them some money.
+She would have a little _dot_ now, and they could travel. Maman said she
+would not have a large enough _dot_ to make a fine marriage in France,
+but that the English and American men were more romantic. They went first
+to the Orient, as there were many Englishmen of good family to be met
+there. "But maman is difficult to please," she added with her enchanting
+artlessness, "as difficult as I myself, monsieur. I wish to fall in love
+like the American girls. Maman says it is not necessary, but I am half
+American, so, why not? There was an English gentleman with a nice title
+in Hong Kong and maman was quite pleased with him until she discovered
+that he gambled or did something equally horrid and she bought our
+tickets for San Francisco right away."
+
+Yes, she was enjoying her travels, but she was a little lonesome; in
+Rouen at least she had her cousins. For the first time in her life she
+was talking to a young man alone; even on the steamer she was not
+permitted to speak to any of the nice young men who looked as if they
+would like her if only maman would relent.
+
+"In our ugly old rooms in Rouen maman cherished me like some rare little
+flower in an old earthen pot," she added quaintly. "Now the pot has
+tinsel and tissue paper round it, but until to-night I have felt as if I
+might just as well be an old cabbage."
+
+But it had been heaven to dance with a young man who was not a cousin;
+and to sit out alone with him in the moonlight, Oh, _grace à Dieu_!
+
+Traveling she had read modern novels for the first time. There were many
+in the ship's library, oh, but dozens! and she knew now how American and
+English girls enjoyed life. Her mother had been ill nearly all the way
+over. She had given her word not to speak to any one, but maman had been
+ignorant of the library replete with the novelists of the day, and
+although she was not untruthful, _enfin_, she saw no reason to ask her
+too anxious parent for another prohibition and condemn herself to yawn
+at the sea.
+
+Ruyler proposed at the end of a week. She was the only really innocent,
+unspoiled, unselfconscious girl he had ever met, almost as old-fashioned
+as his great grandmother must have been. Not that he set forth her
+virtues to bolster his determination to marry a girl of no family even in
+her own country; he was madly in love, and life without her was
+unthinkable; but he tabulated the thousand points to her credit for the
+benefit of his outraged father.
+
+He did not pretend to like Madame Delano. She was a hard, calculating,
+sordid old bourgeoisie, but when he refused the little _dot_ she would
+have settled upon Hélène, he knew that he had won her friendship and that
+she would give him no trouble. She was not a mother-in-law to be ashamed
+of, for her manners were coldly correct, her education in youth had
+evidently been adequate, and in her obese way she was imposing. She gave
+him to understand that she had no more desire to live with her son-in-law
+than he with her, and established herself in a small suite in the Palace
+Hotel. After a "lifetime" in a provincial town, economizing mercilessly,
+she felt, she remarked in one of her rare expansive moments, that she had
+earned the right to look on at life in a great hotel.
+
+The rainy season she spent in Southern California, moving from one large
+hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another. This uncommon
+self-indulgence and her devotion to Hélène were the only weak spots
+Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character. She seldom
+attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the
+endowed car offered by her son-in-law. Hélène married to the best _parti_
+in San Francisco and quite happy, she seemed content to settle down into
+the role of the onlooker at the kaleidoscope of life. She spent eight
+hours of the day and evening seated in an arm chair in the court of the
+Palace Hotel, and for air rode out to the end of the California Street
+car line, always on the front seat of the dummy. She was dubbed a "quaint
+old party" by her new acquaintances and left to her own devices. If she
+didn't want them they could jolly well do without her.
+
+
+VI
+
+Hélène's social success was immediate and permanent. Californians rarely
+do things by halves. Society was no exception. She had "walked off" with
+the most desirable man in town, but they were good gamblers. When they
+lost they paid. She had married into "their set." They had accepted her.
+She was one of them. No secret order is more loyal to its initiates.
+
+During that first year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what
+leisure he could command, found Hélène's rapidly expanding mind as
+companionable as he had hoped; and the girlish dignity she never lost,
+for all her naiveté and vivacity, gratified his pride and compelled, upon
+their second brief visit to New York, even the unqualified approval of
+his family.
+
+She had inherited all the subtle adaptability of her father's race,
+nothing of the cold and rigid narrowness of her mother's class. Price had
+feared that her lively mind might reveal disconcerting shallows, but
+these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes
+wondered just how strong her character was. There were times when she
+showed a pronounced inclination for the line of least resistance ... but
+her youth ... her too sheltered bringing up ... those drab cramped
+years ... no wonder....
+
+He was glad on the whole that his was the part to mold. Nevertheless, he
+had his inconsistencies. Unlike many men of strong will and driving
+purpose he liked strength of character and pronounced individuality in
+women; and he, too, had had fleeting visions of what life might have been
+had Flora Thornton entered life twenty years later. He had been quite
+sincere in telling her that the young stranger reminded him of the most
+powerful personality he had met in California, and he believed that
+within a reasonable time Hélène would be as variously cultivated, as
+widely, if less erratically developed. But was there any such insurgent
+force in her depths? It was not within the possibilities that at any time
+in her life Flora Thornton had been pliable.
+
+A man had little time to study his wife in California these days. Or at
+any time? He sometimes wondered. Certainly happy marriages were rare and
+divorces many. Fine weather nearly all the year round played the deuce
+with domesticity, and his business could not be neglected for the long
+vacation abroad to which they both had looked forward so ardently.
+
+Sometimes, even before this vague gray mist had risen between them, he
+had had moments of wondering whether he knew his wife at all. How could a
+man know a woman who did not yet know herself? He sighed and wished he
+had more time to explore the uncharted seas of a woman's soul.
+
+But the cause of the change in her was something far less picturesque,
+something concrete and sinister. He felt sure of that....
+
+
+VII
+
+Unless--but that was ridiculous! Impossible!
+
+He sprang to his feet, incredulous, disgusted at the mere thought.
+
+But why not? She was very young, and older and wiser women were afflicted
+with inconsistencies, little tenacious desires and vanities never quite
+to be grasped by the elemental male.
+
+He went over to a bookcase containing heavy works of reference and
+pressed his index finger into the molding. It swung outward, revealing
+the door of a safe. He manipulated the combination, took from a drawer of
+the interior a box, opened it and stared at a magnificent Burmah ruby. It
+was or had been a royal jewel, presented to Masewell Price by one of the
+great princes of India whose portrait he had painted. The pearls had all
+been captured long since by Price's sisters and by Morgan V. for his
+wife; but this ruby his mother had given him as she lay dying. She had
+bidden him leave it in his father's safe until he was out of college, and
+then keep it as closely in his personal possession as possible. It would
+be turned over to him with the rest of his private fortune.
+
+"Never let any woman wear it," she had whispered. "It brings luck to men
+but not to women. Nothing could have affected my luck one way or the
+other--I was born to have nothing I wanted, but you, dear little boy.
+Keep it for your luck and in a safe place, but near you."
+
+He had looked back upon this scene as he grew older as the mere
+expression of a whim of dissolution, but it had made so deep an
+impression upon him at the time that insensibly the words sank into his
+plastic mind creating a superstition that refused to yield to reason. The
+ruby was Hélène's birthstone and she was passionately fond of it. She had
+begged and coaxed to wear this jewel, and upon one occasion had stamped
+her little foot and sulked throughout the evening. He had given her a
+ruby bar, had the clasp of her pearl necklace set with rabies, and last
+Christmas had presented her with a small but fine "pigeon blood"
+encircled with diamonds. These had enraptured her for the moment, but she
+had always circled back to the historic stone, over which her indulgent
+husband was so unaccountably obstinate.
+
+Until lately. He recalled that for several months she had not mentioned
+it. Could she have been indulging in a prolonged attack of interior
+sulks, which affected her spirits, dimmed her radiant personality? He
+abominated the idea but admitted the possibility. She would not be the
+first person to be the victim of a secret but furious passion for jewels.
+He recalled a novel of Hichens; not the matter but the central idea.
+Authors of other races had used the same motive. Well, if his wife had an
+abnormal streak in her the sooner he found out the truth the better.
+
+He closed the door of the safe, swung the bookcase into place, slipped
+the ruby with its curious gold chain that looked massive but hardly
+weighed an ounce, into his pocket, rang for a servant and told him to ask
+Mrs. Ruyler to come down to the library as soon as she was dressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+I
+
+Ruyler sighed as he heard his wife walk down the hall. There had been a
+time when she came running like a child at his summons, but in these days
+she walked with a leisurely dignity which to his possibly morbid ear
+betrayed a certain crab-like disposition in her little high heels to slip
+backward along the polished floor.
+
+She came in smiling, however, and kissed him quickly and warmly. Her
+extraordinary hair hung down in two long braids, their blue blackness
+undulating among the soft folds of her thin pink negligée. For the first
+time Ruyler realized that pink was Hélène's favorite color; she seldom
+wore anything else except white or black, and then always relieved with
+pink. And why not, with that deep pink blush in her white cheeks, and the
+velvet blackness of her eyes? People still raved over Hélène Ruyler's
+"coloring," and Price told himself once more as she stood before him, her
+little head dragged back by the weight of her plaits, her slender throat
+crossed by a narrow line of black velvet, that he had married one of the
+most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
+
+He was seized with a sudden sharp pang of jealousy and caught her in his
+arms roughly, his gray eyes almost as black as hers.
+
+"Tell me," he exclaimed, and the new fear almost choked him, "does any
+other man interest you--the least little bit?"
+
+She stared at him and then burst into the most natural laugh he had heard
+from her for months. "That is simply too funny to talk about."
+
+"But I am able to give you so little of my time. Working or tired out at
+night--letting you go out so much alone--but I haven't the heart to
+insist that you yawn over a book, while I am shut up here, or too fagged
+to talk even to you. Life is becoming a tragedy for business men--if
+they've got it in them to care for anything else."
+
+"Well, don't add to the tragedy by cultivating jealousy. I've told you
+that I am perfectly willing to give up Society and sit like Dora holding
+your pens--or filling your fountain pen--no, you dictate. What chance has
+a woman in a business man's life?"
+
+"None, alas, except to look beautiful and be happy. Are you that?--the
+last I mean, of course!"
+
+She nestled closer to him and laughed again. "More so than ever. To be
+frank you have completed my happiness by being jealous. I have wondered
+sometimes if it were a compliment--your being so sure of me."
+
+"That's my idea of love."
+
+"Well, it's mine, too. But if you want me to stay home--"
+
+"Oh, no! You are fond of society? Really, I mean? Why shouldn't you
+be?--a young thing--"
+
+"What else is there? Of course, I should enjoy it much more if you were
+always with me. Shall we never have that year in Europe together?"
+
+"God knows. Something is wrong with the world. It needs
+reorganizing--from the top down. It is inhuman, the way even rich men
+have to work--to remain rich! But sit down."
+
+He led her over to a chair before the window. The storm was decreasing in
+violence, the heavy curtain of rain was no longer tossed, but falling in
+straight intermittent lines, and the islands were coming to life. Even
+the high and heavy crest of Mount Tamalpais was dimly visible.
+
+"It is the last of the storms, I fancy. Spring is overdue," said Price,
+who, however, was covertly watching his wife's face. Her color had faded
+a little, her lids drooped over eyes that stared out at the still
+turbulent waters.
+
+"I love these San Francisco storms," she said abruptly. "I am so glad we
+have these few wild months. But Mrs. Thornton has worried and so have we.
+Her fête at San Mateo comes off on the fourteenth, the first
+entertainment she has given since her return, and it would be ghastly if
+it rained. It should be a wonderful sight--those grounds--everybody in
+fancy dress with little black velvet masks. Don't you think you can go?"
+
+"The fourteenth? I'll try to make it. Who are you to be?"
+
+"Beatrice d'Este--in a court gown of black tissue instead of velvet, with
+just a touch of pink--oh, but a wonderful creation! I designed it myself.
+We are not bothering too much about historical accuracy."
+
+"How would you like this for the touch of pink!" He took the immense ruby
+from his pocket and tossed it into her lap.
+
+For a moment she stared at it with expanding eyes, then gave a
+little shriek of rapture and flung herself into his arms, the child
+he had married.
+
+"Is it true? But true? Shall I wear this wonderful thing? The women will
+die of jealousy. I shall feel like an empress--but more, more, I shall
+wear this lovely thing--I, I, Hélène Ruyler, born Perrin, who never had a
+franc in her pocket in Rouen! Price! Have you changed your mind--but no!
+I cannot believe it."
+
+That was it then! He watched her mobile face sharply. It expressed
+nothing but the excited rapture of a very young woman over a magnificent
+toy. There was none of the morbid feverish passion he had dreadfully
+anticipated. His spirits felt lighter, although he sighed that a bauble,
+even if it were one of the finest of its kind in the world, should have
+projected its sinister shadow between them. It had a wicked history. But
+Hélène saw no shadows. She held it up to the light, peered into it as it
+lay half concealed in the cup of her slender white hands, fondled it
+against her cheek, hung the chain about her neck.
+
+"How I have dreamed of it," she murmured. "How did you come to change
+your mind?"
+
+"I thought it a pity such a fine jewel should live forever in a safe; and
+it will become you above all women. Nature must have had you in her eye
+when she designed the ruby. I had a sudden vision ... and made up my mind
+that you should wear it the first time I was able to take you to a party.
+I must keep the letter of my promise."
+
+"And I can only wear it when you are with me?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+"I'm you, if there is anything in the marriage ceremony." Then she kissed
+him impulsively. "But I won't be a little pig. And I can tell everybody
+between now and the Thornton fête that I am going to wear it, and I can
+think and dream of my triumph meanwhile. But why didn't you let me know
+you were down? It is Sunday, our only day. I overslept shockingly. I
+didn't get home till two."
+
+"Two? Do you dance until two every night?"
+
+"What else? They lead such a purposeless life out here. We sometimes have
+classes--but they don't last long. I have almost forgotten that I once
+had a serious mind. But what would you? It is either society or suffrage.
+I won't be as serious as that yet. I mean to be young--but young! for
+five more years. Then I shall become a 'leader,' or vote for the
+President, or ride on a float in a suffrage parade dressed as the Goddess
+of Liberty, with my hair down."
+
+He laughed, more and more relieved. "Yes, please remain young until you
+are twenty-five. By that time I hope the world will have adjusted itself
+and I shall have the leisure to companion you. Meanwhile, be a child. It
+is very refreshing to me. Come. I must lock this thing up. I have an
+interview here with Spaulding in about ten minutes."
+
+She gave it up reluctantly, kissing it much as she had kissed him during
+their engagement; warm, lingering, but almost impersonal kisses. The ruby
+seemed miraculously to have restored her beaten youth.
+
+She sat on the edge of a chair as he opened the safe and placed the jewel
+in its box and drawer.
+
+"There is one other thing I wanted to ask," he said as he rose. "Is your
+allowance sufficient? It has sometimes occurred to me that you wanted
+more--for some feminine extravagance."
+
+The light went out of her face. He wondered whimsically if he had locked
+it in with the ruby, and once more he was conscious that something
+intangible floated between them. But she looked at him squarely with her
+shadowed eyes.
+
+"Oh, one could spend any amount, of course, but I really have
+quite enough."
+
+"You shall have double your present allowance when these cursed times
+improve. And I have always intended to settle a couple of hundred
+thousand on you--a quarter of a million--as soon as I could realize
+without loss on certain investments. But one day I want you to be quite
+independent."
+
+Her eyes had opened very wide. "A quarter of a million? And it would be
+all my own? I could do anything with it I liked?"
+
+"Well--I think I should put it in trust. I haven't much faith in the
+resistance of your sex to tempting investments promising a high rate of
+interest."
+
+"I have heard you say that when rich men die the amount of worthless
+stock found in their safe deposit boxes passes belief."
+
+"Quite true. But that is hardly an argument in favor of trusting an even
+more inexperienced sex with large sums of money."
+
+She laughed, but less naturally than when he had been seized with an
+unwonted spasm of jealousy. "You will always get the best of me in an
+argument," she said with her exquisite politeness. "Really, I think I
+love being wholly dependent upon you. Here comes your detective. What
+a bore. But at least we lunch together if we do have company. And
+thank you, thank you a thousand times for promising I shall wear the
+ruby at last."
+
+She slipped her hand into his for a second, then left the room, smiling
+over her shoulder, as the locally celebrated "Jake" Spaulding entered.
+Both Ruyler and his general manager had thought it best to have their
+cashier watched. There were rumors of gambling and other road house
+diversions, and they proposed to save their man to the firm, if possible;
+if not, to discharge him before he followed the usual course and involved
+Ruyler and Sons in the loss of thousands they could ill afford to spare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I
+
+On the following day Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion
+that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to
+remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began
+dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and
+complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape
+from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate
+suddenly begins to take a dramatic interest in a man whose course has run
+like a yacht before a strong breeze, she precipitates him toward one half
+crisis after another in order to confuse his mental powers and render him
+wholly a puppet for the final act. These little Earth histrionics are
+arranged no doubt for the weary gods, who hardly brook a mere mortal
+rising triumphantly above the malignant moods of the master playwright.
+
+He lunched at the Pacific Union Club and caught the down-town California
+Street cable car as it passed, finding his favorite seat on the left side
+of the "dummy" unoccupied. He was thinking of Hélène, a little
+disappointed, but on the whole vastly relieved, congratulating himself
+that, no longer haunted, he could give his mind wholly to the important
+question of the merger he contemplated with a rival house that had limped
+along since the disaster, but had at last manifested its willingness to
+accept the offer of Ruyler and Sons.
+
+It was a moment before he realized that his mother-in-law occupied the
+front seat across the narrow space, and even before he recognized that
+large bulk, he had registered something rigid and tense in its muscles;
+strained in its attitude. When he raised his eyes to the face he found
+himself looking at the right cheek instead of the left, and it was
+pervaded by a sickly green tint quite unlike Madame Delano's florid
+color. She was listening to a man who sat just behind her on the long
+seat that ran the length of the dummy. Although the day was clear, there
+was still a sharp wind and no one else sat outside.
+
+Ruyler knew the man by sight. Before the fire he had owned some of the
+most disreputable houses in the district the car would pass on its way to
+the terminus. The buildings were uninsured, and he had made his living
+since as a detective. Even his political breed had gone out of power in
+the new San Francisco, but he was well equipped for a certain type of
+detective work. He had a remarkable memory for faces and could pierce any
+disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the
+underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were
+that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were
+his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap
+restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked,
+although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man
+with pendulous cheeks streaked with red, a predatory nose, and a black
+overhanging mustache. His name was 'Gene Bisbee, and there was a
+tradition that in his younger days he had been handsome, and irresistible
+to the women who had made his fortune.
+
+Ruyler was absently wondering what his haughty mother-in-law could have
+to say to such a man when to his amazement Bisbee planted his elbow in
+the pillow of flesh just below Madame Delano's neck, and said easily:
+
+"Oh, come off, Marie. I'd know you if you were twenty years older and
+fifty pounds heavier--and that's going some. Bimmer and two or three
+others are not so sure--won't bet on it--for twenty years, and, let me
+see--you weighed about a hundred and thirty-five--perfect figger--in the
+old days. Must weigh two seventy-five now. That makes one forty-five
+pounds extra. Well, that and time, and white hair, would change pretty
+near any woman, particularly one with small features. You look a real old
+lady, and you can't be mor'n forty-five. How did you manage the white
+hair? Bleach?"
+
+Ruyler felt his heart turn over. The frozen blood pounded in his brain
+and distended his own muscles, his mouth unclosed to let his breath
+escape. Then he became aware that the woman had recovered herself and
+moved forward, displacing the familiar elbow. She turned imperiously to
+the motorman.
+
+"Stop at the corner," she said. "And if this man attempts to follow me
+please send back a policeman. He is intoxicated."
+
+The car stopped at the corner of the street opposite the site of the
+old Saint Mary's Cathedral, a street where once had been that row of
+small and evil cottages where French women, painted, scantily dressed
+in a travesty of the evening gown, called to the passer-by through the
+slats of old-fashioned green shutters. That had been before Ruyler's
+day, but he knew the history of the neighborhood, and this man's
+interest in it. He was not surprised to hear Bisbee laugh aloud as
+Madame Delano, who stepped off the car with astonishing agility,
+waddled down the now respectable street. But she held her head
+majestically and did not look back.
+
+Ruyler squared his back lest the man, glancing over, recognize him. That
+would be more than he could bear. As the car reached Front Street he
+sprang from the dummy and walked rapidly north to Ruyler and Sons. He
+locked himself in his private office, dismissing his stenographer with
+the excuse that he had important business to think out and must not be
+disturbed.
+
+
+II
+
+But business was forgotten. He was as nearly in a state of panic as was
+possible for a man of his inheritance and ordered life. He belonged to
+that class of New Yorker that looked with cold disgust upon the women of
+commerce. So far as he knew he had never exchanged a word with one of
+them, and had often listened with impatience to the reminiscences of his
+San Francisco friends, now married and at least intermittently decent, of
+the famous ladies who once had reigned in the gay night life of San
+Francisco.
+
+And his mother-in-law! The mother of his wife!
+
+Her name was Marie. In that chaos of flesh an interested eye might
+discover the ruins of beauty. Her hair, he knew, had been black. He
+recalled the terror expressed in every line of that mountainous
+figure--which may well have been perfect twenty years ago. The green
+pallor of her cheek! And he had long felt, rather than knew, that she
+possessed magnificent powers of bluff. Her dignified exit had been no
+more convincing to him than to Bisbee.
+
+He went back over the past and recalled all he knew of the woman whose
+daughter he had married. She had visited the United States about
+twenty-one years ago, met and married Delano, and remained in San
+Francisco two or three months on their way to Japan. Delano had died on
+the voyage across the Pacific, been buried at sea, and his widow had
+returned to her family in Rouen and settled down in her brother's
+household.
+
+This was practically all he knew, for it was all that Hélène knew, and
+Madame Delano never wasted words. It had not occurred to him to question
+her. Their status in Rouen was established, and if not distinguished it
+was indubitably respectable and not remotely suggestive of mystery.
+
+Price, convinced that Hélène's father must have been a gentleman,
+recalled that he had asked her one day to tell him something of the
+Delanos, but his wife had replied vaguely that she believed her
+mother had been too sad to talk about him for a long while, and then
+probably had got out of the habit. She knew nothing more than she
+already had told him.
+
+It came back to him, however, that several times his wife's casual
+references to the past, and particularly regarding her parents, had not
+dove-tailed, but that he had dismissed the impression; attributing it to
+some lapse in his own attention. He had a bad habit of listening and
+thinking out a knotty business problem at the same time. And there is a
+curious inhibition in loyal minds which forbids them to put two and two
+together until suspicion is inescapably aroused.
+
+He had a very well ordered mind, furnished with innumerable little pigeon
+holes, which flew open at the proper vibration from his admirable memory.
+He concentrated this memory upon a little bureau of purely personal
+receptacles and before long certain careless phrases of his wife stood in
+a neat row.
+
+She had mentioned upon one occasion that she thought she must have been
+about five when she arrived in Rouen, and remembered her first impression
+of the Cathedral as well as the boats on the Seine at night. And Cousin
+Pierre had taken her up the river one Sunday to the church on the height
+which had been built for a statue of the Virgin that had been excavated
+there, and bade her kneel and pray at this station for what she wished
+most. She had prayed for a large wax doll that said papa and mama, and
+behold, it had arrived the next day.
+
+Madame Delano had told him unequivocally that she had gone directly to
+Rouen after her husband's death ... but again, although Hélène
+remembered arriving in Rouen with her mother, she must have been left
+for a time elsewhere, for Hélène had another memory--of a convent, where
+she had tarried for what seemed a very long time to her childish mind.
+Could she have been sent to a convent from the house in Rouen when she
+was so little that her memories of that first sojourn were confused? And
+why? The family had apparently been fond of "la petite Americaine," and
+even if her devoted mother had been obliged to leave her for several
+years it is doubtful if they would have sent so young a child to a
+convent. Rack his memory as he would he could recall no allusion to such
+a journey, to any separation between mother and child after they were
+established in Rouen.
+
+But he did remember one of Madame Delano's few references to the past,
+which might suggest that she had left the child somewhere while she went
+home to make peace with her family to get her bearings. Her brother had
+not approved of her marrying an American. "But," she had added
+graciously, "you see I had no such prejudice. Neither now nor then. James
+was the best of husbands."
+
+"James!" "Jim."
+
+He had heard the name Jim as he boarded the dummy, uttered in extremely
+familiar accents; by Bisbee, of course. Yes, and something else. "We all
+felt bad when he croaked."
+
+His feverishly alert memory darted to another pigeon hole and exhumed
+another treasure. Some ten or twelve months ago he had been obliged to go
+to a northern county on business that involved buying up smaller
+concerns, and would keep him away for a fortnight or more. He had taken
+Hélène, and as they were motoring through one of the old towns she had
+leaned forward with a little gasp exclaiming:
+
+"How exactly like! If I didn't know that I had never been in California
+before except merely to be born here I could vow that is where I lived
+with the dear nuns."
+
+He had asked idly: "Where was your convent?" and she had shaken her head.
+"Maman says I never was in a convent, that I dreamed it." She had lifted
+to Ruyler a puzzled face. "I remember she punished me once, when I was
+about seven and persisted in talking about the convent--I suppose I had
+forgotten it for a time in the new life, and something brought it back to
+me. But it is the most vivid memory of my childhood. Do you think I could
+have been one of those uncanny children that live in a dream world? I
+hope not. I like to think I am quite normal and full to the brim of
+common sense." He had laughed and told her not to worry. He had lived in
+a dream world himself when he was little.
+
+The conviction grew upon him as he sat there that Hélène had spent the
+first five years of her life at the Ursuline Convent in St. Peter. What
+had her mother--young and beautiful--been doing during those years, the
+years of a mother's most anxious devotion and pleasurable interest? He
+searched his memory for Club reminiscences of a Marie Delano of twenty
+years earlier, or less. No such name rewarded his mental explorations,
+and Marie Delano was not a name likely to escape.
+
+He exclaimed aloud at his stupidity. The astute French woman was hardly
+likely to return to the scene of her former triumphs with an innocent
+young daughter and an infamous name. Nor, apparently, had she carried it
+to Rouen after she had manifestly foresworn vice for the sake of her
+child, even to the length of resigning herself to the dullness of a
+provincial town.
+
+But "Jim"? Her husband? Could Bisbee have referred to some other Jim who
+had "croaked" recently? Such women have more than one Jim in their
+voluminous lives.
+
+Ruyler had that order of mental temperament to which dubiety is the
+one unendurable condition; he had none of that cowardice which
+postpones an unpleasant solution until the inevitable moment. Whatever
+this hideous mystery he would solve it as quickly as possible and then
+put it out of his life. Beyond question poor Hélène was the victim of
+blackmail; that was the logical explanation of her ill-concealed
+anxiety--misery, no doubt!
+
+He wished she had had the courage to come directly to him, but it was
+idle to expect the resolution of a woman of thirty in a child of twenty.
+It was apparent that she had even tried to shield her mother, for that
+Madame Delano had been caught unaware to-day was indisputable.
+
+What incredible impudence--or courage?--to return here! There were other
+resorts in the South and on the Eastern Coast where a pretty girl might
+reap the harvest of innocent and lovely youth.
+
+Once more his mind abruptly focused itself.
+
+Shortly after his marriage Madame Delano had asked him casually if he
+could inform her as to the reliability of a certain firm of lawyers,
+Lawton, Cross and Co. She "thought of buying a ranch," and the firm had
+been suggested to her by some one or other of these rich people. She also
+wished to make a will.
+
+He had replied as casually that it was a leading firm, and forgotten the
+incident promptly. He recalled now that several times he had seen his
+mother-in-law coming out of the Monadnock Building, where this firm had
+its offices. He had upon one occasion met her in the lift and she had
+explained with unaccustomed volubility that she was still thinking of
+buying a ranch, possibly in Napa County. She understood that quite a
+fortune might be made in fruit, and it would be a diverting interest for
+her old age. Possibly she might encourage a favorite nephew to come out
+and help her run it.
+
+Ruyler, who had been absorbed in his own affairs and hated the sight of
+any woman during business hours, had felt like telling her that if she
+wanted to sink her money in a ranch, that was as good a way to get rid of
+it as any, but had merely nodded and left the elevator. He was not the
+man to give any one unasked advice and be snubbed for his pains.
+
+If "Jim" was her husband and had "croaked" some two years since, what
+more natural than that she had been obliged to come to California and
+settle his estate? Lawton and Cross would keep her secret, as California
+lawyers, with or without blackmail, had kept many others; perhaps she was
+an old friend of Lawton's. He had been a "bird" in his time.
+
+Undoubtedly this was the solution. Otherwise she never would have risked
+the return to San Francisco, even with her changed appearance.
+
+
+III
+
+It was time to dismiss speculation and proceed to action. He rang up
+detective headquarters and asked Jake Spaulding to come to him at once.
+
+Spaulding began: "But the matter ain't ripe yet, boss. Nothin' doin'
+last night--"
+
+But Ruyler cut him short. "Please come immediately--no, not here. Meet me
+at Long's."
+
+He left the building and walked rapidly to a well-known bar where
+estimable citizens, even when impervious to the seductions of cocktail
+and highball, often met in private soundproof rooms to discuss momentous
+deals, or invoke the aid of detectives whose appearance in home or office
+might cause the wary bird to fly away.
+
+The detective did not drink, so Ruyler ordered cigars, and a few moments
+later Spaulding strolled in. His physical movements always belied his
+nervous keen face. He was the antithesis of 'Gene Bisbee. All honest men
+compelled to have dealings with him liked and trusted him. A rich man
+could confide a disgraceful predicament to his keeping without fear of
+blackmail, and a poor man, if his cause were interesting, might command
+his services with a nominal fee. He loved the work and regarded himself
+as an artist, inasmuch as he was exercising a highly cultivated gift, not
+merely pursuing a lucrative profession. He sometimes longed, it is true,
+for worthier objects upon which to lavish this gift, and he found them a
+few years later when the world went to war. He was one of the most
+valuable men in the Federal Secret Service before the end of 1915.
+
+"What's up?" he asked, as he took possession of the most comfortable
+chair in the little room and lit a cigar. "You look as if you hadn't
+slept for a week, and you were lookin' fine yesterday."
+
+"Do you mind if I only half confide in you? It's a delicate matter. I'd
+like to ask you a few questions and may possibly ask you to find the
+answer to several others."
+
+"Fire away. Curiosity is not my vice. I'll only call for a clean breast
+if I find I can't work in the dark."
+
+"Thanks. Do--do you remember any woman of the town named--Marie Delano?"
+He swallowed hard but brought it out. "Who may have flourished here
+fifteen or twenty years ago?"
+
+Spaulding knew that Ruyler's wife had been named Delano, but he refrained
+from whistling and fixed his sharp honest blue eyes on the opposite wall.
+
+"Nope. Sounds fancy enough, but she was no Queen of the Red Light
+District in S.F."
+
+"I was convinced she could not have been known under that name. Do you
+know of any woman of that sort who was married--possibly--to a man whose
+first name was James--Jim--and who left abruptly, while she was still
+young and handsome, just about fifteen years ago?"
+
+"Lord, that's a poser! Do you mean to say she married and retired--landed
+some simp? They do once in a while. Could tell you queer things about
+certain ancestries in this old town."
+
+"No--I don't think that was it. I have reason to think she had been
+married for at least six years before she left. Can't you think of any
+Marie who was married to a Jim--in--in that class of life?"
+
+"I was pretty much of a kid fifteen years ago, but I can recall quite a
+few Maries and even more Jims. But the Jims were much too wary to marry
+the Maries. Try it again, partner. Let us approach from another angle.
+What did your Marie look like?"
+
+"She must have been tall--uncommonly tall--with black hair and small
+features; black eyes that must have been large at that time.
+I--I--believe she had a very fine figure."
+
+"What nationality?"
+
+"French."
+
+The detective recrossed his legs. "French. Oh, Lord! The town was fairly
+overrun with them. Made you think there was nothing in all this talk
+about gay Paree. All the ladybirds seemed to have taken refuge here. You
+have no idea of her last name!"
+
+"It might have been Perrin."
+
+"Never. Not after she got here and set up in business. More likely
+Lestrange or Delacourt--"
+
+"Was there a Delacourt?"
+
+"Not that I remember. I don't see light anywhere. Of course it won't take
+me twenty-four hours to get hold of the history and appearance of every
+queen who was named Marie fifteen years ago, and your description helps a
+lot. Records were burned, but some of the older men on the force are
+walking archives. For the matter of that you might draw out some old
+codger in your club and get as much as I can give you--"
+
+"Rather not! I think I'll have to give you my confidence."
+
+"Much the shortest and straightest route. Just fancy you're takin' a
+nasty dose of medicine for the good of your health. I guess this is a
+case where I can't work in the dark."
+
+"Have you ever noticed an elderly woman, seated in the court of the
+Palace Hotel--immensely stout?"
+
+"I should say I had. One of the sights of S.F. Why--of course--she's your
+mother-in-law!"
+
+"Has there been any talk about her!"
+
+"Some comment on her size. And her childlike delight in watchin'
+the show."
+
+"Nothing else? No one has claimed to recognize her?"
+
+Spaulding sat up straight, his nose pointing. "Recognize her? What
+d'you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I overheard a conversation--one-sided--to-day on the
+California Street dummy, in which Bisbee accused Madame Delano
+practically of what I have told you. At least that is the way I
+interpreted it. He called her Marie, alluded in an unmistakable manner to
+a disgraceful past in which he had known her intimately, and was
+confident that he recognized her in spite of her flesh and white hair. I
+am positive that she recognized him, although she was clever enough not
+to reply."
+
+"Jimminy! The plot thickens. That scoundrel never forgot a face in his
+life. I don't train with him--not by a long sight--so if there's been any
+talk in his bunch, I naturally wouldn't have heard it. You say her name
+is Marie now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Perrin is her real name?"
+
+"She comes of a well-known family of Rouen of that name. She lived there
+with her child for at least thirteen years before her return to
+California. Of that I am certain. Her daughter is now twenty. I wish to
+know where she kept that child during the first five years of its life. I
+have reason to think it was in the Ursuline Convent at St. Peter."
+
+"That's easy settled. And you think the father's first name was Jim?"
+
+"She told me that his name was James Delano. Also that he died within the
+first year of their marriage, when the child was two months old, during
+the voyage to Japan. That may be, but I can see no reason for her
+returning here unless he died more recently and the settlement of his
+estate demanded her presence."
+
+"Pretty good reasoning, particularly if you are sure she stayed here
+until the child was five. Some of them have pretty decent instincts. She
+may have made up her mind to give the kid a chance, and returned to her
+relations. Of course we must assume that they knew nothing of her life."
+
+"I am positive they did not. But there had been some sort of
+estrangement. I have been given to understand that it was because she
+married an American. Of course she may not have written to them at all
+for six or seven years. Her story is that she was visiting other
+relatives in a place called Holbrook Centre, Vermont, and met this man
+and married him. Then that he was detained by business in San Francisco
+for several months, and the child born here."
+
+"Good commonplace story. Just the sort that is never questioned. Of
+course if she did not correspond with her family during all that time she
+could adopt any name for her return to respectability that she chose.
+Delano wasn't it? That's certain. What line do you intend to take? After
+I've delivered the facts?"
+
+"My object is to have the child's legitimacy established, if possible,
+then see that Madame Delano leaves California forever. I think that she
+could be terrified by a threat of blackmail. I can't imagine the mere
+chance of recognition worrying her, for I should say she had as much
+courage as presence of mind. But her passion is money. If she thought
+there was any danger of being forced to hand over what she has I fancy
+she would get out as quickly as possible. She is an intelligent woman and
+I imagine she has taken a sardonic pleasure in sitting out in full view
+of San Francisco, and getting away with it."
+
+"And marrying her girl to the greatest catch in California," thought the
+detective, but he said:
+
+"I believe you're dead right, although, of course, there may be nothing
+in it. Even 'Gene Bisbee might be mistaken, pryin' a gazelle out of an
+elephant like that. Now, tell me all you know."
+
+When Ruyler had covered every point Spaulding nodded. "It's possible this
+Jim was the maquereau and she made him marry her for the sake of the
+child. Doubt if the date can be proved except through the lawyers, and it
+will be hard to make them talk. Of course if there is a Holbrook Centre
+and she was married there--but I have my doubts. The point is that he
+evidently married her if she is settlin' up his estate. I'll find out
+what Jims have died within the last three years or so. That's easy. The
+direct route to the one we want is through St. Peter. I'll go up
+to-night."
+
+"And you'll report to-morrow?"
+
+"Yep. Meet me here at six P.M. Lucky the man seems to have died after
+the fire. I'll set some one on the job of searching death records
+right away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+I
+
+Ruyler had half promised to go to a dinner that night at the house of
+John Gwynne, whose wife would chaperon his wife afterward to the last of
+the Assembly dances.
+
+Gwynne was his English friend who had abandoned the ancient title
+inherited untimely when he was making a reputation in the House of
+Commons, and become an American citizen in California, where he had a
+large ranch originally the property of an American grandmother. His
+migration had been justified in his own eyes by his ready adaptation to
+the land of his choice and to the opportunities offered in the rebuilding
+of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire, as well as in the
+renovation of its politics. He had made his ranch profitable, read law as
+a stepping-stone to the political career, and had just been elected to
+Congress. Ruyler was one of his few intimate friends and had promised to
+go to this farewell dinner if possible. A place would be kept vacant for
+him until the last minute.
+
+Gwynne had married Isabel Otis[A], a Californian of distinguished beauty
+and abilities, whose roots were deep in San Francisco, although she had
+"run a ranch" in Sonoma County. The Gwynnes and the Thorntons until
+Ruyler met Hélène had been the friends whose society he had sought most
+in his rare hours of leisure, and he had spent many summer week-ends at
+their country homes. He had hoped that the intimacy would deepen after
+his marriage, but Hélène during the past year had gone almost exclusively
+with the younger set, the "dancing squad"; natural enough considering her
+age, but Ruyler would have expected a girl of so much intelligence, to
+say nothing of her severe education, to have tired long since of that
+artificial wing of society devoted solely to froth, and gravitated
+naturally toward the best the city afforded. But she had appeared to like
+the older women better at first than later, although she accepted their
+invitations to large dinners and dances.
+
+[Footnote A: See "Ancestors."]
+
+Ruyler made up his mind to attend this dinner at Gwynne's, and telephoned
+his acceptance before he left Long's. Business or no business, he should
+be his wife's bodyguard hereafter. There were blackmailers in society as
+out of it, and it was possible that his ubiquity would frighten them off.
+Whether to demand his wife's confidence or not he was undecided. Better
+let events determine.
+
+
+II
+
+When he arrived at home he went directly to Hélène's room, but paused
+with his hand on the knob of the door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice
+and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position
+to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when
+Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones.
+
+"And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I
+never believed--"
+
+Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he
+had taken a cold shower and was half dressed that he permitted
+himself to think.
+
+That wretch had known, then! It was she who had been blackmailing her
+daughter. And the poor child had been afraid to confide in him, to ask
+him for money. No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a
+fortune of her own....
+
+An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point. His wife was
+not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself. True, she was French
+and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of
+self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his
+centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.
+
+What woman would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets
+which were no fault of hers? A much older woman would not be above
+entombing them, if the fates were kind. But it saddened him to think that
+his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way. Poor child,
+he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit
+and shift her burden to his own shoulders.
+
+Having learned through the medium of the house telephone that his
+mother-in-law had departed, he knocked at his wife's door. She opened it
+at once and there was no mark of agitation on her little oval face under
+its proudly carried crown of heavy braids. She was looking very lovely in
+a severe black velvet gown whose texture and depth cunningly matched her
+eyes and threw into a relief as artful the white purity of her skin and
+the delicate pink of lip and cheek.
+
+She smiled at him brilliantly. "It can't be true that you are
+going with me?"
+
+"I've reformed. I shall go with you everywhere from this time forth. But
+I thought I heard your mother's voice when I came in--"
+
+"She often comes in about dressing time to see me in a new frock. How
+heavenly that you will always go with me." Her voice shook a little and
+she leaned over to smooth a possible wrinkle in her girdle.
+
+"Will you come down to the library? We are rather early."
+
+He went directly to the safe and took out the ruby and clasped the chain
+about her neck. The chain was long and the great jewel took a deeper and
+more mysterious color from the somber background of her bodice.
+
+Hélène gasped. "Am I to wear it to-night? That would be too wonderful.
+This is the last great night in town."
+
+"Why not? I shall be there to mount guard. You shall always wear it when
+I am able to go out with you."
+
+She lifted her radiant face, although it remained subtly immobile with a
+new and almost formal self-possession. "I am even more delighted than I
+was yesterday, for at the fête there will be so much novelty to distract
+attention. You always think of the nicest possible things."
+
+When they were in the taxi he put his arm about her.
+
+"I wonder," he began gropingly, "if you would mind not going out when I
+cannot go with you? I'll go as often as I can manage. There are
+reasons--"
+
+He felt her light body grow rigid. "Reasons? You told me only
+yesterday--"
+
+"I know. But I have been thinking it over. That is rather a fast lot you
+run with. I know, of course, they are F.F.C.'s, and all the rest of it,
+but if I ever drove up to the Club House in Burlingame in the morning and
+saw you sitting on the veranda smoking and drinking gin fizzes--"
+
+"You never will! I could not swallow a gin fizz, or any nasty mixed
+drink. And although I have had my cigarette after meals ever since I was
+fifteen, I never smoke in public."
+
+"I confess I cannot see you in the picture that rose for some perverse
+reason in my mind; but--well, you really are too young to go about so
+much without your husband--"
+
+"I am always chaperoned to the large affairs. Mrs. Gwynne takes me to the
+Fairmont to-night."
+
+"I know. But scandal is bred in the marrow of San Francisco. Its social
+history is founded upon it, and it is almost a matter of principle to
+replace decaying props. Do you mind so much not going about unless I can
+be with you?"
+
+"No, of course not." Her voice was sweet and submissive, but her body did
+not relax. She added graciously: "After all, there are so many luncheons,
+and we often dance in the afternoon."
+
+He had not thought of that! What avail to guard her merely in the
+evening? It was not her life that was in danger....
+
+And he seemed as immeasurably far from obtaining her confidence as
+before. He had always understood that the ways of matrimonial diplomacy
+were strewn with pitfalls and wished that some one had opened a school
+for married men before his time.
+
+He made another clumsy attempt. The cab was swift and had almost covered
+the long distance between the Western Addition and Russian Hill. "Other
+things have worried me. You are so generous. Society here as elsewhere
+has its parasites, its dead beats, trying to limp along by borrowing,
+gambling, 'amusing,' doing dirty work of various sorts. It has worried me
+lest one or more of these creatures may have tried to impose on you with
+hard luck tales--borrow--"
+
+She laughed hysterically. "Price, you are too funny! I do lend
+occasionally--to the girls, when their allowance runs out before the
+first of the month; but I don't know any dead beats."
+
+He plunged desperately. "Your mother's voice sounded rather agitated for
+her. Of course I did not stop to listen, but it occurred to me that she
+may have been gambling in stocks, or have got into some bad land deal.
+She is so confoundedly close-mouthed--if she wants money send her to me."
+
+Hélène sat very straight. Her little aquiline profile against the passing
+street lights was as aloof as imperial features on an ancient coin.
+
+"Really, Price, I don't think you can be as busy as you pretend if you
+have time to indulge in such flights of imagination. Maman has never
+tried to borrow a penny of me, and she is the last person on earth to
+gamble in stocks or any thing else. Or to buy land except on expert
+advice. I think she has given up that idea, anyhow. She said this evening
+she thought it was time for her to visit our people in Rouen."
+
+"Oh, she did! Hélène, I must tell you frankly that I heard her reproach
+you for having broken a promise, and she spoke with deep feeling."
+
+It was possible that the Roman profile turned white, but in the dusk of
+the car he could not be sure. His wife, however, merely shrugged her
+shoulders and replied calmly:
+
+"My dear Price, if that has worried you, why didn't you say so at once? I
+am rather ashamed to tell you, all the same. Maman has been at me lately
+to persuade you to let her have the ruby for a week. She is dreadfully
+superstitious, poor maman, and is convinced it would bring her some
+tremendous good fortune--"
+
+"I have never met a woman who, I could swear, was freer from
+superstition--"
+
+Price closed his lips angrily. Of what use to tax her feminine defenses
+further? He had known her long enough to be sure she would rather tell
+the truth than lie. It was evident that she had no intention of lowering
+her barriers, and he must play the game from the other end: get the proof
+he needed and engineer his mother-in-law out of the United States.
+
+Some time, however, he would have it out with his wife. Being a business
+man and always alert to outwit the other man, he wanted neither intrigue
+nor mystery in his home, but a serene happiness founded upon perfect
+confidence. He found it impossible to remain appalled or angry at his
+wife's readiness of resource in guarding a family secret that must have
+shocked the youth in her almost out of existence.
+
+He patted her hand, and felt its chill within the glove.
+
+"It was like you never to have mentioned it," he murmured. "For, of
+course, it is quite impossible."
+
+"That is what I told her decidedly to-night, and I do not think she will
+ask again. It hurts me to refuse dear maman anything. Her devotion to me
+has been wonderful--but wonderful," she added on a defiant note.
+
+"A mother's devotion, particularly to a girl of your sort, does not make
+any call upon my exclamation points. But here we are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The car rolled up the graded driveway Gwynne had built for the old San
+Francisco house that before his day had been approached by an almost
+perpendicular flight of wooden steps. They were late and the company
+had assembled: the Thorntons, Trennahans, and eight or ten young
+people, all of whom would be chaperoned by the married women to the
+dance at the Fairmont.
+
+Russian Hill had escaped the fire, but Nob Hill had been burnt down to
+its bones, and the Thorntons and Trennahans had not rebuilt, preferring,
+like many others, to live the year round in their country homes and use
+the hotels in winter.
+
+The moment Hélène entered the drawing-room it was evident that the ruby
+was to make as great a sensation as the soul of woman could desire. Even
+the older people flocked about her and the girls were frank and shrill in
+their astonishment and rapture.
+
+"Hélène! Darling! The duckiest thing--I never saw anything so perfectly
+dandy and wonderful! I'd go simply mad! Do, just let me touch it! I
+could eat it!"
+
+Mrs. Thornton, who at any time scorned to conceal envy, or pretend
+indifference, looked at the great burning stone with a sigh and turned to
+her husband.
+
+"Why didn't you manage to get it for me?" she demanded. "It would be far
+more suitable--a magnificent stone like that!--on me than on that baby."
+
+"My darling," murmured Ford anxiously, "I never laid eyes on the thing
+before, or on one like it. I'll find out where Ruyler got it, and try--"
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come out with a duplicate? You should have thought of
+it years ago. You always promised to take me to India."
+
+"It should be on you!" He gazed at her adoringly. Her hair was dressed
+in a high and stately fashion to-night. She wore a gown of gold brocade
+and a necklace and little tiara of emeralds and diamonds; she was
+looking very handsome and very regal. Thornton was a thin, dark, nervous
+wisp of a man, who had borne his share of the burdens laid upon his city
+in the cataclysm of 1906, but if his wife had demanded an enormous
+historic ruby he would have done his best to gratify her. But how the
+deuce could a man--
+
+Mrs. Gwynne was holding the stone in her hand and smiling into its
+flaming depths without envy. She was one of those women of dazzling white
+skin, black hair and blue eyes, who, when wise, never wear any jewels but
+pearls. She wore the Gwynne pearls to-night and a shimmering white gown.
+
+Ruyler glanced round the fine old room with the warm feeling of
+satisfaction he always experienced at a San Francisco function, where the
+women were almost as invariably pretty as they were gay and friendly. He
+did not like the younger men he met on these occasions as well as he did
+many of the older ones; the serious ones would not waste their time on
+society, and there were too many of the sort who were asked everywhere
+because they had made a cult of fashion, whether they could afford it or
+not. A few were the sons of wealthy parents, and were more dissipated
+than those obliged to "hold down" a job that provided them with money
+enough above their bare living expenses to make them useful and
+presentable.
+
+Ruyler looked upon both sorts as cumberers of the earth, and only
+tolerated them in his own house when his wife gave a party and dancing
+men must be had at any price.
+
+There was one man here to-night for whom he had always held particular
+detestation. His name was Nicolas Doremus. He was a broker in a small
+way, but Ruyler guessed that he made the best part of his income at
+bridge, possibly poker. He lived with two other men in a handsome
+apartment in one of the new buildings that were changing the old skyline
+of San Francisco. His dancing teas and suppers were admirably appointed
+and the most exclusive people went to them.
+
+Ruyler knew his history in a general way. His father had made a fortune
+in "Con. Virginia" in the Seventies, and his mother for a few years had
+been the social equal of the women who now patronized her son. But
+unfortunately the gambling microbe settled down in Harry Doremus' veins,
+and shortly after his son was born he engaged his favorite room at the
+Cliff House and blew out his brains. His wife was left with a large
+house, which as a last act of grace he had forborne to mortgage and made
+over to her by deed. She immediately advertised for boarders, and as her
+cooking was excellent and she had the wit to drop out of society and give
+her undivided attention to business, she prospered exceedingly.
+
+She concentrated her ambitions upon her only child; sent him to a private
+school patronized by the sons of the wealthy, and herself taught him
+every ingratiating social art. She wanted him to go to college, but by
+this time "Nick" was nineteen and as highly developed a snob as her
+maternal heart had planned. Knowing that he must support himself
+eventually, he was determined to begin his business career at once, and
+believed, with some truth, that there was a prejudice in this broad field
+against college men. He entered the brokerage firm of a bachelor who had
+occupied Mrs. Doremus' best suite for fifteen years, and made a
+satisfactory clerk, the while he cultivated his mother's old friends.
+
+When Mrs. Doremus died he sold the house and good will for a considerable
+sum, and, combining it with her respectable savings, formed a partnership
+with two other young fellows, whose fathers were rich, but old-fashioned
+enough to insist that their sons should work. Nick did most of the work.
+His partners, during the rainy season, sat with their feet on the
+radiator and read the popular magazines, and in fine weather upheld the
+outdoor traditions of the state.
+
+The firm had a slender patronage, as Ruyler happened to know, but Doremus
+was a member of the Pacific Union Club, and although he dined out every
+night, he must have spent six or seven thousand a year. It was amiably
+assumed that his social services,--he played and sang and often
+entertained exacting groups throughout an entire evening--his fetching
+and carrying for one rich old lady, accounted for his ability to keep out
+of debt and pay for his many extravagances; but Ruyler knew that he was
+principally esteemed at the small green table, and he vaguely recalled as
+he looked over his head to-night that he had heard disconnected murmurs
+of less honorable sources of revenue.
+
+As Ruyler turned away with a frown he met Gwynne's eyes traveling from
+the same direction. "I didn't ask him," he said apologetically. "Hate men
+too well dressed. Looks as if he posed for tailors' ads in the weeklies.
+Never could stand the social parasite anyhow, but Aileen Lawton asked
+Isabel to let her bring him, as they are going to open the ball to-night
+with some new kind of turkey trot.
+
+"Glad I'm off for Washington. California's the greatest place on earth in
+the dry season, but I'd have passed few winters here if it hadn't been
+for the work we all had to do, and even then it would have been heavy
+going without my wife's companionship."
+
+Ruyler sighed. Should he ever enjoy his wife's companionship? And into
+what sort of woman would she develop if forced along crooked ways by ugly
+secrets, blackmail, perpetual lying and deceit? He longed impatiently for
+the decisive interview with Spaulding on the morrow. Then, at least he
+could prepare for action, and, after all, even of more importance now
+than winning his wife's confidence and saving her from mental anguish,
+was the averting of a scandal that would echo across the continent
+straight into the ears of his half-reconciled father.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed
+every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock
+that afternoon.
+
+Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in
+California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish
+California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had
+been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial
+anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had
+fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group
+at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested
+in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had
+forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone
+in to dinner.
+
+But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured
+by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a discussion over
+the merits of the new mayor, Price became aware that Doremus sat beside
+his wife halfway down the table on the opposite side, and that they
+were talking, if not arguing, in a low tone, oblivious for the moment
+of the company.
+
+The deferential bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social
+explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose
+beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance
+of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the
+aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague
+threat in that poise, as if at any moment venom might dart down and
+strike that drooping head with its crown of blue-black braids. Suddenly
+Hélène lifted her eyes, full of appeal, to the round pale blue orbs that
+at this moment openly expressed a cold and ruthless mind.
+
+Ruyler endeavored to piece together those disconnected whispers--letters
+discovered or stolen--blackmail--but such whispers were too often the
+whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never
+seeming to bring any culprit to book.
+
+Had this man got hold of his wife's secret?
+
+But this merely sequacious thought was promptly routed. The young man,
+who was undeniably good looking and was rumored to possess a certain cold
+charm for women--although, to be sure, the wary San Francisco heiress had
+so far been impervious to it--was now leaning over Mrs. Price Ruyler with
+a coaxing possessive air, and the appeal left Hélène's eyes as she smiled
+coquettishly and began to talk with her usual animation; but still in a
+tone that was little more than a murmur.
+
+She moved her shoulder closer to the man she evidently was bent upon
+fascinating, and her long eyelashes swept up and down while her black
+eyes flashed and her pink color deepened.
+
+There was a faint amusement mixed with Doremus' habitual air of amiable
+deference, and somewhat more of assurance, but he was as absorbed as
+Hélène and had no eyes for Janet Maynard, on his left, whose fortune ran
+into millions.
+
+For a moment Ruyler, who had kept his nerve through several years of
+racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive,
+wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations
+and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition
+possible in the world of finance and commerce which could shatter his
+self-possession, cloud his mental processes. But his personal life had
+been singularly free of storms. Even his emotional upheaval, when he had
+fallen completely in love for the first time, had lacked that torment of
+uncertainty which might have played a certain havoc, for a time, with
+those quick unalterable decisions of the business hour; and even his
+engagement had only lasted a month.
+
+It was true that during the past six months he had worried off and on
+about the shadow that had fallen upon his wife's spirits and affected his
+own, but, when he had had time to think of it, before yesterday morning,
+he had assumed it was due to some phase of feminine psychology which he
+had never mastered. That she could be interested in another man never had
+crossed his mind, in spite of his passing flare of jealousy. She was
+still passionately in love with, him, for all her vagaries--or so he had
+thought--
+
+Ruyler was conscious of a riotous confusion of mind that really made him
+apprehensive. Had he witnessed that scene on the dummy--this
+afternoon?--it seemed a long while ago--had he heard those portentous
+words of his mother-in-law to his wife?--had they meant that she had
+warned her daughter against the bad blood in her veins, extracted a
+promise--broken!--to walk in the narrow way of the dutiful
+wife--mercifully spared by a fortunate marriage the terrible temptations
+of the older woman's youth? Had Hélène confessed ... in desperate need of
+help, advice? ... Doremus was just the bounder to compromise a woman and
+then blackmail her.... Good God! What _was_ it?
+
+For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only
+possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a
+bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the
+possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were
+matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo
+these days.
+
+Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco
+got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But
+this--if his wife had fallen in love with another man--and women had no
+discrimination where love was concerned--(if a decent chap got a lovely
+girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)--then indeed he
+was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the
+future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot....
+
+Hélène had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it
+indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to
+please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should
+think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never
+seen her in an unbecoming _déshabillé_; she coquetted with him
+shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only
+upon making him happy. Until lately--
+
+This was by no means her ordinary form.
+
+He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories,
+had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day ... there was,
+beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
+
+Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She
+moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked
+almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her
+remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and
+talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with
+the man on her right.
+
+At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was
+looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long,
+thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in
+his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of
+the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have
+remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was
+being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful
+woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.
+Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her
+until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this
+instance he should be his own detective.
+
+He turned to Mrs. Thornton.
+
+"Going on to the Fairmont?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have a new gown--have you admired it? Arrived from Paris last
+night--and I am chaperoning two of these girls. You are not, of course?"
+
+"I did intend to, but it's no go. Still, I may drop in late and take my
+wife home--"
+
+"Let me take her home." Was his imagination morbid, or was there
+something both peremptory and eager in Mrs. Thornton's tones? "I'm
+stopping at the Fairmont, of course, but Fordy and I often take a drive
+after a hot night and a heavy supper."
+
+"If you would take her home in case I miss it. I must go to the office--"
+
+"I'd like to. That's settled." This time her tones were warm and
+friendly. Ruyler knew that Mrs. Thornton did not like his wife, but her
+friendliness toward him, since her return from Europe three or four
+months ago, had increased, if anything. His mind was now working with its
+accustomed keen clarity. He recalled that there had been no surprise
+mixed with the contempt in her regard of his wife and Doremus.... He also
+recalled that several times of late when he had met her at the
+Fairmont--where he often lunched with a group of men--she had regarded
+him with a curious considering glance, which he suddenly vocalized as:
+"How long?"
+
+This affair had been going on for some time, then. Either it was common
+talk, or some circumstance had enlightened Mrs. Thornton alone.
+
+He glanced around the table. No one appeared to be taking the slightest
+notice of one of many flirtations. At least, whatever his wife's
+infatuation, he could avert gossip. Mrs. Thornton might be a tigress, but
+she was not a cat.
+
+"When do you go down to Burlingame?" she asked.
+
+"Not for two or three weeks yet. I don't fancy merely sleeping in the
+country. But by that time things will ease up a bit and I can get down
+every day in time to have a game of golf before dinner."
+
+"Shall Mrs. Ruyler migrate with the rest?"
+
+"Hardly."
+
+"It will be dull for her in town. No reflections on your charming
+society, but of course she does not get much of it, and she will miss her
+young friends. After all, she is a child and needs playmates."
+
+Ruyler darted at her a sharp look, but she was smiling amiably. Doremus
+and the men he lived with, in town had a bungalow at Burlingame and they
+bought their commutation tickets at precisely the fashionable moment.
+"She will stay in town," he said shortly. "She needs a rest, and San
+Francisco is the healthiest spot on earth."
+
+"But trying to the nerves when what we inaccurately call the trade winds
+begin. Why not let her stay with me? Of course she would be lonely in her
+own house, and is too young to stay there alone anyhow, but I'd like to
+put her up, and you certainly could run down week-ends--possibly oftener.
+American men are always obsessed with the idea that they are twice as
+busy as they really are."
+
+"You are too good. I'll put it up to Hélène. Of course it is for her to
+decide. I'd like it mighty well." But grateful as he was, his uneasiness
+deepened at her evident desire to place her forces at his disposal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I
+
+"And you won't take me to the party?" Hélène pouted charmingly as her
+husband laid her pink taffeta wrap over her shoulders. "I thought you
+said you might make it, and it would be too delightful to dance with you
+once more."
+
+"I'm afraid not. The Australian mail came in just as business closed and
+it's on my mind. I want to go over it carefully before I dictate the
+answers in the morning, and that means two or three hours of hard work
+that will leave me pretty well fagged out. Mrs. Thornton has offered to
+take you home."
+
+"I hate her."
+
+"Oh, please don't!" Ruyler smiled into her somber eyes. "She wants the
+drive, and it would be taking the Gwynnes so far out of the way. Mrs.
+Thornton very kindly suggested it."
+
+"I hate her," said Hélène conclusively. "I wish now I'd kept my own car.
+Then I could always go home alone."
+
+"You shall have a car next winter. And this time I shall not permit you
+to pay for it out of your allowance--which in any case I hope to increase
+by that time."
+
+Her eyes flamed, but not with anger. "Then I'll sell my electric to
+Aileen Lawton right away. We have the touring car in the country, and
+she has been trying to make her father buy her an electric--"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed in your bargain. Second-hand cars, no
+matter what their condition, always go at a sacrifice, and old Lawton is
+a notorious screw. Better not let it go for two or three hundreds; you
+look very sweet driving about in it.... Oh, by the way--I had
+forgotten." He slipped his hand under her coat, unfastened the chain and
+slipped the jewel into his pocket. "I am sorry," he said, with real
+contrition, "and almost wish I had forgotten the thing; but I am a little
+superstitious about keeping that old promise."
+
+She laughed. "And yet you will not permit poor maman a little
+superstition of her own! But I am rather glad. Everybody at the ball will
+hear of the ruby, and I shall be able to keep them in suspense until the
+Thornton fête. Good night. Don't work too hard. Couldn't you get there
+for supper?"
+
+"'Fraid not."
+
+
+II
+
+He did go down to the office and glance through the Australian mail,
+but at a few moments before twelve he took a California Street car up
+to the Fairmont Hotel and went directly to the ballroom. Mrs.
+Thornton was standing just within the doorway, but came toward him
+with lifted eyebrows.
+
+"This is like old times," she said playfully.
+
+"I found less mail than I expected and thought I would come and have a
+dance with my wife." His eyes wandered over the large room, gayly
+decorated, and filled with dancing couples.
+
+Mrs. Thornton laughed. "A belle like your wife? She is always engaged for
+every dance on her program before she is halfway down this corridor."
+
+"Oh, well, husbands have some rights. I'll take it by force. I don't see
+her--she must be sitting out."
+
+Mrs. Thornton slipped her arm through his. "This dance has just begun.
+Walk me up and down. I am tired of standing on one foot."
+
+They strolled down the corridor and through the large central hall. Older
+folks sat or stood in groups; a few young couples were sitting out.
+Ruyler did not see his wife, and concluded she had been resting at the
+moment in the dowager ranks against the wall of the ballroom. The music
+ceased sooner than he expected and Mrs. Thornton, who had been talking
+with animation on the subject of several fine pictures she had bought
+while abroad for the Museum in Golden Gate Park, including one by
+Masefield Price, broke off with an impatient exclamation: "Bother! I must
+run up to my room at once and telephone. Wait for me here."
+
+She steered him toward a group of men. "Mr. Gwynne, keep Mr. Ruyler from
+causing a riot in the ballroom. He insists upon dancing with his wife.
+Hold him by force."
+
+They were standing near the staircase and some distance from the lift.
+Mrs. Thornton ran up the stairs, pausing for an irresistible moment and
+looking down at the company. As she stood there, poised, she looked a
+royal figure with her cloth of gold train covering the steps below her
+and her high and flashing head. "Wait for me," she said, imperiously to
+Price. "I cannot meander down that corridor, deserted and alone."
+
+Ruyler smiled at her, but said to Gwynne: "I'll just go and engage my
+wife for a dance and be back in a jiffy--"
+
+Gwynne clasped his hand about Ruyler's arm. "Just a moment, old chap. I
+want your opinion--"
+
+"But there is the music again. I'll be knocking people over--"
+
+"You will if you go now, and there'll be dancing for hours yet. Your wife
+has been dividing up--now, tell me if you back me in this proposition or
+not. I'm going to Washington to represent you fellows--"
+
+But Ruyler had broken politely away and was walking down the long
+corridor. When he arrived at the ballroom he saw at a glance that his
+wife was not there, for the floor was only half filled. But there were
+other rooms where dancers sat in couples or groups when tired. He went
+hastily through all of them, but saw nothing of his wife. Nor of Doremus.
+
+Mrs. Thornton had gone in search of her.
+
+And Gwynne knew.
+
+This time the hot blood was pounding in his head. He felt as he imagined
+madmen did when about to run amok. Or quite as primitive as any
+Californian of the surging "Fifties."
+
+He was in one of the smaller rooms and he sat down in a corner with his
+back to the few people in it and endeavored to take hold of himself; the
+conventional training of several lifetimes and his own intense pride
+forbade a scene in public. But his curved fingers longed for Doremus'
+throat and he made up his mind that if his awful suspicions were
+vindicated he would beat his wife black and blue. That was far more
+sensible and manly than running whining to a divorce court.
+
+The effort at self-control left him gasping, but when he rose from his
+shelter he was outwardly composed, and determined to seek Gwynne and
+force the truth from him. He would not discuss his wife with another
+woman. And whatever this hideous tragedy brooding over his life he would
+go out and come to grips with it at once.
+
+
+III
+
+And in the corridor he saw his wife chatting gayly with a group of young
+friends. Her color was paler than usual, perhaps, but that was not
+uncommon at a party, and otherwise she was as unruffled, as normal in
+appearance and manner, as when they had parted at the Gwynnes'.
+
+Nevertheless, he went directly up to her, and as she gave a little cry of
+pleased surprise, he drew her hand through his arm. "Come!" he said
+imperiously. "You are to dance this with me. I broke away on purpose--"
+
+"But, darling, I am full up--"
+
+"You have skipped at least two. I have been looking everywhere for you--"
+
+"Polly Roberts dragged me upstairs to see the new gowns M. Dupont brought
+her from Paris. They came this afternoon--so did Mrs. Thornton's--but of
+course I'll dance this with you. You don't look well," she added
+anxiously. "Aren't you?"
+
+"Quite, but rather tired--mentally. I need a dance...."
+
+He wondered if she had gently propelled him down the corridor. They were
+some distance from the group. It was impossible for him to go back and
+ask if his wife's story were true. Mrs. Thornton was nowhere to be seen,
+neither in the corridor nor in the ballroom. Nor was Doremus. He set his
+teeth grimly and managed to smile down upon his wife.
+
+"I shall insist upon having more than one," he said gallantly. "At least
+three hesitations."
+
+She drew in her breath with a mock sigh and swept from under her long
+lashes a glance that still had the power to thrill him. "Outrageous, but
+I shall try to bear up," and the next moment they were giving a graceful
+exhibition of the tango.
+
+"I don't see your friend Doremus," he said casually, as he stood fanning
+her at the end of the dance.
+
+She lifted her eyebrows haughtily. "My friend? That parasite?"
+
+"You seemed very friendly at dinner."
+
+"I usually am with my dinner companion. One's hostess is to be
+considered. Oh--I remember--he was telling me some very amusing gossip,
+although he teased me into fearing he wouldn't. Now, if you are going to
+dance this hesitation with me you had better whirl me off. It is Mr.
+Thornton's, and I see him coming."
+
+Ruyler did not see Doremus until supper was half over and then the young
+man entered the dining-room hurriedly, his usually serene brow lowering
+and his lips set. He walked directly up to Hélène.
+
+"Beastly luck!" he exclaimed. "Hello, Ruyler. Didn't know you honored
+parties any more. I had to break away to meet the Overland train--beastly
+thing was late, of course. Then I had to take them to five hotels before
+I could settle them. They had two beastly little dogs and the hotels
+wouldn't take them in and they wouldn't give up the dogs. Some one ought
+to set up a high-class dog hotel. Sure it would pay. But you'll give me
+the first after supper, won't you?"
+
+Hélène gave him a casual smile that was a poor reward for his elaborate
+apology. "So sorry," she said with the sweet distant manner in which she
+disposed of bores and climbers, "but Mr. Ruyler and I are both tired. We
+are going home directly after supper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+I
+
+On the following day at six o'clock Ruyler went to Long's to meet Jake
+Spaulding. By a supreme effort of will he had put his private affairs out
+of his mind and concentrated on the business details which demanded the
+most highly trained of his faculties. But now he felt relaxed, almost
+languid, as he walked along Montgomery Street toward the rendezvous. He
+met no one he knew. The historic Montgomery Street, once the center of
+the city's life, was almost deserted, but half rebuilt. He could saunter
+and think undisturbed.
+
+What was he to hear? And what bearing would it be found to have on his
+wife's conduct?
+
+He had gone to sleep last night as sure as a man may be of anything that
+his wife was no more interested in Doremus than in any other of the
+young men who found time to dance attendance upon idle, bored, but
+virtuous wives.
+
+If the man knew her secret and were endeavoring to exact blackmail he
+would pay his price with joy--after thrashing him, for he would have
+sacrificed the half of his fortune never to experience again not only the
+demoralizing attack of jealous madness of the night before, which had
+brought in its wake the uneasy doubt if civilization were as far advanced
+as he had fondly imagined, but the sensation of amazed contempt which had
+swept over him at the dinner table as he had seen his wife, whom he had
+believed to be a woman of instinctive taste and fastidiousness,
+manifestly upon intimate terms with a creature who should have been
+walking on four legs. Better, perhaps, the desire to kill a woman than to
+despise her--
+
+He slammed the door when he entered the little room reserved for him, and
+barely restrained himself from flinging his hat into a corner and
+breaking a chair on the table. His languor had vanished.
+
+Spaulding followed him immediately.
+
+"Howdy," he said genially, as he pushed his own hat on the back of his
+head and bit hungrily at the end of a cigar. "Suppose you've been
+impatient--unless too busy to think about it."
+
+"I'd like to know what you've found out as quickly as you can tell me."
+
+"Well, to begin with the kid. I had some trouble at the convent. They're
+a close-mouthed lot, nuns. But I frightened them. Told them it was a
+property matter, and unless they answered my questions privately they'd
+have to answer them in court. Then they came through."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Spaulding lit his cigar and handed the match to Ruyler, who ground it
+under his heel.
+
+"Just about nineteen years ago a Frenchwoman, giving her name as Madame
+Dubois, arrived one day with a child a year old and asked the nuns to
+take care of it, promising a fancy payment. The child had been on a farm
+with a wet-nurse (French style), but Madame Dubois wanted it to learn
+from the first to speak proper English and French, and to live in a
+refined atmosphere generally from the time it was able to take notice.
+She said she was on the stage and had to travel, so was not able to give
+the kid the attention it should have, and the doctor had told her that
+traveling was bad for kids that age, anyhow. Her lawyers would pay the
+baby's board on the first of every month--"
+
+"Who were the lawyers?"
+
+"Lawton and Cross."
+
+"I thought so. Go on."
+
+"The nuns, who, after all, knew their California, thought they smelt a
+rat, for the woman was extraordinarily handsome, magnificently dressed;
+the Mother Superior--who is a woman of the world, all right--read the
+newspapers, and had never seen the name of Dubois--and knew that only
+stars drew fat salaries. She asked some sharp questions about the father,
+and the woman replied readily that he was a scientific man, an inventor,
+and--well, it was natural, was it not? they did not get on very well. He
+disliked the stage, but she had been on it before she married him, and
+dullness and want of money for her own needs and her child's had driven
+her back. He had lived in Los Angeles for a time, but had recently gone
+East to take a high-salaried position. It was with his consent that she
+asked the nuns to take the child--possibly for two or three years. When
+she was a famous actress and could leave the road, she would keep house
+for her husband in New York, and make a home for the child.
+
+"The Mother Superior, by this time, had made up her mind that the father
+wished the child removed from the mother's influence, and although she
+took the whole yarn with a bag of salt, the child was the most beautiful
+she had ever seen, and obviously healthy and amiable. Moreover, the
+convent was to receive two hundred dollars a month--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Exactly. Can you beat it? The Mother Superior made up her mind it was
+her duty to bring up the little thing in the way it should go. As the
+woman was leaving she said something about a possible reconciliation with
+her family, who lived in France; they had not written her since she went
+on the stage. They were of a respectability!--of the old tradition! But
+if they came round she might take the child to them, if her husband would
+consent. She should like it to be brought up in France--
+
+"Here the Mother Superior interrupted her sharply. Was her husband a
+Frenchman? And she answered, no doubt before she thought, for these
+people always forget something, that no, he was an American--her family,
+also, detested Americans. The Mother Superior once more interrupted her
+glibness. How, then, did he have a French name? Oh, but that was her
+stage name--she always went by it and had given it without thinking. What
+was her husband's name? After a second's hesitation she stupidly give the
+name Smith. I can see the mouth of the Mother Superior as it set in a
+grim line. 'Very well,' said she, 'the child's name is Hélène Smith'; and
+although the woman made a wry face she was forced to submit.
+
+"The child remained there four years, and the Mother Superior had some
+reason to believe that 'Madame Dubois' spent a good part of that time in
+San Francisco. She came at irregular intervals to see the child--always
+in vacation, when there were no pupils in the convent, and always at
+night. The Mother Superior, however, thought it best to make no
+investigations, for the child throve, they were all daffy about her, and
+the money came promptly on the first of every month. When the mother came
+she always brought a trunk full of fine underclothes, and left the money
+for a new uniform. Then, one day, Madame Dubois arrived in widow's weeds,
+said that her husband was dead, leaving her quite well off, and that she
+was returning to France."
+
+"And Madame Delano's story is that he died on the way to Japan--if it is
+the same woman--"
+
+"Haven't a doubt of it myself. I did a little cabling before I left last
+night to a man I know in Paris to find out just when Madame Delano
+returned with her child to live with her family in Rouen. He got busy and
+here is his answer--just fifteen years ago almost to the minute."
+
+"Then who was her husband?"
+
+"There you've got me--so far. He was no 'scientist, who later accepted
+a high-salaried position.' A decent chap of that sort would have
+written to his child, paid her board himself, most likely taken it away
+from the mother--"
+
+"But she may have kidnapped it--"
+
+"People are too easy traced in this State--especially that sort. Nor do
+I believe she was an actress. There never was any actress of that
+name--not so you'd notice it, anyhow, and that woman would have been
+known for her looks and height even if she couldn't act. Moreover, if
+she was an actress there would be no sense in giving the nuns a false
+name, since she had admitted the fact. No, it's my guess that she was
+something worse."
+
+"Well, I've prepared myself for anything."
+
+"I figure out that she was the mistress of one of our rich highfliers,
+and that when he got tired of her he pensioned her off, and she made up
+her mind to reform on account of the kid, and went back to Rouen, and
+proceeded to identify herself with her class by growing old and shapeless
+as quickly as possible. She must have adopted the name Delano in New York
+before she bought her steamer ticket, for although I've had a man on the
+hunt, the only Delanos of that time were eminently respectable--"
+
+"Why are you sure she was not a--well--woman of the town?"
+
+"Because, there again--there's no dame of that time either of that name
+or looks--neither Dubois nor Delano. Of course, they come and go, but
+there's every reason to think she stayed right on here in S.F. Of
+course, I've only had twenty-four hours--I'll find out in another
+twenty-four just what conspicuous women of fifteen to twenty years ago
+measure up to what she must have looked like--I got the Mother Superior
+to describe her minutely: nearly six feet, clear dark skin with a
+natural red color--no make-up; very small features, but well made--nose
+and mouth I'm talking about. The eyes were a good size, very black with
+rather thin eyelashes. Lots of black hair. Stunning figure. Rather large
+ears and hands and feet. She always dressed in black, the handsomest
+sort. They generally do."
+
+"Well?" asked Ruyler through his teeth. He had no doubt the woman was his
+mother-in-law. "The Jameses? What of them?"
+
+"That's the snag. Rest is easy in comparison. Innumerable Jameses must
+have died about that time, to say nothing of all the way along the line,
+but while some of the records were saved in 1906, most went up in smoke.
+Moreover, there's just the chance that he didn't die here. But that's
+going on the supposition that the man died when she left California,
+which don't fit our theory. I still think he died not so very long before
+her return to California, and that she probably came to collect a legacy
+he had left her. Otherwise, I should think it's about the last place she
+would have come to. I put a man on the job before I left of collecting
+the Jameses who've died since the fire. Here they are."
+
+He took a list from his pocket and read:
+
+"James Hogg, bookkeeper--races, of course. James Fowler, saloon-keeper.
+James Despard, called 'Frenchy,' a clever crook who lived on
+blackmail--said to have a gift for getting hold of secrets of men and
+women in high society and squeezing them good and plenty--"
+
+He paused. "Of course, that might be the man. There are points. I'll have
+his life looked into, but somehow I don't believe it. I have a hunch the
+man was a higher-up. The sort of woman the Mother Superior described can
+get the best, and they take it. To proceed: James Dillingworth, lawyer,
+died in the odor of sanctity, but you never can tell; I'll have him
+investigated, too. James Maston--I haven't had time to have had the
+private lives of any of these men looked into, but I knew some of them,
+and Maston, who was a journalist, left a wife and three children and was
+little, if any, over thirty. James Cobham, broker--he was getting on to
+fifty, left about a million, came near being indicted during the Graft
+Prosecutions, and although his wife has been in the newspapers as a
+society leader for the last twenty years, and he was one of the founders
+of Burlingame, and then was active in changing the name of the high part
+to Hillsboro when the swells felt they couldn't be identified with the
+village any longer, and he handed out wads the first of every year to
+charity, there are stories that he came near being divorced by his
+haughty wife about fifteen years ago. Of course, those men don't parade
+their mistresses openly like they did thirty years ago--I mean men with
+any social position to keep up. But now and again the wife finds a note,
+or receives an anonymous letter, and gets busy. Then it's the divorce
+court, unless he can smooth her down, and promises reform. Cobham seems
+to me the likeliest man, and I'm going to start a thorough investigation
+to-morrow. These other Jameses don't hold out any promise at
+all--grocers, clerks, butchers. It's the list in hand I'll go by, and if
+nothing pans out--well, we'll have to take the other cue she threw out
+and try Los Angeles."
+
+"Do you know anything about a man named Nicolas Doremus?" asked
+Ruyler abruptly.
+
+"The society chap? Nothing much except that he don't do much business on
+the street but is supposed to be pretty lucky at poker and bridge. But he
+runs with the crowd the police can't or don't raid. I've never seen or
+heard of him anywhere he shouldn't be except with swell slumming or
+roadhouse parties. He's never interested me. If Society can stand that
+sort of bloodsucking tailor's model, I guess I can. Why do you ask? Got
+anything to do with this case?"
+
+"I have an idea he has found out the truth and is blackmailing my wife.
+You might watch him."
+
+"Good point. I will. And if he's found out the truth I guess I can."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+I
+
+Hélène, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs.
+Thornton's invitation.
+
+"Do you think I'd leave you--to come home to a dreary house every night?
+Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if
+you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any
+engagement--you have always known that!"
+
+Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet--she was lunching with
+him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with
+Spaulding--that he hastened to assure her affectionately that the
+certainty of his wife's desire for his constant companionship was both
+his torment and his consolation.
+
+Hélène continued radiantly:
+
+"Besides, darling, Polly Roberts is staying on. Rex can't get away yet."
+
+"Polly Roberts is not nearly good enough for you. She hasn't an idea in
+her head and lives on excitement--"
+
+Hélène laughed merrily. "You are quite right, but there's no harm in her.
+After all, unless one goes in for charities (and I can't, Price, yet;
+besides the charities here are wonderfully looked after), plays bridge,
+has babies, takes on suffrage--what is there to do but play? I suppose
+once life was serious for young women of our class; but we just get into
+the habit of doing nothing because there's nothing to do. Take to-morrow
+as an example: I suppose Polly and I will wander down to The Louvre in
+the morning and buy something or look at the new gowns M. Dupont has just
+brought from Paris.
+
+"Then we'll lunch where there's lots of life and everybody is chatting
+gayly about nothing.
+
+"Then we'll go to the Moving Pictures unless there is a matinée, and then
+we'll motor out to the Boulevard, and then back and have tea somewhere.
+
+"Or, perhaps, we'll motor down to the Club at Burlingame for lunch and
+chatter away the day on the veranda, or dance. This afternoon we'll
+probably ring up a few that are still in town, and dance in Polly's
+parlor at the Fairmont."
+
+Hélène's lip curled, her voice had risen. With, all her young enjoyment
+of wealth and position, she had been bred in a class where to idle is a
+crime. "Just putting in time--time that ought to be as precious as
+youth and high spirits and ease and popularity! But what is one to do?
+I have no talents, and I'd lose caste in my set if I had. I don't
+wonder the Socialists hate us and want to put us all to work. No doubt
+we should be much happier. But now--even if you retired from business,
+you'd spend most of your time on the links. We poor women wouldn't be
+much better off."
+
+"It does seem an abnormal state of affairs; I've barely given it a
+thought, it has always been such a pleasure to find you, after a hard
+day's work, looking invariably dainty, and pretty, and eloquently
+suggestive of leisure and repose. But--to the student of history--I
+suppose it is a condition that cannot last. There must be some sort of
+upheaval due. Well, I hope it will give me more of your society."
+
+They smiled at each other across the little table in perfect confidence.
+They were lunching in the court, and after she had blown him a kiss over
+her glass of red wine, her eyes happened to travel in the direction of
+the large dining-room. She gave a little exclamation of distaste.
+
+"There is maman lunching with that hateful old Mr. Lawton. He was in her
+sitting-room when I ran in to call on her yesterday, and nearly snapped
+my head off when I asked him if he wouldn't buy my electric for Aileen.
+He said it was time she began to learn a few economies instead of more
+extravagances. Poor darling Aileen. She has to stay in town, too, for he
+won't open the house in Atherton until he is ready to go down himself
+every night."
+
+"Is he an old friend of your mother's?"
+
+"She and Papa met him when they were here, and Mrs. Lawton was very kind
+when I was born. It's too bad Mrs. Lawton's dead. She'd be a nice friend
+for maman."
+
+"Perhaps your mother is asking Mr. Lawton's advice about the investment
+of money."
+
+He had been observing his wife closely, but it was more and more apparent
+that if Mr. Lawton held the key to her mother's past she had not been
+informed of the fact. She answered indifferently:
+
+"Possibly. One can get much higher interest out here than in France, and
+maman would never invest money without the best advice. She loves me, but
+money next. Oh, là! là!"
+
+"Has she said anything more about going back to Rouen?"
+
+"I didn't have a word with her alone yesterday, but I'll ask her to-day.
+Poor maman! I fancy the novelty has worn off here, and she would really
+be happier with her own people and customs. She hates traveling, like all
+the French; but don't you think that, after a bit we shall be able to go
+over to Europe at least once a year?"
+
+"I am sure of it. And while I am attending to business in London you
+could visit your mother in Rouen. Tell her that one way or another I'll
+manage it."
+
+And this seemed to him an ideal arrangement!
+
+
+II
+
+When they left the table and walked through the more luxurious part of
+the court, they saw Madame Delano alone and enthroned as usual in the
+largest but most upright of the armchairs. And as ever she watched under
+her fat drooping eyelids the passing throng of smartly dressed women,
+hurrying men, sauntering, staring tourists. Here and there under the
+palms sat small groups of men, leaning forward, talking in low earnest
+tones, their faces, whether of the keen, narrow, nervous, or of the
+fleshy, heavy, square-jawed, unimaginative, aggressive, ruthless type,
+equally expressing that intense concentration of mind which later would
+make their luncheon a living torment.
+
+Hélène threw herself into a chair beside her mother and fondled her hand.
+Ruyler noted that after Madame Delano's surprised smile of welcome she
+darted a keen glance of apprehension from one to the other, and her tight
+little mouth relaxed uncontrollably in its supporting walls of flesh. But
+she lowered her lids immediately and looked approvingly at her daughter,
+who in her new gown of gray, with gray hat and gloves and shoes, was a
+dainty and refreshing picture of Spring. Then she looked at Ruyler with
+what he fancied was an expression of relief.
+
+"I wonder you do not do this oftener," she said.
+
+"I never know until the last moment when or where I shall be able to take
+lunch, and then I often have to meet three or four men. Such is life in
+the city of your adoption."
+
+"There is no city in the world where women are so abominably idle and
+useless!" And at the moment, whatever Madame Delano may have been, her
+voice and mien were those of a virtuous and outraged bourgeoisie. "You
+are all very well, Ruyler, but if I had known what the life of a rich
+young woman was in this town, I'd have married Hélène to a serious young
+man of her own class in Rouen; a husband who would have given her
+companionship in a normal civilized life, who would have taken care of
+her as every young wife should be taken care of, and who would have
+insisted upon at least two children as a matter of course. With us The
+Family is a religion. Here it is an incident where it is not an
+accident."
+
+Ruyler, who was still standing, looked down at his mother-in-law with
+profound interest. He had never heard her express herself at such length
+before. "Do you think I fail as a husband?" he asked humbly. "God knows
+I'd like to give my wife about two-thirds of my time, but at least I have
+perfect confidence in her. I should soon cease to care for a wife I was
+obliged to watch."
+
+"Young things are young things." Madame Delano looked at Hélène, who had
+turned very white and had lowered her own lids to hide the consternation
+in her eyes. But as her mother ceased speaking she raised them in swift
+appeal to Ruyler.
+
+"Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price
+wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long
+skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of
+the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that you
+don't really mean it. I can't have Price jealous. That would be too
+humiliating. I'm afraid I do flirt as naturally as I breathe, but Price
+knows I haven't a thought for a man on earth but him." The color had
+crept back into her cheeks, but there was still anxiety in her soft black
+eyes, and Price was sure that the little pointed toe once more made its
+peremptory appeal.
+
+Madame Delano looked squarely at her son-in-law.
+
+"That's all right--so far," she said grimly. "Hélène is devoted to
+you. But so have many other young wives been to busy American husbands.
+Now, take my advice, and give her more of your companionship before it
+is too late. _Watch over her_. There always comes a time--a
+turning-point--European husbands understand, but American husbands are
+fools. Woman's loyalty, fed on hope only, turns to resentment; and then
+her separate life begins. Now, I've warned you. Go back to your office,
+where, no doubt, your clerks are hanging out of the windows, wondering if
+you are dead and the business wrecked. I want to talk to Hélène."
+
+
+III
+
+In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt
+lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than
+he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly
+understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past,
+and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the
+result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman
+who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it
+alarming, and--unwelcome, but inevitable thought--peculiarly dangerous to
+a young and beautiful creature with wild and lawless blood in her veins.
+
+However, it was patent that so far her apprehensions were merely the
+result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own
+threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San
+Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with
+which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no
+doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on the city she
+must hate.
+
+He renewed his determination to keep what guard he could over his young
+wife, and wondered if his brother Harold, who also had elected to enter
+the old firm, could not be induced to come out and take over a certain
+share of the responsibility. The young man had paid him a visit a year
+ago and been enraptured with life in California.
+
+True, he was accustomed to make quick decisions without consulting any
+one, and he should find a partner irksome, but he was beginning to
+realize acutely that business, even to an American brain, packed with its
+traditions and energies, was not even the half of life, should be a means
+not an end; he set his teeth as he walked rapidly along Montgomery Street
+and vowed that he would keep his domestic happiness if he had to retire
+on what was available of his own fortune. He even wondered if it would
+not be wise to buy a fruit ranch, where he and Hélène could share equally
+in the management, and begin at once to raise a family. They both loved
+outdoor life, and this life of complete frivolity, in which she seemed to
+be hopelessly enmeshed, might before long corrode her nature and blast
+the mental aspirations that still survived in that untended soil. When
+this great merging deal was over he should be free to decide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+I
+
+He arrived at home on the following afternoon at six and was
+immediately rung up by Spaulding, who demanded an interview. It was not
+worth while going down town again, as Hélène was out and would no doubt
+return only in time to dress for dinner. They were to dine at half-past
+seven and go to the play afterward. He told Spaulding to take a taxi
+and come to the house.
+
+Nothing had occurred meanwhile to cause him anxiety. He had taken Hélène
+out to the Cliff House to dinner the night before, and afterward to see
+the road-houses, whose dancing is so painfully proper early in the
+evening. Polly Roberts had come into the most notorious of them at
+eleven, chaperoning a party, which included Aileen Lawton, a girl as
+restless and avid of excitement as herself. Rex Roberts and several other
+young men had been in attendance, and Polly had begged Ruyler to stay on
+and let his wife see something of "real life."
+
+"This is one of the sights of the world, you know," she said, puffing her
+cigarette smoke into his face. "It's _too_ middle-class to be shocked,
+and not to see occasionally what you really cannot get anywhere else.
+Why, there'll even be a lot of tourists here later on, and these dancers
+don't do the real Apache until about one. At least leave Hélène with me,
+if you care more for bed than fun."
+
+But Ruyler had merely laughed and taken his wife home. Hélène had made
+no protest; on the contrary had put her arm through his in the car and
+her head on his shoulder, vowing she was worn out, and glad to go home.
+It was only afterward that it occurred to him that she had clung to him
+that night.
+
+Spaulding entered the library without taking off his hat, and chewing a
+toothpick vigorously. He began to talk at once, stretching himself out in
+a Morris chair, and accepting a cigar. This time Price smoked with him.
+
+"Well," said the detective, "it's like the game of button, button, who's
+got the button? Sometimes I think I'm getting a little warmer and then I
+go stone cold. But I've found out a few things, anyhow. How tall should
+you say Madame Delano is? I've only seen her sitting on her throne there
+in the Palace Court lookin' like an old Sphinx that's havin' a laugh all
+to herself."
+
+"About five feet ten."
+
+"The Mother Superior said six feet, but no doubt when she had figger
+instead of flesh she looked taller. Well, I've discovered no less than
+five tall handsome brunettes that sparkled here in the late Eighties and
+early Nineties, but it's the deuce and all to get an exact description
+out of anybody, especially when quite a few years have elapsed. Most
+people don't see details, only effects. That's what we detectives come up
+against all the time. So, whether these ladies were five feet eight, five
+feet ten, or six feet, whether they had large features or small, big
+hands and feet or fine points, or whether they added on all the inches
+they yearned for by means of high heels or style, is beyond me. But here
+they are."
+
+He took his neat little note-book from his pocket and was about to read
+it, when Ruyler interrupted him.
+
+"But surely you know whether these women were French or not?"
+
+"Aw, that's just what you can't always find out. Lots of 'em pretend to
+be, and others--if they come from good stock in the old country--want you
+to forget it. But the queens generally run to French names, as havin' a
+better commercial value than Mary Jane or Ann Maria. One of these was
+Marie Garnett, who wasn't much on her own but spun the wheel in Jim's
+joint down on Barbary Coast, which was raided just so often for form's
+sake. She always made a quick getaway, was never up in court, and died
+young. Gabrielle ran an establishment down on Geary Street and was one of
+the swellest lookers and swellest togged dames in her profession till the
+drink got her. I can't find that she ever hooked up to a James or any one
+else. Pauline-Marie was another razzle-dazzle who swooped out here from
+nowhere and burrowed into quite a few fortunes and put quite a few of our
+society leaders into mourning. She disappeared and I can't trace her, but
+she seems to have been the handsomest of the bunch, and was fond of
+showing herself at first nights, dressed straight from Paris, until some
+of our war-hardened 'leaders' called upon the managers in a body and
+threatened never to set foot inside their doors again unless she was kept
+out, and the managers succumbed. Then there was the friend of a rich
+Englishman, whose first name I haven't been able to get hold of. They
+lived first at Santa Barbara, then loafed up and down the coast for a
+year or two, spending quite a time in San Francisco. She was 'foreign
+looking' and a stunner, all right. All of these dames drifted out about
+the same time--"
+
+"What was the Englishman's name?"
+
+"J. Horace Medford. Front name may or may not have been James. I doubt if
+his name could be found on any deeds, even in the south, where there was
+no fire. He doesn't seem to have bought any property or transacted any
+business. Just lived on a good-sized income. Of course, all the hotel
+registers here were burnt, but I wired to Santa Barbara and Monterey and
+got what I have given you.
+
+"He had a yacht, and he took the woman with him everywhere. There was
+always a flutter when they appeared at the theater. Of course she went by
+his name, but as he never presented a letter all the time he was here and
+it was quite obvious he could have brought all he wanted, and as men are
+always 'on' anyhow, there was but one conclusion."
+
+"Where did he bank? They might have his full name."
+
+"Bank of California, but his remittances were sent to order of J. Horace
+Medford, and, of course, he signed his cheques the same way."
+
+"That sounds the most likely of the lot--and the most hopeful."
+
+"Well, haven't handed you the fifth yet, and to my mind she's the most
+likely of all. Ever hear of James Lawton's trouble with his wife?"
+
+"Trouble? I thought she died."
+
+"She--did--not. She went East suddenly about fifteen years ago, and soon
+after a notice of her death appeared in the San Francisco papers. But
+there was a tale of woe (for old Lawton) that I doubt if most of her own
+crowd had even a suspicion of."
+
+"Good heavens!" Ruyler recalled the apparent intimacy of his
+mother-in-law and the senior member of the respectable firm of Lawton and
+Cross. If "Madame Delano" were the former Mrs. Lawton, how many things
+would be explained.
+
+"This woman's name was Marie all right, and she was French, although she
+seems to have been adopted by some people named Dubois and brought up in
+California. She was quite the proper thing in high society, but the
+trouble was that she liked another sort better. She was a regular
+fly-by-night. It began when Norton Moore, a rotten limb of one of the
+grandest trees in San Francisco Society--so respectable they didn't know
+there was any side to life but their own--sneaked Mrs. Lawton and three
+girls out of his mother's house one night when she was givin' a ball, put
+'em in a hack and took 'em down to Gabrielle's. There they spent an hour
+lookin' at Gabrielle's swell bunch dressed up and doin' the grand society
+act with some of the men-about-town. Then they danced some and opened a
+bottle or two.
+
+"I never heard that this little jaunt hurt the girls any, but it woke up
+something in Mrs. Lawton. After that--well, there are stories without
+end. Won't take up your time tellin' them. The upshot was that one night
+Lawton, who took a fling himself once in a while, met her at Gabrielle's
+or some other joint, and she went East a day or two after. I suppose he
+didn't get a divorce, partly on account of the kid--Aileen--partly
+because he had no intention of trying his luck again."
+
+"But is there any evidence that she had another child--that she
+hid away?"
+
+"No, but it might easy have been. This life went on for about eight
+years, and it was at least five that she and Lawton merely lived under
+the same roof for the sake of Aileen. They never did get on. That much,
+at least, was well known. It might easy be--"
+
+Ruyler made a rapid calculation. Aileen Lawton was just about three years
+older than Hélène. She was fair like her father. There was no resemblance
+between her and his wife, but the intimacy between them had been
+spontaneous and had never lapsed. She had grown up quite unrestrained and
+spoilt, and broken three engagements, and was always rushing about
+proclaiming in one breath, that California was the greatest place on
+earth and in the next that she should go mad if she didn't get out and
+have a change. Another grievance was that although her father let her
+have her own way, or rather did not pretend to control her, he gave her a
+rather niggardly allowance for her personal expenses and she was supposed
+to be heavily in debt. Ruyler thought he could guess where a good deal of
+his wife's spare cash had gone to. He disliked Aileen Lawton as much as
+he did Polly Roberts; more, if anything, because she might have been
+clever and she chose to be a fool. Both of these intimate friends of his
+wife were the reverse of the superb outdoor type he admired.
+
+"Good Lord!" he said. "I don't think there's much choice."
+
+But in a moment he shook his head. "Too many things don't connect. Where
+did she get the money to go to her relations in Rouen--"
+
+"He pensioned her off, of course."
+
+"And the child? How did he consent to let her return here with a daughter
+he probably never had heard of--"
+
+"I figger out, either that she came into some money from a relation over
+in France, or else she has something on the old boy, and wanting to come
+back here and marry her daughter, she held him up. He's a pillar of the
+church, been one of the Presidents of the Pacific-Union Club, has argued
+cases before the Supreme Court that have been cabled all over the
+country. When a man of that sort gets to Lawton's time of life he don't
+want any scandals."
+
+"All the same," said Ruyler positively, "I don't believe it. I think it
+far more likely that he was a friend of Madame Delano's husband--assuming
+that she had one--and that some money was left with him in trust for her
+or the child."
+
+"Well, it may be, but I incline to Lawton--"
+
+"There's one person would know--"
+
+"'Gene Bisbee. But I never went to that bunch yet for any information,
+and I don't go this time except as a last resort. Of course he knows, and
+that is one reason I believe she is Mrs. Lawton. He was Gabrielle's
+maquereau for years--when he'd wrung enough out of her he set up for
+himself--Well, I ain't through yet, by a long sight. Beliefs ain't
+proof." He rose slowly from the deep chair, stretched himself, and
+settled his hat firmly on his head.
+
+"What's this I hear about a wonderful ruby your wife wore up to Gwynne's
+the other night? Gosh! I'd like to see a sparkler like that."
+
+"Why, by all means."
+
+Ruyler swung the bookcase outward, opened the safe and handed him the
+ruby. Spaulding regarded it with bulging eyes, and touched it with his
+finger tips much as he would a newborn babe. "Some stone!" he said, as he
+handed it back, "but why in thunder don't you keep it in a safe deposit
+box? There are crooks that can crack any safe, and if they got wise to
+this--oh, howdy, ma'am--"
+
+Hélène had come in and stood behind the two men.
+
+Spaulding snatched off his hat and she acknowledged her husband's
+introduction graciously. She was dressed for the evening in white. Her
+eyes looked abnormally large, and she kept dropping her lids as if to
+keep them from setting in a stare. Her lovely mouth with its soft curves
+was faded and set. The whole face was almost as stiff as a mask, and even
+her graceful body was rigid. Ruyler saw Spaulding give her a sharp
+"sizing-up" look, as he murmured,
+
+"Well, so long, Guv. See you to-morrow. Hope the man'll turn out all
+right after all."
+
+"I hope so. He's a good chap otherwise."
+
+"Good night, ma'am. Tell your husband to put that ruby in a safe
+deposit box."
+
+"Oh, nobody knows the safe is there except Mr. Ruyler and myself--"
+
+"There have been safes hidden behind bookcases before," said Spaulding
+dryly. "And crooks, like all the other pests of the earth, just drift
+naturally to this coast. If I were you I'd have a detective on hand
+whenever you wear that bit o' glass--not at a friendly affair like the
+Gwynnes' dinner, of course, but--"
+
+"Good idea!" exclaimed Ruyler. "My wife will wear the ruby to the
+Thornton fête on the fourteenth. Will you be on hand to guard it?"
+
+"Won't I? About half our force is engaged for that blow-out, but no one
+but yours truly shall be guardian angel for the ruby. Well, good night
+once more, and good luck."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as the detective had gone Ruyler drew his wife to him anxiously,
+"What is it, Hélène? You look--well, you don't look yourself!"
+
+"I have a headache," she said irritably. "Perhaps I'm developing nerves.
+I do wish you would take me to New York. Other women get away from this
+town once in a while."
+
+"But you told me on Sunday that you adored California, that it was like
+fairy land--"
+
+"Oh, all the women out here bluff themselves and everybody else just
+so long and then suddenly go to pieces. It's a wonderful state, but
+what a life! What a life! Surely I was made for something better. I
+don't wonder--"
+
+"What?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Oh, nothing. I feel ungrateful, of course. I really should be quite
+happy. Think if I had to go back to Rouen to live--after this taste of
+freedom, and beauty--for California has all the beauties of youth as well
+as its idiocies and vices--"
+
+"There is not the remotest danger of your ever being obliged to live in
+Rouen again--"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. You might get tired of me. We might fight like cat and
+dog for want of common interests, of something to talk about. You would
+never take to drink like so many of the men, but I might--well, I'm glad
+dinner is ready at last."
+
+But she played with her food. That she was repressing an intense and
+mounting excitement Ruyler did not doubt, and he also suspected that she
+wished to broach some particular subject from which she turned in panic.
+They were alone after coffee had been served, and he said abruptly:
+
+"What is it, Hélène? Do you want money? I have an idea that Polly Roberts
+and Aileen Lawton borrow heavily from you, and that they may have cleaned
+you out completely on the first--"
+
+"How dear of you to guess--or rather to get so close. It's worse than
+that. I--that is--well--poor Polly went quite mad over a pearl necklace
+at Shreve's and they told her to take it and wear it for a few days,
+thinking, I suppose, she would never give it up and would get the money
+somehow. She--oh, it's too dreadful--she lost it--and she dares not tell
+Rex--he's lost quite a lot of money lately--and she's mad with
+fright--and I told her--"
+
+"Where did she lose it? It's not easy to lose a necklace, especially when
+the clasp is new."
+
+"She thinks it was stolen from her neck at the theater--you heard what
+that man said."
+
+"Ah! What was the price of the necklace?"
+
+"Twenty thousand dollars. The pearls weren't so very large, of course,
+but Polly never had had a pearl necklace--"
+
+"I'll let her have the money to pay for it on one condition--that it is a
+transaction, between Roberts and myself--"
+
+"No! No! Not for anything!"
+
+"I've lent him money before--"
+
+"But he'd never forgive Polly. He--he's one of those men who make an
+awful fuss on the first of every month when his wife's bills come in."
+
+"There must be a bass chorus on the first of every month in San
+Francisco--"
+
+"Oh, please don't jest. She must have this money."
+
+"She may have it--on those terms. I'll have no business dealings with
+women of the Polly Roberts sort. That would be the last I'd ever see of
+the twenty thousand--"
+
+"I never thought you were stingy!"
+
+Ruyler, in spite of his tearing anxiety, laughed outright. "Is that your
+idea of how the indulgent American husband becomes rich?"
+
+"Oh--of course I wouldn't have you lose such a sum. I really have learned
+the value of money in the abstract, although I can't care for it as much
+as men do."
+
+"I have no great love of money, but there is a certain difference between
+a miser and a levelheaded business man--"
+
+"Price, I must have that money. Polly--oh, I am afraid she will
+kill herself!"
+
+"Not she. A more selfish little beast never breathed. She'll squeeze the
+money out of some one, never fear! But I think I'll lock up your jewels
+in case you are tempted to raise money on them for her--Darling!"
+
+Hélène, without a sound, had fainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at
+once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with
+cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she
+kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the
+wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a
+quartz mine.
+
+"I shall put this in the safe," he said incisively, "for, while I admire
+your stanchness in friendship, even for such an unworthy object as Polly
+Roberts, I do not propose that my wife shall be selling or pawning her
+jewels for any reason whatever. Think over the proposal I made
+downstairs. If Polly is willing I'll lend Roberts the money to-morrow."
+
+She had thrown an arm over her face and she made no reply. He went down
+stairs and put the box in the safe. It occurred to him that she had
+watched him open and close the safe several times but she certainly never
+had written the combination down, and it had taken him a long while to
+commit it to memory himself.
+
+He had glanced over the contents of the box before he locked it in. The
+jewels were all there, the string of pearls that he had given her on
+their marriage day, a few wedding presents, and several rings and
+trinkets he had bought for her since. The value was perhaps twenty
+thousand dollars, for he had told her that she must wait several years
+before he could give her the jewels of a great lady. When she was thirty,
+and really needed them to make up for fading charms--it had been one of
+their pleasant little jokes.
+
+As Ruyler set the combination he sighed and wondered whether their days
+of joking were over. Their life had suddenly shot out of focus and it
+would require all his ingenuity and patience, aided by friendly
+circumstance, to swing it into line again. He did not believe a word of
+the necklace story. Somebody was blackmailing the poor child. If he could
+only find out who! He made up his mind suddenly to put this problem also
+in the hands of Spaulding for solution. The question of his
+mother-in-law's antecedents was important enough, but that of his wife's
+happiness and his own was paramount.
+
+He decided to go to the theater himself, for he was in no condition for
+sleep or the society of men at the club, nor could any book hold his
+attention. He prayed that the play would be reasonably diverting.
+
+He walked down town and as he entered the lobby of the Columbia at the
+close of the first act he saw 'Gene Bisbee and D.V. Bimmer, who was now
+managing a hotel in San Francisco, standing together. He also saw Bisbee
+nudge Bimmer, and they both stared at him openly, the famous hotel man
+with some sympathy in his wise secretive eyes, the reformed peer of the
+underworld with a certain speculative contempt.
+
+Ruyler, to his intense irritation, felt himself flushing, and wondered if
+the man's regard might be translated: "Just how much shall I be able to
+touch him for?" He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the
+damnable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her
+bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented
+his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever
+enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful
+past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society
+seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.
+
+Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price
+Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of
+social brigands.
+
+He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first
+act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to
+make the story negligible.
+
+At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try
+to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make
+her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject
+to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically
+analogous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.
+
+During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had
+placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that
+Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a
+connection. Hélène had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to
+"maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San
+Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and
+that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon
+the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally
+occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....
+
+Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for
+him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the
+gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating
+Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's
+position would be most likely to befriend.
+
+The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no
+frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle,
+he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and
+Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely
+doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the
+foundling asylum.
+
+There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the
+probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton
+had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and
+foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.
+
+When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her
+trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt,
+Medford found it in the way.
+
+After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman,
+driving her on the stage?--or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and
+did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell
+her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when
+Hélène was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives
+with some trumped up story and been received by them.
+
+Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Hélène's father
+was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the
+young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent--possibly at one
+of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with
+tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the
+Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in
+hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances,
+regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and
+disappear into her forgotten dust.
+
+His own romance? What was to be the end of that!
+
+But he returned to his argument. He wanted a coherent story to tell his
+wife, and he wanted also to believe that his wife's father had been a
+gentleman.
+
+Medford, like so many of his eloping kind, had made instinctively for
+California with the beautiful woman he loved but could not marry. Santa
+Barbara, Ruyler had heard, had been the favorite haven for two
+generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of
+England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild
+independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an
+equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating,
+shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport
+if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and told a
+plausible story.
+
+Breeding was a part of Ruyler's religion, as component in his code as
+honor, patriotism, loyalty, or the obligation of the strong to protect
+the weak. Far better the bend sinister in his own class than a legitimate
+parent of the type of 'Gene Bisbee or D.V. Bimmer. Ruyler was a "good
+mixer" when business required that particular form of diplomacy, and the
+familiarities of Jake Spaulding left his nerves unscathed, but in bone
+and brain cells he was of the intensely respectable aristocracy of
+Manhattan Island and he never forgot it. He had surrendered to a girl of
+no position without a struggle, and made her his wife, but it is doubtful
+if he would even have fallen in love with her if she had been underbred
+in appearance or manner. He had never regretted his marriage for a
+moment, not even since this avalanche of mystery and portending scandal
+had descended upon him; if possible he loved his troubled young wife more
+than ever--with a sudden instinct that worse was to come he vowed that
+nothing should ever make him love her less.
+
+When he arrived at his house he found two notes on the hall table
+addressed to himself. The first was from Hélène and read:
+
+"Polly telephoned that she would send her car for me to go down to the
+Fairmont and dance. I cannot sleep so I am going. _She cannot sleep
+either_! Forgive me if I was cross, but I am terribly worried for her.
+Don't wait up for me. Hélène."
+
+He read this note with a frown but without surprise. It was to be
+expected that she would seek excitement until her present fears were
+allayed and her persecutors silenced.
+
+He determined to order Spaulding to have her shadowed constantly for at
+least a fortnight and note made of every person in whose company she
+appeared to be at all uneasy, whether they were of her own set or not. It
+would also be worth while to have Madame Delano's rooms watched, for it
+was possible that she would summon Hélène there to meet Bisbee or others
+of his ilk.
+
+Then he picked up the other note. It was from Spaulding, and as he read
+it all his finespun theories vanished and once more he was adrift on an
+uncharted sea without a landmark in sight.
+
+"Dear Sir," began the detective, who was always formal on paper. "I've
+just got the information required from Holbrook Centre. We didn't half
+believe there was such a place, if you remember? Well there is, and
+according to the parish register Marie Jeanne Perrin was married to James
+Delano on July 25th, 1891. She was there, visiting some French
+relations--they went back soon after--and he had left there when he was
+about sixteen and had only come back that once to see his mother, who was
+dying. Nothing seems to have been known about him in his home town except
+a sort of rumor that he was a bad lot and lived somewheres in California.
+Can you beat it? But don't think I'm stumped. I'm working on a new line
+and I'm not going to say another word until I've got somewheres.
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"J. SPAULDING."
+
+"Delano's father was a Forty-niner, and lived in California till 1860,
+when he went home to H. C. and died soon after. There were wild stories
+about him, too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+I
+
+During the next few days Ruyler saw little of his wife. He was obliged to
+take two business trips out of town and as he could not return until ten
+o'clock at night he advised her to have company to dinner and take her
+guests to the play. But she preferred to dine with Polly Roberts and
+Aileen Lawton, and she spent her days for the most part at Burlingame,
+motoring down with one or more of her friends, or sent for by some
+enthusiastic girl admirer already established there for the summer.
+
+Ruyler was quite willing to forego temporarily his plan of personal
+guardianship, as the more she roamed abroad unattended the better could
+Spaulding watch her associates. The detective had his agents in society,
+as well as in the Palace Hotel, and on the third day he sent a brief note
+to Ruyler announcing that he had "lit on to something" that would make
+his employer's "hair curl, but no more at present from yours truly."
+
+"This time," he added, "I'm on the right track and know it. No more fancy
+theories. But I won't say a word till I can deliver the goods. Give your
+wife all the rope you can."
+
+Price and Hélène met briefly and amiably and she did not again broach the
+subject of the loan for her friend, nor did she ask for her jewels. It
+was apparent that she was proudly determined to conceal whatever terrors
+or even worries that might haunt her, but the effort deprived her of all
+her native vivacity; she was almost formal in manner and her white face
+grew more like a classic mask daily.
+
+On the evening before the Thornton fête, however, Price was able to dine
+at home. They met at table and he saw at once that she either had
+recovered her spirits or was making a deliberate attempt to create the
+impression of a carefree young woman happy in a tête-à-tête dinner with a
+busy husband.
+
+Her talk for the most part was of the great entertainment at San Mateo.
+The weather promised to be simply magnificent. Wasn't that exactly like
+Flora Thornton's luck? The immense grounds were simply swarming with
+workmen; wagon-loads of all sorts of things went through the gates after
+every train--simply one procession after another; but no one else could
+so much as get her nose through those gates.
+
+Hélène, with all her old childish glee, related how she and Aileen, Polly
+(who apparently had forgotten her impending doom), and two or three other
+girls, had called up Mrs. Thornton on the telephone every ten minutes for
+an hour--pretending it was long distance to make sure of a personal
+response--and begged to be allowed to go over and see the preparations,
+until finally, in a towering rage, her ladyship had replied that if they
+called her again she would withdraw her invitations.
+
+"How we did long for an airship. It would have been such fun, for she
+does so disapprove of all of us; thinks us a little flock of silly geese.
+Well, we are, I guess, but wasn't she one herself once? She has a pretty
+hard time even now making life interesting for herself--out here, anyhow.
+
+"Yesterday we motored down to Menlo and dropped in at the Maynards. There
+were a lot of the props of San Francisco society, all as rich as croesus,
+sitting on the veranda crocheting socks or sacks for a crop of new babies
+that are due. One or two were hemstitching lawn, or embroidering a
+monogram, or something else equally useless or virtuous. They were
+talking mild gossip, and didn't even have powder on. It was ghastly--"
+
+"Hélène," said Ruyler abruptly, "what do you think is the secret of
+happiness--I mean, of course, the enduring sort--perhaps content would be
+the better word. Happiness is too dependent upon love, and love was never
+meant for daily food. You are not by nature frivolous, and you are
+capable of thought. Have you ever given any to the secret of content?"
+
+"Yes, work," she answered promptly. "Everybody should have his daily job,
+prescribed either by the state or by necessity; but something he must do
+if both he and society would continue to exist."
+
+Ruyler elevated his eyebrows and looked at her curiously. "Socialism. I
+didn't know you had ever heard of it."
+
+"Aileen and I are not such fools as we look--as you were good enough to
+intimate just now. We went to a series of lectures early last winter over
+at the University, on Socialism--a lot of us formed a class, but all
+except Aileen and I dropped out.
+
+"We continued to read for a time after the lectures were over, but of
+course that didn't last. One drops everything for want of stimulus, and
+when one begins to flutter again one is lost.
+
+"But I heard and read and thought enough to deduce that the only vital
+interest in life after one's secret happiness--which one would not dare
+spread out too thin if one could in this American life--is necessary work
+well done. And that is quite different from those fussy interests and
+fads we create or take up for the sake of thinking we are busy and
+interested.
+
+"Polly's mother once told me she never was so happy in her life as during
+those weeks after the earthquake and fire when all the servants had run
+away and she had to cook for the family out in the street on a stove they
+bought down in a little shop in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on
+three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for
+cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a
+towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got
+the daily rations from the Government. She never thought once of--"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had
+been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped
+excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't
+lift a finger as long as the Government was feeding them."
+
+"There you are! Their ideal is complete leisure, and that of our delicate
+products of the highest civilization--compulsory jobs! What does progress
+mean but the leisure to enjoy the arts and all the finer fruits of
+progress? What else do we men really work for?"
+
+"Progress has gone too far and defeated its own ends. Every healthy human
+being should be forced to work six hours a day.
+
+"That would leave eight for sleep and ten for enjoyment of the arts and
+luxuries. Then we really should enjoy them, and if we couldn't have them
+unless we did our six hours' stint, ennui and the dissipations that it
+breeds would be unknown.
+
+"I can tell you it is demoralizing, disintegrating, to wake up morning
+after morning--about ten o'clock!--and know that you have nothing worth
+while to do for another day--for all the days!--that you have no place in
+the world except as an ornament! Women of limited incomes and a family of
+growing children have enough, to do, of course--too much--they never can
+feel superfluous and demoralized--except by envy--but as for us! Why, I
+can tell you, it is a marvel we don't all go straight to the devil."
+
+They were alone with the coffee, and she was pounding the table with her
+little fist. Her cheeks were deeply flushed and her black somber eyes
+were opening and closing rapidly, as if alternately magnetized by some
+ugly vision and sweeping it aside.
+
+Price watched her with deep interest and deeper anxiety. "A good many
+women go to the devil," he said. "But you are not that sort."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I never could get up enough interest in another man to
+solve the problem in the usual way--but there are other
+resources--I--well--"
+
+"What?" Price sat up very straight.
+
+"Oh, dance ourselves into tuberculosis," she said lightly, and dropping
+her eyelashes. "And tuberculosis of the mind, certainly. On the whole, I
+think I prefer physical to spiritual death....
+
+"However--I found out one thing to-day. The dancing is to be out of
+doors. There will be an immense arbor or something of the sort erected
+on the lawn above the sunken garden. My gown is a dream and I shall wear
+the ruby."
+
+"Yes," he said smiling. "You shall wear the ruby. But you must expect me
+to keep very close to you--"
+
+"The closer the better." She smiled charmingly. "Have you tried on
+your costume?"
+
+"I haven't even looked at it. Who am I?"
+
+"Caesar Borgia. You are not much like him yourself, darling, but I
+thought he was not so very unlike modern American business, as a whole."
+
+Ruyler laughed. "Why not Machiavelli? But as no doubt it is black velvet,
+much puffed and slashed, I may hope it will be becoming to my nondescript
+fairness. You must promise not to wander off for long walks with any of
+your admirers. Not that I fear the admirers, but the thieves that are
+bound to get into that crowd one way or another. They have a way of
+unclasping necklaces even of the most circumspect wives in the company of
+not too absorbing men."
+
+Her eyes opened and flashed, but he had no time to analyze that fleeting
+expression before she was promising volubly not to wander from the
+illuminated spaces.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He interrupted her suddenly. They were in the library now, and sat down
+on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant
+and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the
+islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green
+and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming
+liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a
+landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions hardly
+could rival.
+
+"Are you not grateful for this?" he asked whimsically and a little
+wistfully.
+
+"Oh, Price, dear, I am more grateful than you will ever know. I have not
+a fault on earth to find with you. You would be the prince of the fairy
+tale if you were not so busy.
+
+"But that is the tragedy. You are busy--I am not."
+
+"Well, let us have the personal solution--one that fits ourselves. You
+have time to think it out. I, alas! have not." He took her hand and
+fondled it, hoping for her confidence.
+
+"I don't know." She had a deep rich voice and she could make it very
+intense. "I only know there must--must--be a change--if--if--I am
+to--Can't you take me abroad for a year? That might not be work, but at
+least I should be learning some thing--I have traveled almost not at
+all--and, at least, I should have you."
+
+"But later? Most of your friends have spent a good deal of time in
+Europe. I doubt if any state in the Union goes to Europe as often as
+California! They are all the more discontented when they come back here
+to vegetate--as Mrs. Thornton would express it.
+
+"It would be a blessed interval, but no more."
+
+"We should have time to think out a new and different life....
+
+"You know--in the class I come from--in France--the women are the
+partners of their husbands. Even in the higher bourgeoisie, that is,
+where they still are in business, not living on great inherited
+fortunes--
+
+"My uncle had a small silk house in Rouen, and my aunt kept the books
+and attended to all the correspondence. He always said she was the
+cleverer business man of the two; but French women have a real genius
+for business. Some of our great ladies help their husbands manage
+their estates.
+
+"It is only the few that live for pleasure and glitter in the most
+glittering city in the world that have furnished the novelists the
+material to give the world a false impression of France.
+
+"The majority live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest
+genius could make people read about them.
+
+"Of course, young girls dream of something far more brilliant, and wait
+eagerly for the husband who shall deliver them from their narrow
+restricted little spheres... perhaps take them to the great world of
+Paris; but they settle down, even in Paris, and devote themselves to
+their husbands' interests, which are their own, and to their children....
+
+"That is it! They are indispensable--not as women, but as partners. I
+barely know what your business is about--only that you are in some
+tremendous wholesale commission thing with tentacles that reach half
+round the world.
+
+"Only the wives of politicians are any real help to their husbands in
+this country. Isabel Gwynne! What a help she will be--has been--to Mr.
+Gwynne. But then she was always busy. When her uncle died he left her
+that little ranch and scarcely anything else, she took to raising
+chickens--not to fuss about and fill in her time, but to keep a roof over
+her head and have enough to eat and wear. I doubt if she ever was bored
+in her life."
+
+"I can't take you into the business, sweetheart," said Ruyler slowly.
+"For that would violate the traditions of a very old conservative house.
+But I can quite see that something must be done....
+
+"I married you to make you happy and to be happy myself. I do not intend
+that our marriage shall be a failure. It is possible that Harold would
+consent to come out here and take my place. The business no longer
+requires any great amount of initiative, but the most unremitting
+vigilance. I have thought--it has merely passed through my mind--but you
+might hate it--how would you like it if I bought a large fruit ranch,
+several thousand acres, and put up a canning factory besides? I would
+make you a full partner and you would have to give to your share of the
+work considerably more than six hours of the day--
+
+"We could build a large, plain, comfortable house, take all our books and
+pictures, subscribe to all the newspapers, magazines and reviews, keep up
+with everything that is going on in the world, have house parties once in
+a while, come to town for a few weeks in summer for the plays.
+
+"We should live practically an out-of-door life--if you preferred we
+could buy a cattle ranch in the south. That would mean the greater part
+of the day in the saddle--
+
+"How does it appeal to you?"
+
+He had turned off the electricity, but as he fumbled with his
+embryonic idea he saw her eyes sparkle and a light of passionate hope
+dawn on her face.
+
+"Oh, I should love it! But love it! Especially the fruit ranch. That
+would be like France--our orchards are as wonderful as yours, even if
+nothing could be as big as a California ranch--
+
+"That is, if it would not be a makeshift. Another form of playing at
+life."
+
+"I can assure you that we will have to make it pay or go to the wall. My
+father would probably disinherit me, for it would be breaking another
+tradition, and he compliments me by believing that I am the best business
+man in the firm at present.
+
+"My only capital would be such of my fortune as is not tied up in the
+House--about a hundred thousand dollars in Government bonds. Of course,
+in time, if all goes well, and California does not have another
+setback--if business improves all over the world--I shall be able to take
+the rest of my money out, that I put into this end of the business after
+the fire; but that may be ten years hence. I shouldn't even ask for
+interest on it--that would be the only compensation I could offer for
+deserting the firm.
+
+"Perhaps I had better buy a cattle ranch. Then, if we fail, I shall at
+least have had the training of a cowboy and can hire out."
+
+Hélène laughed and clapped her hands.
+
+"Fail? You? But I should help you to make it a success--I should be
+really necessary?"
+
+"Indispensable. Either you or another partner."
+
+"No! No! I shall be the partner--"
+
+"And you mean that you would be willing to bury your youth, your beauty,
+on a ranch? I have heard bitter confidences out here from women forced to
+waste their youth on a ranch. You are one of the fine flowers of
+civilization--"
+
+"That soon wither in the hothouse atmosphere. I wish to become a hardy
+annual. And when the ranch was running like a clock we could take a month
+or two in Europe every year or so--"
+
+"Rather! And I could show you off--Bother! I'll not answer."
+
+The telephone bell on the little table in the corner (his own private
+wire) rang so insistently that Ruyler finally was magnetized reluctantly
+across the room. He put the receiver to his ear and asked, "Well?" in his
+most inhospitable tones.
+
+The answer came in Spaulding's voice, and in a moment he sat down.
+
+At the end of ten minutes he hung the receiver on the hook and returned
+to find Hélène standing by the window, all the light gone from her eyes,
+staring out at the hard brilliant scene with an expression of
+hopelessness that had relaxed the very muscles of her face.
+
+Ruyler was shocked, and more apprehensive than he had yet been. "Hélène!"
+he exclaimed. "What is the matter? Surely you may confide in me if you
+are in trouble."
+
+"Oh, but I am not," she replied coldly. "Did I look odd? I was just
+wondering how many really happy people there were behind those
+lights--over on Belvedere, at Sausalito--the lights look so golden and
+steady and sure--and glimpses of interiors at night are always so
+fascinating--but I suppose most of the people are commonplace and just
+dully discontented--"
+
+"Well, I am afraid I have something to tell you that hardly will restore
+your delightful gayety of a few moments ago. I am sorry--but--well, the
+fact is I must leave for the north to-morrow morning and hardly shall be
+able to return before the next night. I am really distressed. I wanted so
+much to take you to-morrow night--"
+
+"And I can't wear the ruby?" Her voice was shrill. Ruyler wondered if his
+stimulated imagination fancied a note of terror in it.
+
+"I--I--am afraid not--darling--"
+
+"But that Spaulding man will be there to watch--"
+
+"Unfortunately--I forgot to tell you--he cannot go--he is on an important
+case. Besides--when I make a promise I usually keep it."
+
+"But--but--" She stammered as if her brain were confused, then turned and
+pressed her face to the window. "I suppose nothing matters," she said
+dully. "Perhaps you will let me wear my own little ruby. After all, that
+was maman's, and she gave it to me before I was married. I should like to
+wear one jewel."
+
+"You shall have all your jewels, if you will promise not to give them to
+Polly Roberts or any one else."
+
+"I promise."
+
+He went over and opened the safe, and when he rose with the gold jewel
+case he saw that she was standing behind him. Once more it flitted
+through his mind that she had watched him manipulate the combination
+several times, but he had little confidence in any but a professional
+thief's ability to memorize such an involved assortment of figures as had
+been invented for this particular safe. It was only once in a while that
+he was not obliged to refer to the key that he carried in his pocketbook.
+
+Nor was she looking at the safe, but staring upward at a maharajah,
+covered with pearls of fantastic size. She took the box from his hand
+with a polite word of thanks, offered her cheek to be kissed, and
+left the room.
+
+Price threw himself into a chair and rehearsed the instructions Spaulding
+had given him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing
+colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in
+San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the
+stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.
+
+The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get
+closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through
+the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so
+seductive in the distance.
+
+They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps
+had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching
+their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought
+the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley.
+They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns--San
+Mateo, Redwood City--or the wives of the proletariat--or the servants of
+the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they
+made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered
+gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.
+
+Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly
+dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this
+melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
+He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as
+long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police
+by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them
+all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for
+mere foot passengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging
+conspirators.
+
+He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private
+conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had
+walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its
+thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat
+deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the
+seat beside him.
+
+"It is time you gave me some sort of a hint," he said. "After all, it is
+my affair--"
+
+"I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you
+balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never."
+
+"I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position
+where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the
+rest of my life."
+
+Ruyler's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led round by the nose,
+and his nerves were jumping.
+
+"Now! Now!" said Spaulding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. "When you hire
+a detective you hire him to do things you wouldn't do yourself; and if
+you won't give him the little help he's got to have from you or quit,
+what's the use of hiring him at all?
+
+"I know perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes would convince you
+of what it's up to me to prove--to say nothing of the fact that I count
+on your entrance at the last minute to put an end to the whole bad
+business. For it is a bad business--believe me. But not a word of that
+now. You couldn't pry open my lips with a five dollar Havana."
+
+"Well--you say you had a talk with Madame Delano to-day. Surely you can
+tell me some of the things you have discovered."
+
+"A whole lot. I've been waiting for the chance. Not that I got anything
+out of her. She's one grand bluffer and no mistake. I take off my hat to
+her. When I told her that I could lay hands on the proof that she was
+Marie Garnett--although Jim had married her in his home town under his
+own name--and that she'd gone home to France with the kid when it was
+five, taking the cue from her friend, Mrs. Lawton, and sending word back
+she was dead--"
+
+"You were equally sure a few days ago that she was Mrs. Lawton--"
+
+"That was just my constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely
+theory, and I sort of hung on to it. But I had no real data to go on. Now
+I've got the evidence that Jim Garnett died two months before the fire
+burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that his body was shipped
+back to Holbrook Centre to be buried in the family plot. You see, he was
+sick for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death was registered
+where the fire didn't go--"
+
+"But what put you on?" asked Ruyler impatiently. "I should almost rather
+it had been any one else. He seems to have been about as bad a lot as
+even this town ever turned out."
+
+"He was, all right, and his father before him, although they came from
+mighty fine folks back east. His father came out in '49 with the gold
+rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life--San
+Francisco was a gay little burg those days--opened one of the crack
+gambling houses down on the Old Plaza. Plate glass windows you could look
+through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds
+of men playing at tables where the gold pieces--often slugs--were piled
+as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles
+either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger
+with the sight of so much gold. They didn't try any funny business, for
+every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the
+table beside him.
+
+"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in
+front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up.
+Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep
+away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold
+up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife--she
+had followed him out here--persuaded him to go back home and live in the
+old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to
+death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped
+off. Her name was Mary Garnett.
+
+"That's what put me on--the G. in the middle of the name of the man
+Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what
+his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he
+was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood.
+He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and
+took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.
+
+"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her
+back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then
+he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself,
+either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome,
+distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as
+long as he lived.
+
+"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the
+gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that
+kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and
+she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy
+with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but
+even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.
+
+"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept
+her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and
+came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time.
+But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old
+Lawton--who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days,
+and who was one of her best friends.
+
+"Well, she also got Garnett to make a curious sort of a will, leaving his
+money to James Lawton, to 'dispose of as agreed upon.' She had a thrifty
+business head, had that French dame, and she had made him buy property
+when he was flush, and put it in her name, although she gave a written
+agreement never to sell out as long as he lived.
+
+"He agreed to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the
+time, and, besides, she played on his family pride--lineal descendant of
+the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was
+taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its
+being brought up wearing the old name, and gettin' rid of Marie at the
+same time.
+
+"She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in
+California; but I guess that didn't worry him much.
+
+"If the earthquake and fire hadn't come so soon after the will was
+probated there might have been a lot of speculation about it, among men,
+at least. Those old gossips in the Club windows would soon have been
+putting two and two together; but the calamity that burnt up all the Club
+windows, just swept it clean out of their heads.
+
+"I figger out that old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income
+she'd been havin' both from Jim and her properties, out of his own
+pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he could settle the estate. He had
+to borrow the money to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his wife's
+property, and when things got to a certain pass he wrote Madame D. to
+come along and take over her property. She'll be good and rich one of
+these days, when all the mortgages are paid off and Lawton paid back, but
+it was wise for her to stay on the job. Lawton is dead straight, but his
+partner is sowing wild oats in his old age--good old S.F. style, and I
+guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far. Get me?"
+
+"It's atrocious!"
+
+"Oh, not nearly so bad as it might be. Just think, if it had been
+Gabrielle, or Pauline-Marie, or even Mrs. Lawton. That's the worst kind
+of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie Garnett hung on like grim
+death to what the grand society you move in pretends to value most, and
+the Lord knows she'll never lose it now.
+
+"Nor need there be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The thing
+to do is to hustle Madame Delano out of San Francisco. She'll go, all
+right, with you to look after her interests. She don't fancy being
+recognized and blackmailed, or I miss my guess. You may have to pay
+Bisbee something, but D. V.'s not that sort, and I don't think anybody
+else is on. If they've suspected they'll soon forget it when the old lady
+disappears from the Palace Hotel. Gee, but she has a nerve."
+
+"She is an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here
+to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence
+twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her
+ironic French soul to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day after day
+and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnett in the obese Madame
+Delano, whose daughter is one of the great ladies of the city to whose
+underworld she once belonged, and from whose filthy profits she derives
+her income. Good God!"
+
+He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spaulding, who had drawn out
+his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Time's gettin' short. The stunt is to be pulled off
+just before supper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+I
+
+They walked rapidly up the close avenue--planted far back in the Fifties
+by Ford Thornton's grandfather--the blaze of light at the end of the long
+perspective growing wider and wider. As they emerged they paused for a
+moment, dazzled by the scene.
+
+The original home of the Thorntons had been of ordinary American
+architecture and covered with ivy; it might have been transplanted from
+some old aristocratic village in the East. Flora Thornton had maintained
+that only one style of architecture was appropriate in a state settled by
+the Spaniards, and famous for its missions of Moorish architecture. Fordy
+loved the old house, but as he denied his wife nothing he had given her a
+million, three years before the fire which so sadly diminished fortunes,
+and told her to build any sort of house she pleased; if she would only
+promise to live in it and not desert him twice a year for Europe.
+
+The immense structure, standing on a knoll, bore a certain resemblance to
+the Alhambra, with its heavy square towers; its arched gateways leading
+into courtyards with fountains or sunken pools, the red brown of the
+stucco which looked like stone and was not. To-night it was blazing with
+lights of every color.
+
+So were the ancient oaks, which were old when the Alhambra was built,
+the shrubberies, the vast rose garden. The surface of the pool in the
+sunken garden reflected the green or red masses of light that shot up
+every few moments from the four corners of the terrace surrounding it.
+On the lawn just above and to the right of the house, a platform had
+been built for dancing; it was enclosed on three sides with an arbor of
+many alcoves, lined with flowers, soft lights concealed in depending
+clusters of oranges.
+
+And everywhere there were people dressed in costumes, gorgeous,
+picturesque, impressive, historic, or recklessly invented, but suggesting
+every era when dress counted at all. They danced on the great platform to
+the strains of the invisible band, strolled along the terraces above the
+sunken garden, wandered through the groves and "grounds," or sat in the
+windows of the great house or in its courts. All wore the little black
+satin mask prescribed by Mrs. Thornton, and created an illusion that
+transported the imagination far from California. Ruyler had a whimsical
+sense of being on another star where the favored of the different periods
+of Earth had foregathered for the night.
+
+But there was nothing ghostly in the shrill chatter as incessant as the
+twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them
+and hardly knew whether to scold or join in the chorus.
+
+Ruyler had always protested against the high-pitched din made by even six
+American women when gathered together, and to the infernal racket at any
+large entertainment; but to-night he sighed, forgetting his apprehensions
+for the moment.
+
+He had exquisite memories of these lovely grounds; he and Hélène had
+spent several days with Mrs. Thornton during their engagement, and she
+had lent them the house for their honeymoon; he would have liked to
+wander through the pleasant spaces with his wife to-night and make love
+to her, instead of spying on her in the company of a detective.
+
+For that, he was forced to conclude, was what he had been brought for.
+Spaulding had mentioned her name casually, when telling him that he must
+be on hand to nab the "party" who was at the bottom of the whole trouble;
+but Spaulding hardly could have watched the person who was blackmailing
+without including her in his surveillance. He wished now that he had left
+that part of the mystery to take care of itself, trusting to his
+mother-in-law's departure to relieve the situation. No doubt she would
+have told him the truth herself rather than leave her daughter to the
+mercy of the men who knew her secret.
+
+But he was still far from suspecting the worst of the truth.
+
+There were a number of men in fancy dominoes; he and Spaulding crossed
+the lawn in front of the house unchallenged and, passing under the
+frowning archway, entered the first of the courts.
+
+The oblong sunken pool was banked with myrtle, and above, as well as in
+the great inner court with the fountain, there were narrow arcaded
+windows with fluttering silken curtains. Mrs. Thornton had too satiric a
+sense of humor to have had the famous arabesques of the Alhambra
+reproduced any more than the massive coats-of-arms above the arches, but
+the walls were delicately colored, the delicate columns looked like old
+ivory, and the greatest of the local architects had been entirely
+successful in combining the massiveness of the warrior stronghold with
+the airy lightness and spaciousness of the pleasure house.
+
+The bedrooms, Ruyler told Spaulding, were all as modern as they were
+luxurious, and the library, living-rooms, and dining-room, were in the
+best American style. Fordy had rebelled at too much "Spanish atmosphere,"
+his blood being straight Anglo-Saxon, and Mrs. Thornton always knew when
+to yield. Nevertheless, Flora Thornton had built the proper setting for
+her barbaric beauty, and, possibly, spirit.
+
+People were sitting about the courts on piles of colored silken cushions,
+those that had got themselves up in Eastern costumes having drifted
+naturally to the suitable surroundings; for, after all, the Moors had
+been Mohammedans.
+
+"Don't let's hang round here," said the detective, "and don't stand
+holding yourself like a ramrod--like that gent out there with the ruff
+that must be taking the skin off his chin. I kinder thought I'd like to
+see the whole show, but we'd best go now and wait for our little turn."
+
+He led the way round the building to the rear of the southwest tower.
+There was a little grove of jasmine trees just beneath it, that made the
+air overpoweringly sweet, but there were no lights on this side, as the
+garages, stables, vegetable gardens, and servants' quarters would have
+destroyed the picture.
+
+Spaulding glanced about sharply, but there was not even a strolling
+couple, and even the moon was shining on the other side of the heavy mass
+of buildings.
+
+"Now, listen," he said. "You see this window?"--he indicated one directly
+over their heads. "At exactly one o'clock, when everybody is flocking to
+the supper tables on the terraces, I expect some one to lean out of that
+window and talk to some one who will be waiting just below. There may be
+no talk, but I think there will be, and I want you to listen to every
+word of it without so much as drawing a long breath, no matter what is
+said, until I grab your elbow--like this--then I want you to put up your
+hand in a hurry while I'm also attendin' to business.
+
+"That's all I'll say now. But by the time a few words have been said,
+later, I guess you'll be on.
+
+"Now, we must resign ourselves to a long wait without a smoke and to
+keeping perfectly still. I dared not risk comin' any later for fear the
+others might be beforehand, too."
+
+Ruyler ground his teeth. He felt ridiculous and humiliated. It was no
+compensation that he was holding up the wall of a stucco Moorish palace
+and that some three hundred masked people in fancy dress were within
+earshot... or did the way he was togged out make him feel all the more
+absurd? The whole thing was beastly un-American....
+
+But, was it, after all? If he and Hélène had been here together to-night,
+not married and harrowed, but engaged and quick with romance, would he
+have thought it absurd to conspire and maneuver to separate her from the
+crowd and snatch a few moments of heavenly solitude? Would he have
+despised himself for suffering torments if she flouted him or for wanting
+to murder any man who balked him?
+
+Love, and all the passions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all
+the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and
+greed and the lust to kill in war--these were instincts and traits that
+appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner
+civilized and savage of the globe. The world changed somewhat in form
+during its progress, but never in substance.
+
+And mystery and intrigue were equally a part of life, as indigenous to
+the Twentieth Century as to those days long entombed in history when the
+troops of Ferdinand and Isabella sat down on the plain before Grenada.
+
+Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be
+recognized, in others--in that of certain men and women in the public
+eye, for instance--they were almost in the nature of a continuous
+performance.
+
+In these days men took a bath morning and evening, ate daintily, had a
+refined vocabulary to use on demand, dressed in tweeds instead of velvet.
+There were longer intervals between the old style of warfare when men
+were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or
+disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right
+against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like
+Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his
+capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly
+after the strain and nervous worry of the day.
+
+It suddenly felt quite normal to be here flattened against a wall waiting
+for some impossible dénouement.
+
+Nevertheless, he was sick with apprehension.
+
+Would it merely be the prelude to another drama? Was his life to be a
+series of unwritten plays, of which he was both the hero and the
+bewildered spectator? Or would it bring him calm, the terrible calm of
+stagnation, of an inner life finished, sealed, buried?
+
+It was inevitable in these romantic surroundings and conditions that he
+should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had
+stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such
+evidence.... It would be a damnable liberty.... It might be inextricably
+woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus
+whom Hélène saw constantly.... Spaulding may have seen his chance to nip
+the thing in the bud, and had taken the risk....
+
+He felt the detective's lips at his ear: "Hear anything? Move a little
+so's you can look up."
+
+Ruyler heard his wife's voice above him, then Aileen Lawton's. He parted
+the branches and saw the two girls lean over the low sill of the
+casement. Both had removed their masks, but their faces were only dimly
+revealed. Their voices, however, were distinct enough, and his wife's was
+dull and flat.
+
+"Oh, I can't," she said. "I can't."
+
+"Well, you'll just jolly well have to. You've got it, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I've got it!"
+
+"Well, he'll never suspect you."
+
+"I shall tell him."
+
+"Tell him? You little fool. And give us all away?"
+
+"I'd mention no other names."
+
+"As if he wouldn't probe until he found out. Don't you know Price Ruyler
+yet? My father said once he'd have made a great District Attorney. What's
+the use of telling him later, for that matter? Why not now?"
+
+"I haven't the courage yet. I might have one day--at just the right
+moment. I never thought I was a coward."
+
+"You're just a kid. That's what's the matter. We ought to have left you
+out. I told Polly that--"
+
+"You couldn't! Oh, don't you see you couldn't. That's the terrible part
+of it! Left me out? I'd have found my way in."
+
+"I'm not so sure. You were interested in heaps of things, and in love,
+and all that--"
+
+"Oh, I'd like to excuse myself by blaming it on being bored, and tired of
+trying to amuse myself doing nothing worth while, but it's bad blood,
+that's what it is, bad blood, and you know it, if none of the others do."
+
+"Oh, I'm not one of your heredity fiends. When did your mother tell you?"
+
+"Only the other day."
+
+"Well, she ought to have told you long ago. I believe you'd have kept out
+if you'd known."
+
+"Wouldn't I? But of course she hated to tell the truth to me--"
+
+"Well, if I'd known that you didn't know I'd have told you, all right. I
+wormed it out of Dad soon after you arrived, and at first I thought it
+was a good joke on Society, to say nothing of Price Ruyler, with his air
+of God having created heaven first, maybe, but New York just after. Then
+I got fond of you and I wouldn't have told for the world. But I would
+have put you on your guard if I'd known."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if Price doesn't find out about this, if he
+learns the other--who my father was, and that awful men have recognized
+my mother--I suppose he'll hate me, and in time I'll go back to Rouen--"
+
+"Now, you don't think as ill as that of him, do you? He makes me so mad
+sometimes I could spit in his face, but if he's one thing he's true blue.
+He's the straight masculine type with a streak of old romance that would
+make him love a woman the more, the sorrier he was for her, and the
+weaker she was--I mean so long as she was young. After this, just get to
+work on your character, kid. When you're thirty maybe he won't feel that
+it's his whole duty to protect you. You'll never be hard and seasoned
+like me, nor able to take care of yourself. I like danger, and
+excitement, and uncertainty, and mystery, and intrigue, and lying, and
+wriggling out of tight places. I'd have gone mad in this hole long ago,
+if I hadn't, for I don't care for sport. But you were intended to develop
+into what is called a 'fine woman,' surrounded by the right sort of man
+meanwhile. And Price Ruyler is the right sort. I'll say that much for
+him. He'd have driven me to drink, but he's just your sort--"
+
+"And what am I doing? I am the most degraded woman in the world."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not. Not by a long sight. You don't know how much worse
+you could be. One woman who is here to-night I saw lying dead drunk in
+the road between San Mateo and Burlingame the other day when I was
+driving with Alice Thorndyke, and Alice is having her fourth or fifth
+lover, I forget which--"
+
+"They are no worse than I."
+
+"Listen. He's coming. Got it ready?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"You must. He'll hound you in the _Merry Tattler_ until the whole town
+knows you're a welcher, and not a soul would speak to you. That is the
+one unpardonable sin--"
+
+"I wish I'd told Price--"
+
+"Oh, no, you don't. This is just a lovely way out. Glad he had the
+inspiration. Hello, Nick."
+
+A man had groped his way between the trees and stood just under
+the window.
+
+"What are you doing here?" asked Doremus sourly.
+
+"Witness, witness, my dear Nick. Besides, poor Hélène never would have
+come alone, so there you are."
+
+"To hell with all this melodramatic business. It could have been done
+anywhere--"
+
+"Not much. Dark corners for dark doings."
+
+"Well, hand it over."
+
+Ruyler had given his brain an icy shower bath as soon as he heard his
+wife's voice, and was now as cool and alert as even the detective could
+have wished. He did not wait for the promised impulse to his elbow; his
+hand shot up just ahead of Doremus's and closed over his wife's hand,
+which, he felt at once, held the ruby. At the same moment Spaulding
+caught Doremus by his medieval collar and shook him until the man's teeth
+chattered, then he slapped his face and kicked him.
+
+"Now, you," he said standing over the panting man, who was mopping his
+bleeding nose, and holding the electric torch so that it would shine on
+his own face. "You get out of California, d'you hear? You're a gambler
+and a blackmailer and a panderer to old women, and I've got some
+evidence that would drag you into court however it turned out, so's
+you'd find this town a live gridiron. So, git, while you can. Go while
+the going's good."
+
+Doremus, too shaken to reply, slunk off, and Spaulding after a glance
+upward, left as silently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I
+
+Aileen had shrieked and fled. Ruyler stood in the room with the ruby in
+his open hand. He saw that Hélène was standing quite erect before him.
+She had made no attempt to leave the room, nor did she appear to be
+threatened with hysterics.
+
+He groped until he found the electric button. The room, as Ruyler had
+inferred, was Mrs. Thornton's winter boudoir, a gorgeous room of yellow
+brocade and oriental stuffs.
+
+"Will you sit down?" he asked.
+
+Hélène shook her head. She was very white and she looked as old as a
+young actress who has been doing one night stands for three months.
+Behind the drawn mask of her face there was her indestructible youth, but
+so faint that it thought itself dead.
+
+She looked at her hands, which she twisted together as if they were cold.
+
+"Will you tell me the truth now?" asked Price.
+
+"Don't you guess it?"
+
+"When I came here to-night I believed that you were the victim of
+blackmail. I was not watching you--I hope you will take my word for that.
+We--I had a detective on the case--Spaulding merely wanted to nab the man
+who was blackmailing you--"
+
+"Do you still believe that?"
+
+"I overheard your conversation with Aileen Lawton. I don't know what
+to believe."
+
+"I am a gambler. My father was a gambler. He kept a notorious place in
+San Francisco. His name out here was James Garnett. My grandfather was a
+gambler. He was even more spectacular--"
+
+"I know all that. Don't mind."
+
+"You knew it?" For the first time she looked at him, but she turned her
+eyes away at once and stared at the oblong of dark framed by the
+window. "Why--"
+
+"Spaulding told me to-night only."
+
+"Mother told me a week or so ago. She'd been recognized. Shortly after I
+married, when she found out how the women played bridge and poker here,
+she made me promise I'd never touch a card, never play any sort of
+gambling game. I promised readily enough, and I thought nothing of her
+insistence. Maman was old-fashioned in many ways--I mean the life we
+lived in. Rouen was so different from this that I could understand how
+many things would shock her. I never thought about it--but--it was about
+six months ago--you were away for a week and I stayed with Polly Roberts
+at the Fairmont. I knew of course that she played and that Aileen and a
+lot of the others did, but I hadn't given the matter a thought. One heard
+nothing but bridge, bridge, bridge. I was sick of the word.
+
+"But I found they played poker. Polly and Aileen, Alice Thorndyke, Janet
+Maynard, Mary Kimball, Nick Doremus, Rex and one or two other men who
+could get off in the afternoons.
+
+"I never had dreamed any one in society played for such high stakes.
+Janet Maynard and Mary Kimball could afford it, but Polly and Alice and
+Aileen couldn't. Still they often won--enough, anyhow, to clean up and go
+on. Doremus is a wonderful player. That is how I got interested, watching
+him after he had explained the game to me.
+
+"It was a long time before I was persuaded to take a hand. It was so
+interesting just to watch. And not only the game, but their faces. Some
+would have a regular 'poker face,' others would give themselves away.
+Once Aileen had the most awful hysterics. We were afraid some one outside
+would hear her; the deadening was burnt out of the walls of the Fairmont
+at the time of the fire. But we were in the middle room of the suite.
+
+"Nick told her in his dreadful cold expressionless voice that if she ever
+did that again he'd never play another game with her. That meant that
+they'd all drop her, and she came to and promised, and she kept her word.
+Poker is the breath of life to her. I think she'd become a drug fiend if
+she couldn't have it.
+
+"At last they persuaded me to play. We were playing at Nick's, and after
+a light dinner served by his Jap, we went right on playing until
+midnight. I never thought of you or anything. I seemed to respond with
+every nerve in my body and brain. I won and won and won, and even when I
+lost I didn't mind. The sensation, the tearing excitement just under a
+perfectly cool brain was wonderful.
+
+"I only ceased to enjoy it when I realized what it meant. When I couldn't
+keep away from it. When I lived for the hour when we would meet,--at
+Polly's, or at Nick's or at Aileen's--any of the places where we were
+supposed to be dancing, but where there was no danger of being found out.
+Of course I dared not have them at home, and the others lived with their
+families, or had too many servants....
+
+"I came fully to my senses one day when Nick told me I was a born
+gambler if ever there was one. Then, when I realized, I became
+desperately unhappy.
+
+"I was the slave of a thing. I was deceiving you. When I was at the table
+I loved poker better than you, better than anything on earth. When I was
+alone I hated it. But I couldn't break away. Besides, I didn't always
+win. I had to play in the hope of winning back. Or if I won a lot it was
+a point of honor to go on and play again, and give them their chance.
+
+"Mrs. Thornton found out. She gave me a terrible talking to. I am afraid
+I was very insolent.
+
+"But she came up that night of the Assembly and warned me that you were
+down stairs. I was playing in Polly's room. We had all danced two or
+three times and then slipped up to the next floor by different stairs and
+lifts. I liked her better then. Of course she did it for your sake, not
+mine. But she's a good sort, not a cat.
+
+"You have not noticed, but I have not bought a new gown this season
+except that little gray one and this--which was made in the house. I
+dared not pawn my jewels, for fear you would miss them.
+
+"I have been in hell.
+
+"Then--it was that evening you heard maman reproach me for breaking my
+promise--I had lost a dreadful lot of money and Nick had scurried round
+and borrowed it for me. I didn't know then that he meant all the time to
+get hold of the ruby--I am sure now that he cheated and made me lose.
+
+"Well, I sent the maid away that night and told maman. She was nearly off
+her head. I never saw her excited before. Then she told me the truth. I
+felt as if I had been turned to stone. But I felt suddenly cool and wary.
+I knew I must keep my head. It was as if my father had suddenly come
+alive in my brain. I had never lied to you before, merely put you off.
+But how I lied that night! I felt possessed. But I knew I must not be
+found out, and I made up my mind to stop playing as soon as I came out
+even. If I had known that my father and my grandfather had been gamblers
+I never should have touched a card. I'd far rather have drunk poison.
+
+"I made up my mind then, and there to stop and I felt quite capable of
+it. But I had to go on and square myself, for I owed that money to Nick.
+But when I played it was with my head only. All the fever had gone out of
+my veins. I loathed it. I loathed still more deceiving you.
+
+"I won and won and won. I thought I was delivered. I was almost happy
+again. Some day I meant to tell you--when it was all over.
+
+"Then I began to lose horribly. Thousands. It ran up to twenty thousand.
+I did not betray myself, and the girls thought I had money of my own and
+could pay my losses quite easily. They didn't know that Nick always
+helped me out. He was never the least bit in love with me--he couldn't
+love any woman--but he said I played such a wonderful game and was such a
+sport, never lost my head, that he wouldn't lose me for the world--when I
+threatened to stop and never play again.
+
+"But all the time he wanted the ruby. I found that out when he told me he
+must have the money inside of a week; he'd taken it out of his business,
+and it really belonged to his partners, and they'd find him out and send
+him to prison--
+
+"I offered him my jewels. They would have brought half their value at
+least. I could have told you they were stolen--only one more lie. It was
+then he said he must have the ruby. He had known about it ever since you
+came out here, but after he saw it on me that night at the Gwynnes' he
+was more than ever determined to have it.
+
+"I laughed at him at first. It seemed preposterous that he could demand a
+ruby worth two or three hundred thousand dollars in payment for a debt of
+twenty thousand. I thought of selling my jewels and furs and laces, or
+pawning them and raising the amount--he only had my I.O.U. for that sum.
+But I didn't know where to go. So I told Aileen. She wouldn't hear of my
+disposing of my things, said it would, be all over town in twenty-four
+hours. She advised me to get the twenty thousand out of you on one
+pretext or another.
+
+"I tried. You will remember. Then Nick began to haunt me. He whispered in
+my ear wherever we met. I was nearly frantic. He said he could hold me up
+to shame without compromising himself. I had written him some frantic
+letters, and he said they read just like--like--the other thing.
+
+"I felt perfectly helpless. I knew that even if I did manage to pawn the
+jewels, you would miss them from the safe and trace them. I ceased to
+feel cool. I nearly went off my head. But I stopped gambling. I felt sure
+by this time that he could make me lose, but I couldn't prove it. Aileen
+told me I must give him the ruby. He promised me before Aileen that he
+would give me back my I.O.U.'s as well as my notes if I would hand over
+the ruby. He knew I was to wear it to-night.
+
+"Finally I gave in. Yesterday Nick called me up on the telephone and told
+me to come down to the California Market to lunch, and to bring Aileen.
+He told me there that unless I promised to give him the ruby to-night,
+and kept my word, he'd either give my I.O.U.'s and my notes to you or to
+the _Merry Tattler_. He didn't care which. I could have my choice.
+
+"I said I would do it. But it was terribly conspicuous. Everybody would
+notice when it was gone. He said I must conceal it anyhow until we
+unmasked after supper, and then I could pretend I had lost it. He
+discussed several plans for having me slip it to him, but it was Aileen
+who insisted we should come here. Mrs. Thornton never opens her boudoir
+at a party. Everywhere else would be a blaze of light. In this dark
+corner we should be safe, especially if he came from the outside and I
+from inside. How did your detective find out?"
+
+"I think Aileen did a decent thing for once in her life."
+
+She went on in her monotonous voice. "I felt reckless after that and I
+really was gay and almost happy at dinner last night. The die was cast. I
+didn't much care for anything. I thought perhaps it was my last night
+with you--that when I told you I had lost the ruby you would suspect and
+turn me out of your house, tell maman to take me back to Rouen.
+
+"Then came that awful moment when you said you had to go away and I could
+not wear it. For a few moments I thought I should scream and tell you
+everything. But I was both too proud and too much of a coward. Then I
+knew I should have to rob the safe, and somehow I hated that part more
+than anything else. I did it just ten minutes before Rex and Polly called
+for me to motor down here. It had seemed the most horrible thing in the
+world to be a gambler, but it was worse to be a thief.
+
+"I remembered the combination perfectly. I have that sort of memory: it
+registers photographically. I had seen you move the combination several
+times. Perhaps I deliberately registered it. I can't say. I have lived in
+such a maze of intrigue lately. I can't say. That is all--except that I
+didn't get the letters and the other things."
+
+"He had an envelope in one hand. Spaulding has it beyond a doubt."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly: "It is a
+pity you haven't the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of
+the evening."
+
+She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him. "I have the
+chain--" She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice--"but--but--you
+can't mean--it isn't possible that you can forgive me."
+
+"I think I have taken very bad care of you. What are you, after all, but
+a brilliant child? I am thirty-three--"
+
+He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeling of rage, and thrust his
+hands into his friendly pockets. He had never made many verbal
+protestations to her, although the most exacting wife could have found no
+fault with his love-making. But to-night he felt dumb; he was mortally
+afraid of appearing high and noble and magnanimous.
+
+"You see, things always happen during the first years of married life.
+Perhaps more happens--I mean in a pettier way--when the man has leisure
+and can see too much of his wife. In my case--our case--it was the other
+way--and something almost tragic happened. So I vote we treat it
+casually, as something that must have been expected sooner or later to
+disturb our--our--even tenor--and forget it."
+
+"Forget it?"
+
+"Well, yes. I can if you can."
+
+"And can you forget who I am?"
+
+"You are exactly what you were before those scoundrels recognized your
+mother, and--and--set me going. Of course I had to find out the truth. I
+thought you knew and tried to make you tell me. But you
+wouldn't--couldn't--and I had to employ Spaulding."
+
+"Do you mean you would have married me if you had known the truth at
+the time?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"And--but--I told you--I became a regular gambler."
+
+He could not help smiling. "I have no fear of your gambling again. And I
+don't fancy you were a bit worse than the others who had no gambling
+blood in them--all the world has that. Gambling is about the earliest of
+the vices. I--if--you wouldn't mind promising--I know you will keep it."
+
+"Nothing under heaven would induce me to play again. But--but--I opened
+your safe like a thief and stole--"
+
+"Oh, not quite. After all it was yours as much as mine. If I had died
+without a will you would have got it.
+
+"Of course--I know what you mean--but men have always driven women into a
+corner, and they have had to get out by methods of their own. I wish now
+I had given you the twenty thousand. I prefer you should accept my
+decision that it was all my fault. Give me the chain."
+
+She drew it from her bosom and handed it to him. He fastened the ruby in
+its place and threw the chain over her neck. The great jewel lit up the
+front of her somber gown like a sudden torch in a cavern.
+
+The stern despair of Hélène's tragic mask relaxed. She dropped her face
+into her hands and began to sob. Then Ruyler was himself again. He
+picked her up in his arms and settled comfortably into the deepest of
+the chairs.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Avalanche, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Avalanche, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Avalanche
+
+Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2004 [EBook #7863]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AVALANCHE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE AVALANCHE
+
+                            _A MYSTERY STORY_
+
+                           BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+
+                                   1919
+
+
+
+
+TO CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+I
+
+Price Ruyler knew that many secrets had been inhumed by the earthquake
+and fire of San Francisco and wondered if his wife's had been one of
+them. After all, she had been born in this city of odd and whispered
+pasts, and there were moments when his silent mother-in-law suggested a
+past of her own.
+
+That there was a secret of some sort he had been progressively convinced
+for quite six months. Moreover, he felt equally sure that this impalpable
+gray cloud had not drifted even transiently between himself and his wife
+during the first year and a half of their marriage. They had been
+uncommonly happy; they were happy yet ... the difference lay not in the
+quality of Helene's devotion, enhanced always by an outspoken admiration
+for himself and his achievements, but in subtle changes of temperament
+and spirits.
+
+She had been a gay and irresponsible young creature when he married her,
+so much so that he had found it expedient to put her on an allowance and
+ask her not to ran up staggering bills in the fashionable shops; which
+she visited daily, as much for the pleasure of the informal encounter
+with other lively and irresponsible young luminaries of San Francisco
+society as for the excitement of buying what she did not want.
+
+He had broached the subject with some trepidation, for they had never had
+a quarrel; but she had shown no resentment whatever, merely an eager
+desire to please him. She even went directly down to the Palace Hotel and
+reproached her august parent for failing to warn her that a dollar was
+not capable of infinite expansion.
+
+But no wonder she had been extravagant, she told Ruyler plaintively. It
+had been like a fairy tale, this sudden release from the rigid
+economies of her girlhood, when she had rarely had a franc in her
+pocket, and they had lived in a suite of the old family villa on one
+of the hills of Rouen, Madame Delano paying her brother for their
+lodging, and dressing herself and Helene with the aid of a half
+paralyzed seamstress with a fiery red nose. Ma foi! It was the
+nightmare of her youth, that nose and that croaking voice. But the
+woman had fingers, and a taste! And her mother could have concocted a
+smart evening frock out of an old window curtain.
+
+But the petted little daughter was never asked to go out and buy a spool
+of thread, much less was she consulted in the household economies. All
+she noticed was that her clothes were smarter than Cousin Marthe's, who
+had a real dressmaker, and was subject to fits of jealous sulks. No
+wonder that when money was poured into her lap out in this wonderful
+California she had assumed that it was made only to spend.
+
+But she would learn! She would learn! She would ask her mother that very
+day to initiate her into the fascinating secrets of personal economies,
+teach her how to portion out her quarterly allowance between her
+wardrobe, club dues, charities, even her private automobile.
+
+This last heroic suggestion was her own, and although her husband
+protested he finally agreed; it was well she should learn just what it
+cost to be a woman of fashion in San Francisco, and the allowance was
+very generous. His old steward, Mannings, ran the household, although as
+he went through the form of laying the bills before his little mistress
+on the third of every month, she knew that the upkeep of the San
+Francisco house and the Burlingame villa ran into a small fortune a year.
+
+"It is not that I am threatened with financial disaster," Ruyler had said
+to her. "But San Francisco has not recovered yet, and it is impossible to
+say just when she will recover. I want to be absolutely sure of my
+expenditures."
+
+She had promised vehemently, and, as far as he knew, she had kept her
+promise. He had received no more bills, and it was obvious that her
+haughty chauffeur was paid on schedule time, until, seized with another
+economical spasm, she sold her car and bought a small electric which she
+could drive herself.
+
+Ruyler, little as he liked his mother-in-law, was intensely grateful to
+her for the dexterity with which she had adjusted Helene's mind to the
+new condition. She even taught her how to keep books in an elemental way
+and balanced them herself on the first of every month. As Helene Ruyler
+had a mind as quick and supple as it was cultivated in _les graces_, she
+soon ceased to feel the chafing of her new harness, although she did
+squander the sum she had reserved for three months mere pocket money upon
+a hat; which was sent to the house by her wily milliner on the first day
+of the second quarter. She confessed this with tears, and her husband,
+who thought her feminine passion for hats adorable, dried her tears and
+took her to the opening night of a new play. But he did not furnish the
+pathetic little gold mesh bag, and as he made her promise not to borrow,
+she did not treat her friends to tea or ices at any of the fashionable
+rendezvous for a month. Then her native French thrift came to her aid and
+she sold a superfluous gold purse, a wedding present, to an envious
+friend at a handsome bargain.
+
+That was ancient history now. It was twenty months since Price had
+received a bill, and secret inquiries during the past two had satisfied
+him that his wife's name was written in the books of no shop in San
+Francisco that she would condescend to visit. Therefore, this maddening
+but intangible barrier had nothing to do with a change of habit that had
+not caused an hour of tears and sulks. Helene had a quick temper but a
+gay and sweet disposition, normally high spirits, little apparent
+selfishness, and a naive adoration of masculine superiority and strength;
+altogether, with her high bred beauty and her dignity in public, an
+enchanting creature and an ideal wife for a busy man of inherited social
+position and no small degree of pride.
+
+But all this lovely equipment was blurred, almost obscured at times, by
+the shadow that he was beginning to liken to the San Francisco fogs that
+drifted through the Golden Gate and settled down into the deep hollows of
+the Marin hills; moving gently but restlessly even there, like ghostly
+floating tides. He could see them from his library window, where he often
+finished his afternoon's work with his secretaries.
+
+But the fog drifted back to the Pacific, and the shadow that encompassed
+his wife did not, or rarely. It chilled their ardors, even their serene
+domesticity. She was often as gay and impulsive as ever, but with abrupt
+reserves, an implication not only of a new maturity of spirit, but of
+watchfulness, even fear. She had once gone so far as to give voice
+passionately to the dogma that no two mortals had the right to be as
+happy as they were; then laughed apologetically and "guessed" that the
+old Puritan spirit of her father's people was coming to life in her
+Gallic little soul; then, with another change of mood, added defiantly
+that it was time America were rid of its baneful inheritance, and that
+she would be happy to-day if the skies fell to-morrow. She had flung
+herself into her husband's arms, and even while he embraced her the eyes
+of his spirit searched for the girl wife who had fled and left this more
+subtly fascinating but incomprehensible creature in her place.
+
+
+II
+
+The morning was Sunday and he sat in the large window of his library that
+overlooked the Bay of San Francisco. The house, which stood on one of the
+highest hills, he had bought and remodeled for his bride. The books that
+lined these walls had belonged to his Ruyler grandfather, bought in a day
+when business men had time to read and it was the fashion for a gentleman
+to cultivate the intellectual tracts of his brain. The portraits that
+hung above, against the dark paneling, were the work of his mother's
+father, one of the celebrated portrait painters of his time, and were
+replicas of the eminent and mighty he had painted. Maharajas, kings,
+emperors, famous diplomats, men of letters, artists of his own small
+class, statesmen and several of the famous beauties of their brief day;
+these had been the favorite grandson's inheritance from Masewell Price,
+and they made an impressive frieze, unique in the splendid homes of the
+city of Ruyler's adoption.
+
+He had brought them from New York when he had decided to live in
+California, and hung them in his bachelor quarters. He had soon made up
+his mind that he must remain in San Francisco for at least ten years if
+he would maintain the business he had rescued from the disaster of 1906
+at the level where he had, by the severest application of his life,
+placed it by the end of 1908. Meanwhile he had grown to like San
+Francisco better than he would have believed possible when he arrived in
+the wrecked city, still smoking, and haunted with the subtle odors of
+fires that had consumed more than products of the vegetable kingdom.
+
+The vast ruin with its tottering arches and broken columns, its lonely
+walls looking as if bitten by prehistoric monsters that must haunt this
+ancient coast, the soft pastel colors the great fire had given as sole
+compensation for all it had taken, the grotesque twisted masses of steel
+and the aged gray hills that had looked down on so many fires, had
+appealed powerfully to his imagination, and made him feel, when wandering
+alone at night, as if his brain cells were haunted by old memories of
+Antioch when Nature had annihilated in an instant what man had lavished
+upon her for centuries. Nowhere, not even in what was left of ancient
+Rome, had he ever received such an impression of the age of the world and
+of the nothingness of man as among the ruins of this ridiculously modern
+city of San Francisco. It fascinated him, but he told himself then that
+he should leave it without a pang. He was a New Yorker of the seventh
+generation of his house, and the rest of the United States of America was
+merely incidental.
+
+The business, a branch of the great New York firm founded in 1840 by an
+ancestor grown weary of watching the broad acres of Ruyler Manor
+automatically transmute themselves into the yearly rent-roll, and
+reverting to the energy and merchant instincts of his Dutch ancestors,
+had been conducted skillfully for the thirty years preceding the
+disaster by Price's uncle, Dryden Ruyler. But the earthquake and fire in
+which so many uninsured millions had vanished, had also wrecked men past
+the rebounding age, and Dryden Ruyler was one of them. He might have
+borne the destruction of the old business building down on Front Street,
+or even the temporary stagnation of trade, but when the Pacific Union
+Club disappeared in the raging furnace, and, like many of his old
+cronies who had no home either in the country or out in the Western
+Addition, he was driven over to Oakland for lodgings, this ghastly
+climax of horrors--he escaped in a milk wagon after sleeping for two
+nights without shelter on the bare hills behind San Francisco, while the
+fire roared its defiance to the futile detonations of dynamite, and his
+sciatica was as fiery as the atmosphere--had broken the old man's
+spirit, and he had announced his determination to return to
+Ruyler-on-Hudson and die as a gentleman should.
+
+There was no question of Price's father, Morgan Ruyler, leaving New
+York, even if he had contemplated the sacrifice for a moment; that his
+second son and general manager of the several branches of the great
+business of Ruyler and Sons--as integral a part of the ancient history
+of San Francisco as of the comparatively modern history of New
+York--should go, was so much a matter of course that Price had taken the
+first Overland train that left New York after the receipt of his uncle's
+despairing telegram.
+
+In spite of the fortune behind him and his own expert training, the
+struggle to rebuild the old business to its former standard had been
+unintermittent. The terrific shock to the city's energies was followed
+by a general depression, and the insane spending of a certain class of
+San Franciscans when their insurance money was paid, was like a brief
+last crackling in a cold stove, and, moreover, was of no help to the
+wholesale houses.
+
+But Price Ruyler, like so many of his new associates in like case, had
+emerged triumphant; and with the unqualified approval and respect of the
+substantial citizens of San Francisco.
+
+It was this position he had won in a community where he had experienced
+the unique sensation of being a pioneer in at the rebirth of a great
+city, as well as the outdoor sports that kept him fit, that had endeared
+California to Ruyler, and in time caused him whimsically to visualize New
+York as a sternly accusing instead of a beckoning finger. Long before he
+found time to play polo at Burlingame he had conceived a deep respect for
+a climate where a man might ride horseback, shoot, drive a racing car, or
+tramp, for at least eight months of the year with no menace of sudden
+downpour, and hardly a change in the weight of his clothes.
+
+To-day the rain was dashing against his windows and the wind howled about
+the exposed angles of his house with that personal fury of assault with
+which storms brewed out in the vast wastes of the Pacific deride the
+enthusiastic baptism of a too confident explorer. All he could see of the
+bay was a mad race of white caps, and dark blurs which only memory
+assured him were rocky storm-beaten islands; mountain tops, so geological
+tradition ran, whose roots were in an unquiet valley long since dropped
+from mortal gaze.
+
+The waves were leaping high against the old forts at the entrance to the
+Golden Gate, and occasionally he saw a small craft drift perilously near
+to the rocks. But he loved the wild weather of San Francisco, for he was
+by nature an imaginative man and he liked to think that he would have
+followed the career of letters had not the traditions of the great
+commercial house of Ruyler and Sons, forced him to carry on the burden.
+
+The men of his family had never been idlers since the recrudescence of
+ancestral energy in the person of Morgan Ruyler I; it was no part of
+their profound sense of aristocracy to retire on inherited or invested
+wealth; they believed that your fine American of the old stock should die
+in harness; and if the harness had been fashioned and elaborated by
+ancestors whose portraits hung in the Chamber of Commerce, all the more
+reason to keep it spic and up to date instead of letting it lapse into
+those historic vaults where so many once honored names lay rotting. They
+were a hard, tight-fisted lot, the Ruylers, and Price in one secluded but
+cherished wing of his mind was unlike them only because his mother was
+the daughter of Masefield Price and would have been an artist herself if
+her scandalized husband would have consented. Morgan Ruyler IV had
+overlooked his father-in-law's divagation from the orthodox standards of
+his own family because he had been a spectacular financial success;
+bringing home ropes of enormous pearls from India in addition to the
+fantastic sums paid him by enraptured native princes. But while Morgan
+Ruyler believed that rich men should work and make their sons work, if
+only because an idle class was both out of place in a republic and
+conducive to unrest in the masses, it was quite otherwise with women.
+They were for men to shelter, and it was their sole duty to be useful in
+the home, and, wherever possible, ornamental in public. Nor had he the
+least faith in female talent.
+
+Marian Ruyler had yielded the point and departed hopefully for a broader
+sphere when her second and favorite son was eight. Morgan Ruyler married
+again as soon as convention would permit, this time carefully selecting a
+wife of the soundest New York predispositions and with a personal
+admiration of Queen Victoria; and he had watched young Price like an
+affectionate but inexorable parent hawk until the young man followed his
+brother--a quintessential Ruyler--into the now historic firm. However, he
+suffered little from anxiety. Price, too, was conservative, intensely
+proud of the family traditions, an almost impassioned worker, and
+unselfish as men go. Two sons in every generation must enter the firm. It
+was not in the Ruyler blood to take long chances.
+
+
+III
+
+Life out here in California had been too hurried for more than fleeting
+moments of self-study, but on this idle Sunday morning Price Ruyler's
+perturbed mind wandered to that inner self of his to which he once had
+longed to give a freer expression. It was odd that the conservative
+training, the rigid traditions of his family, conventional,
+old-fashioned, Puritanical, as became the best stock of New York, a stock
+that in the Ruyler family had seemed to carry its own antidote for the
+poisons ever seeking entrance to the spiritual conduits of the rich, had
+left any place for that sentimental romantic tide in his nature which had
+swept him into marriage with a girl outside of his own class; a girl of
+whose family he had known practically nothing until his outraged father
+had cabled to a correspondent in Paris to make investigation of the
+Perrin family of Rouen, to which the girl's mother claimed to belong.
+
+The inquiries were satisfactory; they were quite respectable,
+bourgeois, silk merchants in a small way--although at least two strata
+below that haute bourgeoisie which now regarded itself as the real
+upper class of the Republique Francaise. A true Ruyler, however, would
+have fled at the first danger signal, never have reached the point
+where inquiries were in order.
+
+California was replete with charming, beautiful, and superlatively
+healthy girls; the climate produced them as it did its superabundance of
+fruit, flowers, and vegetables. But they had left Price Ruyler
+untroubled. He had been far more interested watching San Francisco rise
+from its ruins, transformed almost overnight from a picturesque but
+ramshackle city, a patchwork of different eras, into a staid metropolis
+of concrete and steel, defiant alike of earthquake and fire. He had liked
+the new experience of being a pioneer, which so subtly expanded his
+starved ego that he had, by unconscious degrees, made up his mind to
+remain out here as the permanent head of the San Francisco House; and in
+time, no doubt, marry one of these fine, hardy, frank, out-of-door,
+wholly unsubtle California girls. Moreover, he had found in San Francisco
+several New Yorkers as well as Englishmen of his own class--notably John
+Gwynne, who had thrown over one of the greatest of English peerages to
+follow his personal tastes in a legislative career--all of whom had
+settled down into that free and independent life from motives not
+dissimilar from his own.
+
+But he had ceased to be an untroubled spirit from the moment he met
+Helene Delano. He had gone down to Monterey for polo, and he had
+forgotten the dinner to which he had brought a keen appetite, and stared
+at her as she entered the immense dining room with her mother.
+
+It was not her beauty, although that was considerable, that had summarily
+transposed his gallant if cool admiration for all charming well bred
+women into a submerging recognition of woman in particular; it was her
+unlikeness to any of the girls he had been riding, dancing, playing golf
+and tennis with during the past year and a half (for two years after his
+arrival he had seen nothing of society whatever). Later that evening he
+defined this dissimilarity from the American girl as the result not only
+of her French blood but of her European training, her quiet secluded
+girlhood in a provincial town of great beauty, where she had received a
+leisurely education rare in the United States, seen or read little of the
+great world (she had visited Paris only twice and briefly), her mind
+charmingly developed by conscientious tutors. But at the moment he
+thought that the compelling power lay in some deep subtlety of eye, her
+little air of lofty aloofness, her classic small features in a small
+face, and the top-heavy masses of blue black hair which she carried with
+a certain naive pride as if it were her only vanity; in her general
+unlikeness to the gray-eyed fair-haired American--a type to which himself
+belonged. Her only point in common with this fashionable set patronizing
+Del Monte for the hour, was the ineffable style with which she wore her
+perfect little white frock; an American inheritance, he assumed after he
+knew her; for, as he recalled provincial French women, style was not
+their strong point.
+
+When he met her eyes some twenty minutes later, he dismissed the
+impression of subtlety, for their black depths were quick with an eager
+wonder and curiosity. Later they grew wistful, and he guessed that she
+knew none of these smart folk, down, like himself, for the tournament;
+people who were chattering from table to table like a large family. That
+some of his girl acquaintances were interested in the young stranger he
+inferred from speculative and appraising eyes that were turned upon her
+from time to time.
+
+Price, with some irony, wondered at their curiosity. The San Francisco
+girl, he had discovered, possessed an extra sense all her own. There was
+no lofty indifference about her. She had the worth-while stranger
+detected and tabulated and his or her social destiny settled before the
+Eastern train had disgorged its contents at the Oakland mole. And even
+the immense florid mother of this lovely girl, with her own masses of
+snow white hair dressed in a manner becoming her age, and a severe gown
+of black Chantilly net, relieved by the merest trifle of jet, looked the
+reverse of the nondescript tourist. The girl wore white embroidered silk
+muslin and a thin gold chain with a small ruby pendant. She was rather
+above the average height, although not as tall as her mother, and if she
+were as thin as fashion commanded, her bones were so small that her neck
+and arms looked almost plump. Her expressive eyes were as black as her
+hair, and her only large feature. Her skin was of a quite remarkably pink
+whiteness, although there was a pink color in her lips and cheeks. The
+older men stared at her more persistently than the younger ones, who
+liked their own sort and not girls who looked as if they might be "booky"
+and "spring things on a fellow."
+
+There was a ball in the evening and once more mother and daughter sat
+apart, while the flower of San Francisco--an inclusive term for the
+select circles of Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame, San Mateo, far San
+Rafael and Belvedere--romped as one great family. Newport, Ruyler
+reflected for the twentieth time, did it no better. To the stranger
+peering through the magic bars they were now as insensible as befitted
+their code. These two people knew nobody and that was the end of it.
+
+
+IV
+
+But Price noted that now the girl's eyes were merely wistful, and once or
+twice he saw them fill with tears. As three of the dowagers merely
+sniffed when he sought possible information, he finally had recourse to
+the manager of the hotel, D.V. Bimmer. They were a Madame and
+Mademoiselle Delano from Rouen, and had been at the hotel for a
+fortnight, not seeming to mind its comparative emptiness, but enjoying
+the sea bathing and the drives. The girl rode, and went out every morning
+with a groom.
+
+"But didn't they bring any letters?" asked Ruyler. "They are ladies and
+one letter would have done the business. That poor girl is having the
+deuce of a time."
+
+"D.V.," who knew "everybody" in California, and all their secrets, shook
+his head. "'Fraid not. The French maid told the floor valet that although
+the father was American--from New England somewheres--and the girl born
+in California, accidentally as it were, she had lived in France all her
+life--she's just eighteen--never crossed the ocean before. Can you beat
+it? Until last month, and then they came from Hong Kong--taking a trip
+round the world in good old style. The madame, who scarcely opens her
+month, did condescend to tell me that she had admired California very
+much when she was here before, and intended to travel all over the state.
+Perhaps I met her in that far off long ago, for I was managing a hotel in
+San Francisco about that time, and her face haunts me somehow--although
+when features get all swallowed up by fat like that you can't locate
+them. The girl, too, reminds me of some one, but of course she was in
+arms when she left and as I ain't much on cathedrals I never went to
+Rouen. Of course it's the old trick, bringing a pretty girl to a
+fashionable watering place to marry her off, but these folks are not
+poor. Not what we'd call rich, perhaps, but good and solid. I don't fall
+for the old lady; she's a cool proposition or I miss my guess, but the
+girl's all right. I've seen too many girls in this Mecca for adventurous
+females and never made a mistake yet. I wish some of our grand dames
+would extend the glad hand. But I'm afraid they won't. Terrible
+exclusive, this bunch."
+
+Ruyler scowled and walked back to the ballroom. The exclusiveness of this
+young society on the wrong side of the continent sometimes made him
+homesick and sometimes made him sick. He saw little chance for this poor
+girl to enjoy the rights of her radiant youth if her mother had not taken
+the precaution to bring letters. France was full of Californians. Many
+lived there. Surely she must have met some one she could have made use
+of. It was tragic to watch a pathetic young thing staring at two or three
+hundred young men and maidens disporting themselves with the natural
+hilarity of youth, and but few of them too ill-natured to welcome a young
+and lovely stranger if properly introduced.
+
+He experienced a desperate impulse to go up to the mother and offer
+her the hospitality of the evening, ask her to regard him as her host.
+But Madame Delano had a frozen eye, and no doubt orthodox French ideas
+on the subject of young girls. A moment later his eye fell on Mrs.
+Ford Thornton.
+
+"Fordy" was many times a millionaire, and his handsome intelligent wife
+lived the life of her class. But she was far less conservative than any
+woman Price had met in San Francisco. Although she was no longer young he
+had more than once detected symptoms of a wild and insurgent spirit, and
+an impatient contempt for the routine she was compelled to follow or go
+into retirement. She was always leaving abruptly for Europe, and every
+once in a while she did something quite uncanonical; enjoying wickedly
+the consternation she caused among the serenely regulated, and betraying
+to the keen eyes of the New Yorker an ironic appreciation of the immense
+wealth which enabled her to do as she chose, answerable to no one. Her
+husband was uxorious and she had no children. She had seemed to Price
+more restless than usual of late and showing unmistakable signs of abrupt
+departure. (He was sure she dusted the soles of her boots as she locked
+the door of drawing-room A.) Perhaps to-night she might be in a
+schismatic mood.
+
+She was standing apart, a tall, dark, almost fiercely haughty woman, but
+dressed with a certain arrogant simplicity, without jewels, her hair in a
+careless knot at the base of her head. There were times when she was
+impeccably groomed, others when she looked as if an infuriated maid had
+left her helpless. She was, as Ruyler well knew, a kind and generous
+woman (in certain of her moods), with whom the dastardly cradle fates had
+experimented, hoping for high drama when the whip of life snapped once
+too often. Perhaps she had found her revenge as well as her consolation
+in cheating them.
+
+It was evident to Price that she had been snubbing somebody, for a group
+of matrons, flushed and drawn apart, were whispering resentfully. Price
+Ruyler stood in no awe of her. He could match her arrogance, and he liked
+and admired her more than any of his new friends. They quarreled
+furiously but she had never snubbed him.
+
+He walked over to her, his cool gray eyes lit with the pleasure in seeing
+her that she had learned to expect. "Good evening, oh, Queen of the
+Pacific," he said lightly. "You are looking quite wonderful as usual. Are
+you standing alone almost in the middle of the room to emphasize
+the--difference?"
+
+"I am in no mood for compliments, satiric or otherwise." She looked him
+over with cool penetration. "I may not massage or have my old cuticle
+ripped off. If I choose to look my age you must admit that it gives me
+one more claim to originality."
+
+"You should have let the world know long since just how original you are,
+instead of settling down into the leadership of San Francisco society--"
+
+He enjoyed provoking her. Her dark narrow eyes opened and flashed as they
+must have done in their unchastened youth. "Don't dare call me the leader
+of this--this!"
+
+"Granted. But the fact remains that your word alone is law. Therefore I
+am about to ask you to forget that I am a bungling diplomat and do a kind
+act. For once you would be able to be both kind and original."
+
+"I did not know you went in for charities. I am sick of shelling out."
+
+"My only part in charities is shelling out."
+
+"Well, come to the point. What do you want?"
+
+"I want you to go over to that lady--Madame Delano, her name is--sitting
+beside that beautiful girl, and introduce yourself and then me. They are
+strangers and I'd like to give them a good time."
+
+"How disinterested of you!" She looked the isolated couple over. "The
+girl is all right, but I don't like the mother. She is well dressed--oh,
+correct from tip to toe--but not quite the lady."
+
+Ruyler's cool insolent gaze swept the dado of amiable overfed ladies who
+fanned themselves against the wall.
+
+"None of that! You know that I do not tolerate the New York attitude.
+At least we know who ours are; they came into their own respectably,
+and with no uncertain touch. Of course it is stupid of them to get fat.
+Naturally it makes them look _bourgeoise_. But this is a lazy climate.
+As to that woman: there is something about her I do not like. She is
+aggressively not massaged, not made up. Only a woman of assured
+position can afford to be mid-Victorian. It is now quite the smart
+thing to make up."
+
+"No doubt her position is assured in her own provincial town. It will be
+easy enough to drop her if she doesn't go down. You can't deny that the
+girl is all right--and a sweet pathetic figure."
+
+"If the girl marries one of our boys--and no doubt that is what she was
+brought here for--we shall not be able to get rid of the mother. We've
+tried that and failed."
+
+At that moment Ruyler's eyes met those of the girl. They flashed an
+irresistible appeal. He drew a short breath. How different she looked!
+She radiated a subtle promise of perfect companionship. Price Ruyler did
+what all men will do until the end of time. He made up his mind that he
+had found his woman and without vocal assistance.
+
+Mrs. Thornton, who had been watching the unusual mobility of his face,
+met his eyes with a satirical smile in her own, her thin red curling lips
+drawn almost straight for a moment. She had played with the fancy, before
+anger banished it, that if she had been twenty years younger.... Men had
+fallen madly in love with her in her own day.... She detected the
+symptoms in this man at once. Her savage will compelled her to accept
+accumulating years without a concession. But she had forgotten nothing.
+
+Ruyler may have read her thoughts.
+
+"You know," he said, with an attempt at lightness, although the coast
+wind tan, which was his only claim to coloring, had paled a little, "that
+girl reminds me so much of you that I have made up my mind to marry her.
+I don't care who she is. If you don't help me to meet her conventionally
+I'll manage somehow, but I should hate to practice any subterfuges on the
+woman I intend to make my wife."
+
+For a moment he had the sensation of being pinned to the wall by that
+narrow concentrated gaze. Then Mrs. Thornton swung on her heel. "I'll do
+it," she said.
+
+She walked across the room with the supple grace her slender figure had
+never lost and sat down beside the older woman. In a moment the
+astonished dowagers who had "suffered from her fiendish temper all
+evening," saw her talking with spontaneous graciousness to both the
+strangers. Madame Delano was at first more distant and reserved than Mrs.
+Thornton had ever been, manifestly betraying all the suspicion and
+unsocial instincts of her class; but she thawed, and the two women
+chatted, while once more the girl's eyes wandered to the dancers.
+
+When Mrs. Thornton had tormented Ruyler for quite fifteen minutes she
+beckoned to him imperiously. A moment later he was whirling the girl down
+the ball room and thrilling at her contact.
+
+
+V
+
+The wooing had been as headlong as his falling in love. Helene Delano had
+a deep sweet voice, which completed the conquest during the hour they
+spent in the grounds under the shelter of a great palm, until hunted down
+by a horrified parent.
+
+Helene talked frankly of her life. Her mother had been visiting relatives
+in a small New England town--Holbrook Centre, she believed it was called,
+but hard American names did not cling to her memory--she loved the soft
+Latin and Indian names in California--and there she had met and married
+her father, James Delano. They were on their way to Japan when business
+detained him in San Francisco much longer than he had expected and she
+was born. She believed that he had owned a ranch that he wanted to sell.
+He died on the voyage across the Pacific and her mother had returned to
+live among her own people in Rouen--very plain bourgeois, but of a
+respectability, Oh, la! la!
+
+"But it was a tiresome life for a young girl with American blood in her,
+monsieur." Her mother's income from her husband's estate was not large,
+but they lived in a wing of the old house and were very comfortable. From
+her window there was a lovely view of the Seine winding off to Paris.
+"Oh, monsieur, how I used to long to go to Paris! America was too far. I
+never even dreamed of it. But Paris! And only two little glimpses of
+it--the last when we spent a fortnight there before sailing, to get me
+some nice frocks...."
+
+She had studied hard--but hard! She knew four languages, she told Ruyler
+proudly. "I had no _dot_ then, you see. It was possible I might have to
+teach one day. A governess in England, Oh, la! la!"
+
+But six months ago a good old uncle had died and left them some money.
+She would have a little _dot_ now, and they could travel. Maman said she
+would not have a large enough _dot_ to make a fine marriage in France,
+but that the English and American men were more romantic. They went first
+to the Orient, as there were many Englishmen of good family to be met
+there. "But maman is difficult to please," she added with her enchanting
+artlessness, "as difficult as I myself, monsieur. I wish to fall in love
+like the American girls. Maman says it is not necessary, but I am half
+American, so, why not? There was an English gentleman with a nice title
+in Hong Kong and maman was quite pleased with him until she discovered
+that he gambled or did something equally horrid and she bought our
+tickets for San Francisco right away."
+
+Yes, she was enjoying her travels, but she was a little lonesome; in
+Rouen at least she had her cousins. For the first time in her life she
+was talking to a young man alone; even on the steamer she was not
+permitted to speak to any of the nice young men who looked as if they
+would like her if only maman would relent.
+
+"In our ugly old rooms in Rouen maman cherished me like some rare little
+flower in an old earthen pot," she added quaintly. "Now the pot has
+tinsel and tissue paper round it, but until to-night I have felt as if I
+might just as well be an old cabbage."
+
+But it had been heaven to dance with a young man who was not a cousin;
+and to sit out alone with him in the moonlight, Oh, _grace a Dieu_!
+
+Traveling she had read modern novels for the first time. There were many
+in the ship's library, oh, but dozens! and she knew now how American and
+English girls enjoyed life. Her mother had been ill nearly all the way
+over. She had given her word not to speak to any one, but maman had been
+ignorant of the library replete with the novelists of the day, and
+although she was not untruthful, _enfin_, she saw no reason to ask her
+too anxious parent for another prohibition and condemn herself to yawn
+at the sea.
+
+Ruyler proposed at the end of a week. She was the only really innocent,
+unspoiled, unselfconscious girl he had ever met, almost as old-fashioned
+as his great grandmother must have been. Not that he set forth her
+virtues to bolster his determination to marry a girl of no family even in
+her own country; he was madly in love, and life without her was
+unthinkable; but he tabulated the thousand points to her credit for the
+benefit of his outraged father.
+
+He did not pretend to like Madame Delano. She was a hard, calculating,
+sordid old bourgeoisie, but when he refused the little _dot_ she would
+have settled upon Helene, he knew that he had won her friendship and that
+she would give him no trouble. She was not a mother-in-law to be ashamed
+of, for her manners were coldly correct, her education in youth had
+evidently been adequate, and in her obese way she was imposing. She gave
+him to understand that she had no more desire to live with her son-in-law
+than he with her, and established herself in a small suite in the Palace
+Hotel. After a "lifetime" in a provincial town, economizing mercilessly,
+she felt, she remarked in one of her rare expansive moments, that she had
+earned the right to look on at life in a great hotel.
+
+The rainy season she spent in Southern California, moving from one large
+hotel crowded with Eastern visitors to another. This uncommon
+self-indulgence and her devotion to Helene were the only weak spots
+Ruyler was able to discover in that cast-iron character. She seldom
+attended the brilliant entertainments of her daughter and refused the
+endowed car offered by her son-in-law. Helene married to the best _parti_
+in San Francisco and quite happy, she seemed content to settle down into
+the role of the onlooker at the kaleidoscope of life. She spent eight
+hours of the day and evening seated in an arm chair in the court of the
+Palace Hotel, and for air rode out to the end of the California Street
+car line, always on the front seat of the dummy. She was dubbed a "quaint
+old party" by her new acquaintances and left to her own devices. If she
+didn't want them they could jolly well do without her.
+
+
+VI
+
+Helene's social success was immediate and permanent. Californians rarely
+do things by halves. Society was no exception. She had "walked off" with
+the most desirable man in town, but they were good gamblers. When they
+lost they paid. She had married into "their set." They had accepted her.
+She was one of them. No secret order is more loyal to its initiates.
+
+During that first year and a half of ideal happiness Ruyler, in what
+leisure he could command, found Helene's rapidly expanding mind as
+companionable as he had hoped; and the girlish dignity she never lost,
+for all her naivete and vivacity, gratified his pride and compelled, upon
+their second brief visit to New York, even the unqualified approval of
+his family.
+
+She had inherited all the subtle adaptability of her father's race,
+nothing of the cold and rigid narrowness of her mother's class. Price had
+feared that her lively mind might reveal disconcerting shallows, but
+these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes
+wondered just how strong her character was. There were times when she
+showed a pronounced inclination for the line of least resistance ... but
+her youth ... her too sheltered bringing up ... those drab cramped
+years ... no wonder....
+
+He was glad on the whole that his was the part to mold. Nevertheless, he
+had his inconsistencies. Unlike many men of strong will and driving
+purpose he liked strength of character and pronounced individuality in
+women; and he, too, had had fleeting visions of what life might have been
+had Flora Thornton entered life twenty years later. He had been quite
+sincere in telling her that the young stranger reminded him of the most
+powerful personality he had met in California, and he believed that
+within a reasonable time Helene would be as variously cultivated, as
+widely, if less erratically developed. But was there any such insurgent
+force in her depths? It was not within the possibilities that at any time
+in her life Flora Thornton had been pliable.
+
+A man had little time to study his wife in California these days. Or at
+any time? He sometimes wondered. Certainly happy marriages were rare and
+divorces many. Fine weather nearly all the year round played the deuce
+with domesticity, and his business could not be neglected for the long
+vacation abroad to which they both had looked forward so ardently.
+
+Sometimes, even before this vague gray mist had risen between them, he
+had had moments of wondering whether he knew his wife at all. How could a
+man know a woman who did not yet know herself? He sighed and wished he
+had more time to explore the uncharted seas of a woman's soul.
+
+But the cause of the change in her was something far less picturesque,
+something concrete and sinister. He felt sure of that....
+
+
+VII
+
+Unless--but that was ridiculous! Impossible!
+
+He sprang to his feet, incredulous, disgusted at the mere thought.
+
+But why not? She was very young, and older and wiser women were afflicted
+with inconsistencies, little tenacious desires and vanities never quite
+to be grasped by the elemental male.
+
+He went over to a bookcase containing heavy works of reference and
+pressed his index finger into the molding. It swung outward, revealing
+the door of a safe. He manipulated the combination, took from a drawer of
+the interior a box, opened it and stared at a magnificent Burmah ruby. It
+was or had been a royal jewel, presented to Masewell Price by one of the
+great princes of India whose portrait he had painted. The pearls had all
+been captured long since by Price's sisters and by Morgan V. for his
+wife; but this ruby his mother had given him as she lay dying. She had
+bidden him leave it in his father's safe until he was out of college, and
+then keep it as closely in his personal possession as possible. It would
+be turned over to him with the rest of his private fortune.
+
+"Never let any woman wear it," she had whispered. "It brings luck to men
+but not to women. Nothing could have affected my luck one way or the
+other--I was born to have nothing I wanted, but you, dear little boy.
+Keep it for your luck and in a safe place, but near you."
+
+He had looked back upon this scene as he grew older as the mere
+expression of a whim of dissolution, but it had made so deep an
+impression upon him at the time that insensibly the words sank into his
+plastic mind creating a superstition that refused to yield to reason. The
+ruby was Helene's birthstone and she was passionately fond of it. She had
+begged and coaxed to wear this jewel, and upon one occasion had stamped
+her little foot and sulked throughout the evening. He had given her a
+ruby bar, had the clasp of her pearl necklace set with rabies, and last
+Christmas had presented her with a small but fine "pigeon blood"
+encircled with diamonds. These had enraptured her for the moment, but she
+had always circled back to the historic stone, over which her indulgent
+husband was so unaccountably obstinate.
+
+Until lately. He recalled that for several months she had not mentioned
+it. Could she have been indulging in a prolonged attack of interior
+sulks, which affected her spirits, dimmed her radiant personality? He
+abominated the idea but admitted the possibility. She would not be the
+first person to be the victim of a secret but furious passion for jewels.
+He recalled a novel of Hichens; not the matter but the central idea.
+Authors of other races had used the same motive. Well, if his wife had an
+abnormal streak in her the sooner he found out the truth the better.
+
+He closed the door of the safe, swung the bookcase into place, slipped
+the ruby with its curious gold chain that looked massive but hardly
+weighed an ounce, into his pocket, rang for a servant and told him to ask
+Mrs. Ruyler to come down to the library as soon as she was dressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+I
+
+Ruyler sighed as he heard his wife walk down the hall. There had been a
+time when she came running like a child at his summons, but in these days
+she walked with a leisurely dignity which to his possibly morbid ear
+betrayed a certain crab-like disposition in her little high heels to slip
+backward along the polished floor.
+
+She came in smiling, however, and kissed him quickly and warmly. Her
+extraordinary hair hung down in two long braids, their blue blackness
+undulating among the soft folds of her thin pink negligee. For the first
+time Ruyler realized that pink was Helene's favorite color; she seldom
+wore anything else except white or black, and then always relieved with
+pink. And why not, with that deep pink blush in her white cheeks, and the
+velvet blackness of her eyes? People still raved over Helene Ruyler's
+"coloring," and Price told himself once more as she stood before him, her
+little head dragged back by the weight of her plaits, her slender throat
+crossed by a narrow line of black velvet, that he had married one of the
+most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
+
+He was seized with a sudden sharp pang of jealousy and caught her in his
+arms roughly, his gray eyes almost as black as hers.
+
+"Tell me," he exclaimed, and the new fear almost choked him, "does any
+other man interest you--the least little bit?"
+
+She stared at him and then burst into the most natural laugh he had heard
+from her for months. "That is simply too funny to talk about."
+
+"But I am able to give you so little of my time. Working or tired out at
+night--letting you go out so much alone--but I haven't the heart to
+insist that you yawn over a book, while I am shut up here, or too fagged
+to talk even to you. Life is becoming a tragedy for business men--if
+they've got it in them to care for anything else."
+
+"Well, don't add to the tragedy by cultivating jealousy. I've told you
+that I am perfectly willing to give up Society and sit like Dora holding
+your pens--or filling your fountain pen--no, you dictate. What chance has
+a woman in a business man's life?"
+
+"None, alas, except to look beautiful and be happy. Are you that?--the
+last I mean, of course!"
+
+She nestled closer to him and laughed again. "More so than ever. To be
+frank you have completed my happiness by being jealous. I have wondered
+sometimes if it were a compliment--your being so sure of me."
+
+"That's my idea of love."
+
+"Well, it's mine, too. But if you want me to stay home--"
+
+"Oh, no! You are fond of society? Really, I mean? Why shouldn't you
+be?--a young thing--"
+
+"What else is there? Of course, I should enjoy it much more if you were
+always with me. Shall we never have that year in Europe together?"
+
+"God knows. Something is wrong with the world. It needs
+reorganizing--from the top down. It is inhuman, the way even rich men
+have to work--to remain rich! But sit down."
+
+He led her over to a chair before the window. The storm was decreasing in
+violence, the heavy curtain of rain was no longer tossed, but falling in
+straight intermittent lines, and the islands were coming to life. Even
+the high and heavy crest of Mount Tamalpais was dimly visible.
+
+"It is the last of the storms, I fancy. Spring is overdue," said Price,
+who, however, was covertly watching his wife's face. Her color had faded
+a little, her lids drooped over eyes that stared out at the still
+turbulent waters.
+
+"I love these San Francisco storms," she said abruptly. "I am so glad we
+have these few wild months. But Mrs. Thornton has worried and so have we.
+Her fete at San Mateo comes off on the fourteenth, the first
+entertainment she has given since her return, and it would be ghastly if
+it rained. It should be a wonderful sight--those grounds--everybody in
+fancy dress with little black velvet masks. Don't you think you can go?"
+
+"The fourteenth? I'll try to make it. Who are you to be?"
+
+"Beatrice d'Este--in a court gown of black tissue instead of velvet, with
+just a touch of pink--oh, but a wonderful creation! I designed it myself.
+We are not bothering too much about historical accuracy."
+
+"How would you like this for the touch of pink!" He took the immense ruby
+from his pocket and tossed it into her lap.
+
+For a moment she stared at it with expanding eyes, then gave a
+little shriek of rapture and flung herself into his arms, the child
+he had married.
+
+"Is it true? But true? Shall I wear this wonderful thing? The women will
+die of jealousy. I shall feel like an empress--but more, more, I shall
+wear this lovely thing--I, I, Helene Ruyler, born Perrin, who never had a
+franc in her pocket in Rouen! Price! Have you changed your mind--but no!
+I cannot believe it."
+
+That was it then! He watched her mobile face sharply. It expressed
+nothing but the excited rapture of a very young woman over a magnificent
+toy. There was none of the morbid feverish passion he had dreadfully
+anticipated. His spirits felt lighter, although he sighed that a bauble,
+even if it were one of the finest of its kind in the world, should have
+projected its sinister shadow between them. It had a wicked history. But
+Helene saw no shadows. She held it up to the light, peered into it as it
+lay half concealed in the cup of her slender white hands, fondled it
+against her cheek, hung the chain about her neck.
+
+"How I have dreamed of it," she murmured. "How did you come to change
+your mind?"
+
+"I thought it a pity such a fine jewel should live forever in a safe; and
+it will become you above all women. Nature must have had you in her eye
+when she designed the ruby. I had a sudden vision ... and made up my mind
+that you should wear it the first time I was able to take you to a party.
+I must keep the letter of my promise."
+
+"And I can only wear it when you are with me?"
+
+"I am afraid so."
+
+"I'm you, if there is anything in the marriage ceremony." Then she kissed
+him impulsively. "But I won't be a little pig. And I can tell everybody
+between now and the Thornton fete that I am going to wear it, and I can
+think and dream of my triumph meanwhile. But why didn't you let me know
+you were down? It is Sunday, our only day. I overslept shockingly. I
+didn't get home till two."
+
+"Two? Do you dance until two every night?"
+
+"What else? They lead such a purposeless life out here. We sometimes have
+classes--but they don't last long. I have almost forgotten that I once
+had a serious mind. But what would you? It is either society or suffrage.
+I won't be as serious as that yet. I mean to be young--but young! for
+five more years. Then I shall become a 'leader,' or vote for the
+President, or ride on a float in a suffrage parade dressed as the Goddess
+of Liberty, with my hair down."
+
+He laughed, more and more relieved. "Yes, please remain young until you
+are twenty-five. By that time I hope the world will have adjusted itself
+and I shall have the leisure to companion you. Meanwhile, be a child. It
+is very refreshing to me. Come. I must lock this thing up. I have an
+interview here with Spaulding in about ten minutes."
+
+She gave it up reluctantly, kissing it much as she had kissed him during
+their engagement; warm, lingering, but almost impersonal kisses. The ruby
+seemed miraculously to have restored her beaten youth.
+
+She sat on the edge of a chair as he opened the safe and placed the jewel
+in its box and drawer.
+
+"There is one other thing I wanted to ask," he said as he rose. "Is your
+allowance sufficient? It has sometimes occurred to me that you wanted
+more--for some feminine extravagance."
+
+The light went out of her face. He wondered whimsically if he had locked
+it in with the ruby, and once more he was conscious that something
+intangible floated between them. But she looked at him squarely with her
+shadowed eyes.
+
+"Oh, one could spend any amount, of course, but I really have
+quite enough."
+
+"You shall have double your present allowance when these cursed times
+improve. And I have always intended to settle a couple of hundred
+thousand on you--a quarter of a million--as soon as I could realize
+without loss on certain investments. But one day I want you to be quite
+independent."
+
+Her eyes had opened very wide. "A quarter of a million? And it would be
+all my own? I could do anything with it I liked?"
+
+"Well--I think I should put it in trust. I haven't much faith in the
+resistance of your sex to tempting investments promising a high rate of
+interest."
+
+"I have heard you say that when rich men die the amount of worthless
+stock found in their safe deposit boxes passes belief."
+
+"Quite true. But that is hardly an argument in favor of trusting an even
+more inexperienced sex with large sums of money."
+
+She laughed, but less naturally than when he had been seized with an
+unwonted spasm of jealousy. "You will always get the best of me in an
+argument," she said with her exquisite politeness. "Really, I think I
+love being wholly dependent upon you. Here comes your detective. What
+a bore. But at least we lunch together if we do have company. And
+thank you, thank you a thousand times for promising I shall wear the
+ruby at last."
+
+She slipped her hand into his for a second, then left the room, smiling
+over her shoulder, as the locally celebrated "Jake" Spaulding entered.
+Both Ruyler and his general manager had thought it best to have their
+cashier watched. There were rumors of gambling and other road house
+diversions, and they proposed to save their man to the firm, if possible;
+if not, to discharge him before he followed the usual course and involved
+Ruyler and Sons in the loss of thousands they could ill afford to spare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+I
+
+On the following day Ruyler, who had looked upon the whirlwind of passion
+that had swept him into a romantic and unworldly marriage, as likely to
+remain the one brief drama of his prosaic business man's life, began
+dimly to apprehend that he was hovering on the edge of a sinister and
+complicated drama whose end he could as little foresee as he could escape
+from the hand of Fate that was pushing him inexorably forward. When Fate
+suddenly begins to take a dramatic interest in a man whose course has run
+like a yacht before a strong breeze, she precipitates him toward one half
+crisis after another in order to confuse his mental powers and render him
+wholly a puppet for the final act. These little Earth histrionics are
+arranged no doubt for the weary gods, who hardly brook a mere mortal
+rising triumphantly above the malignant moods of the master playwright.
+
+He lunched at the Pacific Union Club and caught the down-town California
+Street cable car as it passed, finding his favorite seat on the left side
+of the "dummy" unoccupied. He was thinking of Helene, a little
+disappointed, but on the whole vastly relieved, congratulating himself
+that, no longer haunted, he could give his mind wholly to the important
+question of the merger he contemplated with a rival house that had limped
+along since the disaster, but had at last manifested its willingness to
+accept the offer of Ruyler and Sons.
+
+It was a moment before he realized that his mother-in-law occupied the
+front seat across the narrow space, and even before he recognized that
+large bulk, he had registered something rigid and tense in its muscles;
+strained in its attitude. When he raised his eyes to the face he found
+himself looking at the right cheek instead of the left, and it was
+pervaded by a sickly green tint quite unlike Madame Delano's florid
+color. She was listening to a man who sat just behind her on the long
+seat that ran the length of the dummy. Although the day was clear, there
+was still a sharp wind and no one else sat outside.
+
+Ruyler knew the man by sight. Before the fire he had owned some of the
+most disreputable houses in the district the car would pass on its way to
+the terminus. The buildings were uninsured, and he had made his living
+since as a detective. Even his political breed had gone out of power in
+the new San Francisco, but he was well equipped for a certain type of
+detective work. He had a remarkable memory for faces and could pierce any
+disguise, he was as persistent as a ferret, and his knowledge of the
+underworld of San Francisco was illimitable. But his chief assets were
+that he looked so little like a detective, and that, so secretive were
+his methods, his calling was practically unknown. He had set up a cheap
+restaurant with a gambling room behind at which the police winked,
+although pretending to raid him now and again. He was a large soft man
+with pendulous cheeks streaked with red, a predatory nose, and a black
+overhanging mustache. His name was 'Gene Bisbee, and there was a
+tradition that in his younger days he had been handsome, and irresistible
+to the women who had made his fortune.
+
+Ruyler was absently wondering what his haughty mother-in-law could have
+to say to such a man when to his amazement Bisbee planted his elbow in
+the pillow of flesh just below Madame Delano's neck, and said easily:
+
+"Oh, come off, Marie. I'd know you if you were twenty years older and
+fifty pounds heavier--and that's going some. Bimmer and two or three
+others are not so sure--won't bet on it--for twenty years, and, let me
+see--you weighed about a hundred and thirty-five--perfect figger--in the
+old days. Must weigh two seventy-five now. That makes one forty-five
+pounds extra. Well, that and time, and white hair, would change pretty
+near any woman, particularly one with small features. You look a real old
+lady, and you can't be mor'n forty-five. How did you manage the white
+hair? Bleach?"
+
+Ruyler felt his heart turn over. The frozen blood pounded in his brain
+and distended his own muscles, his mouth unclosed to let his breath
+escape. Then he became aware that the woman had recovered herself and
+moved forward, displacing the familiar elbow. She turned imperiously to
+the motorman.
+
+"Stop at the corner," she said. "And if this man attempts to follow me
+please send back a policeman. He is intoxicated."
+
+The car stopped at the corner of the street opposite the site of the
+old Saint Mary's Cathedral, a street where once had been that row of
+small and evil cottages where French women, painted, scantily dressed
+in a travesty of the evening gown, called to the passer-by through the
+slats of old-fashioned green shutters. That had been before Ruyler's
+day, but he knew the history of the neighborhood, and this man's
+interest in it. He was not surprised to hear Bisbee laugh aloud as
+Madame Delano, who stepped off the car with astonishing agility,
+waddled down the now respectable street. But she held her head
+majestically and did not look back.
+
+Ruyler squared his back lest the man, glancing over, recognize him. That
+would be more than he could bear. As the car reached Front Street he
+sprang from the dummy and walked rapidly north to Ruyler and Sons. He
+locked himself in his private office, dismissing his stenographer with
+the excuse that he had important business to think out and must not be
+disturbed.
+
+
+II
+
+But business was forgotten. He was as nearly in a state of panic as was
+possible for a man of his inheritance and ordered life. He belonged to
+that class of New Yorker that looked with cold disgust upon the women of
+commerce. So far as he knew he had never exchanged a word with one of
+them, and had often listened with impatience to the reminiscences of his
+San Francisco friends, now married and at least intermittently decent, of
+the famous ladies who once had reigned in the gay night life of San
+Francisco.
+
+And his mother-in-law! The mother of his wife!
+
+Her name was Marie. In that chaos of flesh an interested eye might
+discover the ruins of beauty. Her hair, he knew, had been black. He
+recalled the terror expressed in every line of that mountainous
+figure--which may well have been perfect twenty years ago. The green
+pallor of her cheek! And he had long felt, rather than knew, that she
+possessed magnificent powers of bluff. Her dignified exit had been no
+more convincing to him than to Bisbee.
+
+He went back over the past and recalled all he knew of the woman whose
+daughter he had married. She had visited the United States about
+twenty-one years ago, met and married Delano, and remained in San
+Francisco two or three months on their way to Japan. Delano had died on
+the voyage across the Pacific, been buried at sea, and his widow had
+returned to her family in Rouen and settled down in her brother's
+household.
+
+This was practically all he knew, for it was all that Helene knew, and
+Madame Delano never wasted words. It had not occurred to him to question
+her. Their status in Rouen was established, and if not distinguished it
+was indubitably respectable and not remotely suggestive of mystery.
+
+Price, convinced that Helene's father must have been a gentleman,
+recalled that he had asked her one day to tell him something of the
+Delanos, but his wife had replied vaguely that she believed her
+mother had been too sad to talk about him for a long while, and then
+probably had got out of the habit. She knew nothing more than she
+already had told him.
+
+It came back to him, however, that several times his wife's casual
+references to the past, and particularly regarding her parents, had not
+dove-tailed, but that he had dismissed the impression; attributing it to
+some lapse in his own attention. He had a bad habit of listening and
+thinking out a knotty business problem at the same time. And there is a
+curious inhibition in loyal minds which forbids them to put two and two
+together until suspicion is inescapably aroused.
+
+He had a very well ordered mind, furnished with innumerable little pigeon
+holes, which flew open at the proper vibration from his admirable memory.
+He concentrated this memory upon a little bureau of purely personal
+receptacles and before long certain careless phrases of his wife stood in
+a neat row.
+
+She had mentioned upon one occasion that she thought she must have been
+about five when she arrived in Rouen, and remembered her first impression
+of the Cathedral as well as the boats on the Seine at night. And Cousin
+Pierre had taken her up the river one Sunday to the church on the height
+which had been built for a statue of the Virgin that had been excavated
+there, and bade her kneel and pray at this station for what she wished
+most. She had prayed for a large wax doll that said papa and mama, and
+behold, it had arrived the next day.
+
+Madame Delano had told him unequivocally that she had gone directly to
+Rouen after her husband's death ... but again, although Helene
+remembered arriving in Rouen with her mother, she must have been left
+for a time elsewhere, for Helene had another memory--of a convent, where
+she had tarried for what seemed a very long time to her childish mind.
+Could she have been sent to a convent from the house in Rouen when she
+was so little that her memories of that first sojourn were confused? And
+why? The family had apparently been fond of "la petite Americaine," and
+even if her devoted mother had been obliged to leave her for several
+years it is doubtful if they would have sent so young a child to a
+convent. Rack his memory as he would he could recall no allusion to such
+a journey, to any separation between mother and child after they were
+established in Rouen.
+
+But he did remember one of Madame Delano's few references to the past,
+which might suggest that she had left the child somewhere while she went
+home to make peace with her family to get her bearings. Her brother had
+not approved of her marrying an American. "But," she had added
+graciously, "you see I had no such prejudice. Neither now nor then. James
+was the best of husbands."
+
+"James!" "Jim."
+
+He had heard the name Jim as he boarded the dummy, uttered in extremely
+familiar accents; by Bisbee, of course. Yes, and something else. "We all
+felt bad when he croaked."
+
+His feverishly alert memory darted to another pigeon hole and exhumed
+another treasure. Some ten or twelve months ago he had been obliged to go
+to a northern county on business that involved buying up smaller
+concerns, and would keep him away for a fortnight or more. He had taken
+Helene, and as they were motoring through one of the old towns she had
+leaned forward with a little gasp exclaiming:
+
+"How exactly like! If I didn't know that I had never been in California
+before except merely to be born here I could vow that is where I lived
+with the dear nuns."
+
+He had asked idly: "Where was your convent?" and she had shaken her head.
+"Maman says I never was in a convent, that I dreamed it." She had lifted
+to Ruyler a puzzled face. "I remember she punished me once, when I was
+about seven and persisted in talking about the convent--I suppose I had
+forgotten it for a time in the new life, and something brought it back to
+me. But it is the most vivid memory of my childhood. Do you think I could
+have been one of those uncanny children that live in a dream world? I
+hope not. I like to think I am quite normal and full to the brim of
+common sense." He had laughed and told her not to worry. He had lived in
+a dream world himself when he was little.
+
+The conviction grew upon him as he sat there that Helene had spent the
+first five years of her life at the Ursuline Convent in St. Peter. What
+had her mother--young and beautiful--been doing during those years, the
+years of a mother's most anxious devotion and pleasurable interest? He
+searched his memory for Club reminiscences of a Marie Delano of twenty
+years earlier, or less. No such name rewarded his mental explorations,
+and Marie Delano was not a name likely to escape.
+
+He exclaimed aloud at his stupidity. The astute French woman was hardly
+likely to return to the scene of her former triumphs with an innocent
+young daughter and an infamous name. Nor, apparently, had she carried it
+to Rouen after she had manifestly foresworn vice for the sake of her
+child, even to the length of resigning herself to the dullness of a
+provincial town.
+
+But "Jim"? Her husband? Could Bisbee have referred to some other Jim who
+had "croaked" recently? Such women have more than one Jim in their
+voluminous lives.
+
+Ruyler had that order of mental temperament to which dubiety is the
+one unendurable condition; he had none of that cowardice which
+postpones an unpleasant solution until the inevitable moment. Whatever
+this hideous mystery he would solve it as quickly as possible and then
+put it out of his life. Beyond question poor Helene was the victim of
+blackmail; that was the logical explanation of her ill-concealed
+anxiety--misery, no doubt!
+
+He wished she had had the courage to come directly to him, but it was
+idle to expect the resolution of a woman of thirty in a child of twenty.
+It was apparent that she had even tried to shield her mother, for that
+Madame Delano had been caught unaware to-day was indisputable.
+
+What incredible impudence--or courage?--to return here! There were other
+resorts in the South and on the Eastern Coast where a pretty girl might
+reap the harvest of innocent and lovely youth.
+
+Once more his mind abruptly focused itself.
+
+Shortly after his marriage Madame Delano had asked him casually if he
+could inform her as to the reliability of a certain firm of lawyers,
+Lawton, Cross and Co. She "thought of buying a ranch," and the firm had
+been suggested to her by some one or other of these rich people. She also
+wished to make a will.
+
+He had replied as casually that it was a leading firm, and forgotten the
+incident promptly. He recalled now that several times he had seen his
+mother-in-law coming out of the Monadnock Building, where this firm had
+its offices. He had upon one occasion met her in the lift and she had
+explained with unaccustomed volubility that she was still thinking of
+buying a ranch, possibly in Napa County. She understood that quite a
+fortune might be made in fruit, and it would be a diverting interest for
+her old age. Possibly she might encourage a favorite nephew to come out
+and help her run it.
+
+Ruyler, who had been absorbed in his own affairs and hated the sight of
+any woman during business hours, had felt like telling her that if she
+wanted to sink her money in a ranch, that was as good a way to get rid of
+it as any, but had merely nodded and left the elevator. He was not the
+man to give any one unasked advice and be snubbed for his pains.
+
+If "Jim" was her husband and had "croaked" some two years since, what
+more natural than that she had been obliged to come to California and
+settle his estate? Lawton and Cross would keep her secret, as California
+lawyers, with or without blackmail, had kept many others; perhaps she was
+an old friend of Lawton's. He had been a "bird" in his time.
+
+Undoubtedly this was the solution. Otherwise she never would have risked
+the return to San Francisco, even with her changed appearance.
+
+
+III
+
+It was time to dismiss speculation and proceed to action. He rang up
+detective headquarters and asked Jake Spaulding to come to him at once.
+
+Spaulding began: "But the matter ain't ripe yet, boss. Nothin' doin'
+last night--"
+
+But Ruyler cut him short. "Please come immediately--no, not here. Meet me
+at Long's."
+
+He left the building and walked rapidly to a well-known bar where
+estimable citizens, even when impervious to the seductions of cocktail
+and highball, often met in private soundproof rooms to discuss momentous
+deals, or invoke the aid of detectives whose appearance in home or office
+might cause the wary bird to fly away.
+
+The detective did not drink, so Ruyler ordered cigars, and a few moments
+later Spaulding strolled in. His physical movements always belied his
+nervous keen face. He was the antithesis of 'Gene Bisbee. All honest men
+compelled to have dealings with him liked and trusted him. A rich man
+could confide a disgraceful predicament to his keeping without fear of
+blackmail, and a poor man, if his cause were interesting, might command
+his services with a nominal fee. He loved the work and regarded himself
+as an artist, inasmuch as he was exercising a highly cultivated gift, not
+merely pursuing a lucrative profession. He sometimes longed, it is true,
+for worthier objects upon which to lavish this gift, and he found them a
+few years later when the world went to war. He was one of the most
+valuable men in the Federal Secret Service before the end of 1915.
+
+"What's up?" he asked, as he took possession of the most comfortable
+chair in the little room and lit a cigar. "You look as if you hadn't
+slept for a week, and you were lookin' fine yesterday."
+
+"Do you mind if I only half confide in you? It's a delicate matter. I'd
+like to ask you a few questions and may possibly ask you to find the
+answer to several others."
+
+"Fire away. Curiosity is not my vice. I'll only call for a clean breast
+if I find I can't work in the dark."
+
+"Thanks. Do--do you remember any woman of the town named--Marie Delano?"
+He swallowed hard but brought it out. "Who may have flourished here
+fifteen or twenty years ago?"
+
+Spaulding knew that Ruyler's wife had been named Delano, but he refrained
+from whistling and fixed his sharp honest blue eyes on the opposite wall.
+
+"Nope. Sounds fancy enough, but she was no Queen of the Red Light
+District in S.F."
+
+"I was convinced she could not have been known under that name. Do you
+know of any woman of that sort who was married--possibly--to a man whose
+first name was James--Jim--and who left abruptly, while she was still
+young and handsome, just about fifteen years ago?"
+
+"Lord, that's a poser! Do you mean to say she married and retired--landed
+some simp? They do once in a while. Could tell you queer things about
+certain ancestries in this old town."
+
+"No--I don't think that was it. I have reason to think she had been
+married for at least six years before she left. Can't you think of any
+Marie who was married to a Jim--in--in that class of life?"
+
+"I was pretty much of a kid fifteen years ago, but I can recall quite a
+few Maries and even more Jims. But the Jims were much too wary to marry
+the Maries. Try it again, partner. Let us approach from another angle.
+What did your Marie look like?"
+
+"She must have been tall--uncommonly tall--with black hair and small
+features; black eyes that must have been large at that time.
+I--I--believe she had a very fine figure."
+
+"What nationality?"
+
+"French."
+
+The detective recrossed his legs. "French. Oh, Lord! The town was fairly
+overrun with them. Made you think there was nothing in all this talk
+about gay Paree. All the ladybirds seemed to have taken refuge here. You
+have no idea of her last name!"
+
+"It might have been Perrin."
+
+"Never. Not after she got here and set up in business. More likely
+Lestrange or Delacourt--"
+
+"Was there a Delacourt?"
+
+"Not that I remember. I don't see light anywhere. Of course it won't take
+me twenty-four hours to get hold of the history and appearance of every
+queen who was named Marie fifteen years ago, and your description helps a
+lot. Records were burned, but some of the older men on the force are
+walking archives. For the matter of that you might draw out some old
+codger in your club and get as much as I can give you--"
+
+"Rather not! I think I'll have to give you my confidence."
+
+"Much the shortest and straightest route. Just fancy you're takin' a
+nasty dose of medicine for the good of your health. I guess this is a
+case where I can't work in the dark."
+
+"Have you ever noticed an elderly woman, seated in the court of the
+Palace Hotel--immensely stout?"
+
+"I should say I had. One of the sights of S.F. Why--of course--she's your
+mother-in-law!"
+
+"Has there been any talk about her!"
+
+"Some comment on her size. And her childlike delight in watchin'
+the show."
+
+"Nothing else? No one has claimed to recognize her?"
+
+Spaulding sat up straight, his nose pointing. "Recognize her? What
+d'you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I overheard a conversation--one-sided--to-day on the
+California Street dummy, in which Bisbee accused Madame Delano
+practically of what I have told you. At least that is the way I
+interpreted it. He called her Marie, alluded in an unmistakable manner to
+a disgraceful past in which he had known her intimately, and was
+confident that he recognized her in spite of her flesh and white hair. I
+am positive that she recognized him, although she was clever enough not
+to reply."
+
+"Jimminy! The plot thickens. That scoundrel never forgot a face in his
+life. I don't train with him--not by a long sight--so if there's been any
+talk in his bunch, I naturally wouldn't have heard it. You say her name
+is Marie now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And Perrin is her real name?"
+
+"She comes of a well-known family of Rouen of that name. She lived there
+with her child for at least thirteen years before her return to
+California. Of that I am certain. Her daughter is now twenty. I wish to
+know where she kept that child during the first five years of its life. I
+have reason to think it was in the Ursuline Convent at St. Peter."
+
+"That's easy settled. And you think the father's first name was Jim?"
+
+"She told me that his name was James Delano. Also that he died within the
+first year of their marriage, when the child was two months old, during
+the voyage to Japan. That may be, but I can see no reason for her
+returning here unless he died more recently and the settlement of his
+estate demanded her presence."
+
+"Pretty good reasoning, particularly if you are sure she stayed here
+until the child was five. Some of them have pretty decent instincts. She
+may have made up her mind to give the kid a chance, and returned to her
+relations. Of course we must assume that they knew nothing of her life."
+
+"I am positive they did not. But there had been some sort of
+estrangement. I have been given to understand that it was because she
+married an American. Of course she may not have written to them at all
+for six or seven years. Her story is that she was visiting other
+relatives in a place called Holbrook Centre, Vermont, and met this man
+and married him. Then that he was detained by business in San Francisco
+for several months, and the child born here."
+
+"Good commonplace story. Just the sort that is never questioned. Of
+course if she did not correspond with her family during all that time she
+could adopt any name for her return to respectability that she chose.
+Delano wasn't it? That's certain. What line do you intend to take? After
+I've delivered the facts?"
+
+"My object is to have the child's legitimacy established, if possible,
+then see that Madame Delano leaves California forever. I think that she
+could be terrified by a threat of blackmail. I can't imagine the mere
+chance of recognition worrying her, for I should say she had as much
+courage as presence of mind. But her passion is money. If she thought
+there was any danger of being forced to hand over what she has I fancy
+she would get out as quickly as possible. She is an intelligent woman and
+I imagine she has taken a sardonic pleasure in sitting out in full view
+of San Francisco, and getting away with it."
+
+"And marrying her girl to the greatest catch in California," thought the
+detective, but he said:
+
+"I believe you're dead right, although, of course, there may be nothing
+in it. Even 'Gene Bisbee might be mistaken, pryin' a gazelle out of an
+elephant like that. Now, tell me all you know."
+
+When Ruyler had covered every point Spaulding nodded. "It's possible this
+Jim was the maquereau and she made him marry her for the sake of the
+child. Doubt if the date can be proved except through the lawyers, and it
+will be hard to make them talk. Of course if there is a Holbrook Centre
+and she was married there--but I have my doubts. The point is that he
+evidently married her if she is settlin' up his estate. I'll find out
+what Jims have died within the last three years or so. That's easy. The
+direct route to the one we want is through St. Peter. I'll go up
+to-night."
+
+"And you'll report to-morrow?"
+
+"Yep. Meet me here at six P.M. Lucky the man seems to have died after
+the fire. I'll set some one on the job of searching death records
+right away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+I
+
+Ruyler had half promised to go to a dinner that night at the house of
+John Gwynne, whose wife would chaperon his wife afterward to the last of
+the Assembly dances.
+
+Gwynne was his English friend who had abandoned the ancient title
+inherited untimely when he was making a reputation in the House of
+Commons, and become an American citizen in California, where he had a
+large ranch originally the property of an American grandmother. His
+migration had been justified in his own eyes by his ready adaptation to
+the land of his choice and to the opportunities offered in the rebuilding
+of San Francisco after the earthquake and fire, as well as in the
+renovation of its politics. He had made his ranch profitable, read law as
+a stepping-stone to the political career, and had just been elected to
+Congress. Ruyler was one of his few intimate friends and had promised to
+go to this farewell dinner if possible. A place would be kept vacant for
+him until the last minute.
+
+Gwynne had married Isabel Otis[A], a Californian of distinguished beauty
+and abilities, whose roots were deep in San Francisco, although she had
+"run a ranch" in Sonoma County. The Gwynnes and the Thorntons until
+Ruyler met Helene had been the friends whose society he had sought most
+in his rare hours of leisure, and he had spent many summer week-ends at
+their country homes. He had hoped that the intimacy would deepen after
+his marriage, but Helene during the past year had gone almost exclusively
+with the younger set, the "dancing squad"; natural enough considering her
+age, but Ruyler would have expected a girl of so much intelligence, to
+say nothing of her severe education, to have tired long since of that
+artificial wing of society devoted solely to froth, and gravitated
+naturally toward the best the city afforded. But she had appeared to like
+the older women better at first than later, although she accepted their
+invitations to large dinners and dances.
+
+[Footnote A: See "Ancestors."]
+
+Ruyler made up his mind to attend this dinner at Gwynne's, and telephoned
+his acceptance before he left Long's. Business or no business, he should
+be his wife's bodyguard hereafter. There were blackmailers in society as
+out of it, and it was possible that his ubiquity would frighten them off.
+Whether to demand his wife's confidence or not he was undecided. Better
+let events determine.
+
+
+II
+
+When he arrived at home he went directly to Helene's room, but paused
+with his hand on the knob of the door. He heard his mother-in-law's voice
+and she was the last person he wished to meet until he was in a position
+to tell her to leave the country. He was turning away impatiently when
+Madame Delano lifted her hard incisive tones.
+
+"And you promised me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I trusted you, I
+never believed--"
+
+Price retreated hurriedly to his own room, and it was not until he
+had taken a cold shower and was half dressed that he permitted
+himself to think.
+
+That wretch had known, then! It was she who had been blackmailing her
+daughter. And the poor child had been afraid to confide in him, to ask
+him for money. No wonder her eyes had flashed at the prospect of a
+fortune of her own....
+
+An even less welcome ray illuminated his mind at this point. His wife was
+not unversed in the arts of dissimulation herself. True, she was French
+and took naturally to diplomatic wiles; true, also, the instinct of
+self-preservation in even younger members of a sex that man in his
+centuries of power had made, superficially, the weaker, was rarely inert.
+
+What woman would wish her husband to know disgraceful ancestral secrets
+which were no fault of hers? A much older woman would not be above
+entombing them, if the fates were kind. But it saddened him to think that
+his wife should be rushed to maturity along the devious way. Poor child,
+he must win her confidence as quickly as his limping wits would permit
+and shift her burden to his own shoulders.
+
+Having learned through the medium of the house telephone that his
+mother-in-law had departed, he knocked at his wife's door. She opened it
+at once and there was no mark of agitation on her little oval face under
+its proudly carried crown of heavy braids. She was looking very lovely in
+a severe black velvet gown whose texture and depth cunningly matched her
+eyes and threw into a relief as artful the white purity of her skin and
+the delicate pink of lip and cheek.
+
+She smiled at him brilliantly. "It can't be true that you are
+going with me?"
+
+"I've reformed. I shall go with you everywhere from this time forth. But
+I thought I heard your mother's voice when I came in--"
+
+"She often comes in about dressing time to see me in a new frock. How
+heavenly that you will always go with me." Her voice shook a little and
+she leaned over to smooth a possible wrinkle in her girdle.
+
+"Will you come down to the library? We are rather early."
+
+He went directly to the safe and took out the ruby and clasped the chain
+about her neck. The chain was long and the great jewel took a deeper and
+more mysterious color from the somber background of her bodice.
+
+Helene gasped. "Am I to wear it to-night? That would be too wonderful.
+This is the last great night in town."
+
+"Why not? I shall be there to mount guard. You shall always wear it when
+I am able to go out with you."
+
+She lifted her radiant face, although it remained subtly immobile with a
+new and almost formal self-possession. "I am even more delighted than I
+was yesterday, for at the fete there will be so much novelty to distract
+attention. You always think of the nicest possible things."
+
+When they were in the taxi he put his arm about her.
+
+"I wonder," he began gropingly, "if you would mind not going out when I
+cannot go with you? I'll go as often as I can manage. There are
+reasons--"
+
+He felt her light body grow rigid. "Reasons? You told me only
+yesterday--"
+
+"I know. But I have been thinking it over. That is rather a fast lot you
+run with. I know, of course, they are F.F.C.'s, and all the rest of it,
+but if I ever drove up to the Club House in Burlingame in the morning and
+saw you sitting on the veranda smoking and drinking gin fizzes--"
+
+"You never will! I could not swallow a gin fizz, or any nasty mixed
+drink. And although I have had my cigarette after meals ever since I was
+fifteen, I never smoke in public."
+
+"I confess I cannot see you in the picture that rose for some perverse
+reason in my mind; but--well, you really are too young to go about so
+much without your husband--"
+
+"I am always chaperoned to the large affairs. Mrs. Gwynne takes me to the
+Fairmont to-night."
+
+"I know. But scandal is bred in the marrow of San Francisco. Its social
+history is founded upon it, and it is almost a matter of principle to
+replace decaying props. Do you mind so much not going about unless I can
+be with you?"
+
+"No, of course not." Her voice was sweet and submissive, but her body did
+not relax. She added graciously: "After all, there are so many luncheons,
+and we often dance in the afternoon."
+
+He had not thought of that! What avail to guard her merely in the
+evening? It was not her life that was in danger....
+
+And he seemed as immeasurably far from obtaining her confidence as
+before. He had always understood that the ways of matrimonial diplomacy
+were strewn with pitfalls and wished that some one had opened a school
+for married men before his time.
+
+He made another clumsy attempt. The cab was swift and had almost covered
+the long distance between the Western Addition and Russian Hill. "Other
+things have worried me. You are so generous. Society here as elsewhere
+has its parasites, its dead beats, trying to limp along by borrowing,
+gambling, 'amusing,' doing dirty work of various sorts. It has worried me
+lest one or more of these creatures may have tried to impose on you with
+hard luck tales--borrow--"
+
+She laughed hysterically. "Price, you are too funny! I do lend
+occasionally--to the girls, when their allowance runs out before the
+first of the month; but I don't know any dead beats."
+
+He plunged desperately. "Your mother's voice sounded rather agitated for
+her. Of course I did not stop to listen, but it occurred to me that she
+may have been gambling in stocks, or have got into some bad land deal.
+She is so confoundedly close-mouthed--if she wants money send her to me."
+
+Helene sat very straight. Her little aquiline profile against the passing
+street lights was as aloof as imperial features on an ancient coin.
+
+"Really, Price, I don't think you can be as busy as you pretend if you
+have time to indulge in such flights of imagination. Maman has never
+tried to borrow a penny of me, and she is the last person on earth to
+gamble in stocks or any thing else. Or to buy land except on expert
+advice. I think she has given up that idea, anyhow. She said this evening
+she thought it was time for her to visit our people in Rouen."
+
+"Oh, she did! Helene, I must tell you frankly that I heard her reproach
+you for having broken a promise, and she spoke with deep feeling."
+
+It was possible that the Roman profile turned white, but in the dusk of
+the car he could not be sure. His wife, however, merely shrugged her
+shoulders and replied calmly:
+
+"My dear Price, if that has worried you, why didn't you say so at once? I
+am rather ashamed to tell you, all the same. Maman has been at me lately
+to persuade you to let her have the ruby for a week. She is dreadfully
+superstitious, poor maman, and is convinced it would bring her some
+tremendous good fortune--"
+
+"I have never met a woman who, I could swear, was freer from
+superstition--"
+
+Price closed his lips angrily. Of what use to tax her feminine defenses
+further? He had known her long enough to be sure she would rather tell
+the truth than lie. It was evident that she had no intention of lowering
+her barriers, and he must play the game from the other end: get the proof
+he needed and engineer his mother-in-law out of the United States.
+
+Some time, however, he would have it out with his wife. Being a business
+man and always alert to outwit the other man, he wanted neither intrigue
+nor mystery in his home, but a serene happiness founded upon perfect
+confidence. He found it impossible to remain appalled or angry at his
+wife's readiness of resource in guarding a family secret that must have
+shocked the youth in her almost out of existence.
+
+He patted her hand, and felt its chill within the glove.
+
+"It was like you never to have mentioned it," he murmured. "For, of
+course, it is quite impossible."
+
+"That is what I told her decidedly to-night, and I do not think she will
+ask again. It hurts me to refuse dear maman anything. Her devotion to me
+has been wonderful--but wonderful," she added on a defiant note.
+
+"A mother's devotion, particularly to a girl of your sort, does not make
+any call upon my exclamation points. But here we are."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The car rolled up the graded driveway Gwynne had built for the old San
+Francisco house that before his day had been approached by an almost
+perpendicular flight of wooden steps. They were late and the company
+had assembled: the Thorntons, Trennahans, and eight or ten young
+people, all of whom would be chaperoned by the married women to the
+dance at the Fairmont.
+
+Russian Hill had escaped the fire, but Nob Hill had been burnt down to
+its bones, and the Thorntons and Trennahans had not rebuilt, preferring,
+like many others, to live the year round in their country homes and use
+the hotels in winter.
+
+The moment Helene entered the drawing-room it was evident that the ruby
+was to make as great a sensation as the soul of woman could desire. Even
+the older people flocked about her and the girls were frank and shrill in
+their astonishment and rapture.
+
+"Helene! Darling! The duckiest thing--I never saw anything so perfectly
+dandy and wonderful! I'd go simply mad! Do, just let me touch it! I
+could eat it!"
+
+Mrs. Thornton, who at any time scorned to conceal envy, or pretend
+indifference, looked at the great burning stone with a sigh and turned to
+her husband.
+
+"Why didn't you manage to get it for me?" she demanded. "It would be far
+more suitable--a magnificent stone like that!--on me than on that baby."
+
+"My darling," murmured Ford anxiously, "I never laid eyes on the thing
+before, or on one like it. I'll find out where Ruyler got it, and try--"
+
+"Do you suppose I'd come out with a duplicate? You should have thought of
+it years ago. You always promised to take me to India."
+
+"It should be on you!" He gazed at her adoringly. Her hair was dressed
+in a high and stately fashion to-night. She wore a gown of gold brocade
+and a necklace and little tiara of emeralds and diamonds; she was
+looking very handsome and very regal. Thornton was a thin, dark, nervous
+wisp of a man, who had borne his share of the burdens laid upon his city
+in the cataclysm of 1906, but if his wife had demanded an enormous
+historic ruby he would have done his best to gratify her. But how the
+deuce could a man--
+
+Mrs. Gwynne was holding the stone in her hand and smiling into its
+flaming depths without envy. She was one of those women of dazzling white
+skin, black hair and blue eyes, who, when wise, never wear any jewels but
+pearls. She wore the Gwynne pearls to-night and a shimmering white gown.
+
+Ruyler glanced round the fine old room with the warm feeling of
+satisfaction he always experienced at a San Francisco function, where the
+women were almost as invariably pretty as they were gay and friendly. He
+did not like the younger men he met on these occasions as well as he did
+many of the older ones; the serious ones would not waste their time on
+society, and there were too many of the sort who were asked everywhere
+because they had made a cult of fashion, whether they could afford it or
+not. A few were the sons of wealthy parents, and were more dissipated
+than those obliged to "hold down" a job that provided them with money
+enough above their bare living expenses to make them useful and
+presentable.
+
+Ruyler looked upon both sorts as cumberers of the earth, and only
+tolerated them in his own house when his wife gave a party and dancing
+men must be had at any price.
+
+There was one man here to-night for whom he had always held particular
+detestation. His name was Nicolas Doremus. He was a broker in a small
+way, but Ruyler guessed that he made the best part of his income at
+bridge, possibly poker. He lived with two other men in a handsome
+apartment in one of the new buildings that were changing the old skyline
+of San Francisco. His dancing teas and suppers were admirably appointed
+and the most exclusive people went to them.
+
+Ruyler knew his history in a general way. His father had made a fortune
+in "Con. Virginia" in the Seventies, and his mother for a few years had
+been the social equal of the women who now patronized her son. But
+unfortunately the gambling microbe settled down in Harry Doremus' veins,
+and shortly after his son was born he engaged his favorite room at the
+Cliff House and blew out his brains. His wife was left with a large
+house, which as a last act of grace he had forborne to mortgage and made
+over to her by deed. She immediately advertised for boarders, and as her
+cooking was excellent and she had the wit to drop out of society and give
+her undivided attention to business, she prospered exceedingly.
+
+She concentrated her ambitions upon her only child; sent him to a private
+school patronized by the sons of the wealthy, and herself taught him
+every ingratiating social art. She wanted him to go to college, but by
+this time "Nick" was nineteen and as highly developed a snob as her
+maternal heart had planned. Knowing that he must support himself
+eventually, he was determined to begin his business career at once, and
+believed, with some truth, that there was a prejudice in this broad field
+against college men. He entered the brokerage firm of a bachelor who had
+occupied Mrs. Doremus' best suite for fifteen years, and made a
+satisfactory clerk, the while he cultivated his mother's old friends.
+
+When Mrs. Doremus died he sold the house and good will for a considerable
+sum, and, combining it with her respectable savings, formed a partnership
+with two other young fellows, whose fathers were rich, but old-fashioned
+enough to insist that their sons should work. Nick did most of the work.
+His partners, during the rainy season, sat with their feet on the
+radiator and read the popular magazines, and in fine weather upheld the
+outdoor traditions of the state.
+
+The firm had a slender patronage, as Ruyler happened to know, but Doremus
+was a member of the Pacific Union Club, and although he dined out every
+night, he must have spent six or seven thousand a year. It was amiably
+assumed that his social services,--he played and sang and often
+entertained exacting groups throughout an entire evening--his fetching
+and carrying for one rich old lady, accounted for his ability to keep out
+of debt and pay for his many extravagances; but Ruyler knew that he was
+principally esteemed at the small green table, and he vaguely recalled as
+he looked over his head to-night that he had heard disconnected murmurs
+of less honorable sources of revenue.
+
+As Ruyler turned away with a frown he met Gwynne's eyes traveling from
+the same direction. "I didn't ask him," he said apologetically. "Hate men
+too well dressed. Looks as if he posed for tailors' ads in the weeklies.
+Never could stand the social parasite anyhow, but Aileen Lawton asked
+Isabel to let her bring him, as they are going to open the ball to-night
+with some new kind of turkey trot.
+
+"Glad I'm off for Washington. California's the greatest place on earth in
+the dry season, but I'd have passed few winters here if it hadn't been
+for the work we all had to do, and even then it would have been heavy
+going without my wife's companionship."
+
+Ruyler sighed. Should he ever enjoy his wife's companionship? And into
+what sort of woman would she develop if forced along crooked ways by ugly
+secrets, blackmail, perpetual lying and deceit? He longed impatiently for
+the decisive interview with Spaulding on the morrow. Then, at least he
+could prepare for action, and, after all, even of more importance now
+than winning his wife's confidence and saving her from mental anguish,
+was the averting of a scandal that would echo across the continent
+straight into the ears of his half-reconciled father.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was about halfway through dinner that the primitive man in him routed
+every variety of apprehension that had tormented him since two o'clock
+that afternoon.
+
+Trennahan, another distinguished New Yorker, who had made his home in
+California for many years, had taken in Mrs. Gwynne, and his Spanish
+California wife sat at the foot of the table with the host. Ford had
+been given a lively girl, Aileen Lawton, to dissipate the financial
+anxieties of the day, and, to Ruyler's satisfaction, Mrs. Thornton had
+fallen to his lot and he sat on the left of Isabel. In this little group
+at the head of the table, his chosen intimates, who were more interested
+in the affairs of the world than in Consummate California, Ruyler had
+forgotten his wife for a time and had not noticed with whom she had gone
+in to dinner.
+
+But during an interval when Mrs. Thornton's attention had been captured
+by the man on her right, and the others drawn into a discussion over
+the merits of the new mayor, Price became aware that Doremus sat beside
+his wife halfway down the table on the opposite side, and that they
+were talking, if not arguing, in a low tone, oblivious for the moment
+of the company.
+
+The deferential bend was absent from the neck of the adroit social
+explorer, his head was alertly poised above the lovely young matron whose
+beauty, wealth, and foreign personality, to say nothing of the importance
+of her husband, gave her something of the standing of royalty in the
+aristocratic little republic of San Francisco Society. There was a vague
+threat in that poise, as if at any moment venom might dart down and
+strike that drooping head with its crown of blue-black braids. Suddenly
+Helene lifted her eyes, full of appeal, to the round pale blue orbs that
+at this moment openly expressed a cold and ruthless mind.
+
+Ruyler endeavored to piece together those disconnected whispers--letters
+discovered or stolen--blackmail--but such whispers were too often the
+whiffs from energetic but empty minds, always floating about and never
+seeming to bring any culprit to book.
+
+Had this man got hold of his wife's secret?
+
+But this merely sequacious thought was promptly routed. The young man,
+who was undeniably good looking and was rumored to possess a certain cold
+charm for women--although, to be sure, the wary San Francisco heiress had
+so far been impervious to it--was now leaning over Mrs. Price Ruyler with
+a coaxing possessive air, and the appeal left Helene's eyes as she smiled
+coquettishly and began to talk with her usual animation; but still in a
+tone that was little more than a murmur.
+
+She moved her shoulder closer to the man she evidently was bent upon
+fascinating, and her long eyelashes swept up and down while her black
+eyes flashed and her pink color deepened.
+
+There was a faint amusement mixed with Doremus' habitual air of amiable
+deference, and somewhat more of assurance, but he was as absorbed as
+Helene and had no eyes for Janet Maynard, on his left, whose fortune ran
+into millions.
+
+For a moment Ruyler, who had kept his nerve through several years of
+racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive,
+wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations
+and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition
+possible in the world of finance and commerce which could shatter his
+self-possession, cloud his mental processes. But his personal life had
+been singularly free of storms. Even his emotional upheaval, when he had
+fallen completely in love for the first time, had lacked that torment of
+uncertainty which might have played a certain havoc, for a time, with
+those quick unalterable decisions of the business hour; and even his
+engagement had only lasted a month.
+
+It was true that during the past six months he had worried off and on
+about the shadow that had fallen upon his wife's spirits and affected his
+own, but, when he had had time to think of it, before yesterday morning,
+he had assumed it was due to some phase of feminine psychology which he
+had never mastered. That she could be interested in another man never had
+crossed his mind, in spite of his passing flare of jealousy. She was
+still passionately in love with, him, for all her vagaries--or so he had
+thought--
+
+Ruyler was conscious of a riotous confusion of mind that really made him
+apprehensive. Had he witnessed that scene on the dummy--this
+afternoon?--it seemed a long while ago--had he heard those portentous
+words of his mother-in-law to his wife?--had they meant that she had
+warned her daughter against the bad blood in her veins, extracted a
+promise--broken!--to walk in the narrow way of the dutiful
+wife--mercifully spared by a fortunate marriage the terrible temptations
+of the older woman's youth? Had Helene confessed ... in desperate need of
+help, advice? ... Doremus was just the bounder to compromise a woman and
+then blackmail her.... Good God! What _was_ it?
+
+For all his mental turmoil he realized that here alone was the only
+possible menace to his life's happiness. His mother-in-law's past was a
+bitter pill for a proud man to swallow, and there was even the
+possibility of his wife's illegitimacy, but, after all, those were
+matters belonging to the past, and the past quickly receded to limbo
+these days.
+
+Even an open scandal, if some one of the offal sheets of San Francisco
+got hold of the story and published it, would be forgotten in time. But
+this--if his wife had fallen in love with another man--and women had no
+discrimination where love was concerned--(if a decent chap got a lovely
+girl it was mainly by luck; the rotters got just as good)--then indeed he
+was in the midst of disaster without end. The present was chaos and the
+future a blank. He'd enlist in the first war and get himself shot....
+
+Helene had a charming light coquetry, wholly French, and she exercised it
+indiscriminately, much to the delight of the old beaux, for she loved to
+please, to be admired; she had an innocent desire that all men should
+think her quite beautiful and irresistible. Even her husband had never
+seen her in an unbecoming _deshabille_; she coquetted with him
+shamelessly, whenever she was not too gloriously serious and intent only
+upon making him happy. Until lately--
+
+This was by no means her ordinary form.
+
+He had come upon too many couples in remote corners of conservatories,
+had been a not unaccomplished principal in his own day ... there was,
+beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
+
+Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness. She
+moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked
+almost gray. But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her
+remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and
+talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with
+the man on her right.
+
+At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs. Thornton was
+looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long,
+thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain. The mist in
+his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of
+the sudden winds of the Pacific. In any case, his mind hardly could have
+remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was
+being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful
+woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.
+Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her
+until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion. And in this
+instance he should be his own detective.
+
+He turned to Mrs. Thornton.
+
+"Going on to the Fairmont?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, I have a new gown--have you admired it? Arrived from Paris last
+night--and I am chaperoning two of these girls. You are not, of course?"
+
+"I did intend to, but it's no go. Still, I may drop in late and take my
+wife home--"
+
+"Let me take her home." Was his imagination morbid, or was there
+something both peremptory and eager in Mrs. Thornton's tones? "I'm
+stopping at the Fairmont, of course, but Fordy and I often take a drive
+after a hot night and a heavy supper."
+
+"If you would take her home in case I miss it. I must go to the office--"
+
+"I'd like to. That's settled." This time her tones were warm and
+friendly. Ruyler knew that Mrs. Thornton did not like his wife, but her
+friendliness toward him, since her return from Europe three or four
+months ago, had increased, if anything. His mind was now working with its
+accustomed keen clarity. He recalled that there had been no surprise
+mixed with the contempt in her regard of his wife and Doremus.... He also
+recalled that several times of late when he had met her at the
+Fairmont--where he often lunched with a group of men--she had regarded
+him with a curious considering glance, which he suddenly vocalized as:
+"How long?"
+
+This affair had been going on for some time, then. Either it was common
+talk, or some circumstance had enlightened Mrs. Thornton alone.
+
+He glanced around the table. No one appeared to be taking the slightest
+notice of one of many flirtations. At least, whatever his wife's
+infatuation, he could avert gossip. Mrs. Thornton might be a tigress, but
+she was not a cat.
+
+"When do you go down to Burlingame?" she asked.
+
+"Not for two or three weeks yet. I don't fancy merely sleeping in the
+country. But by that time things will ease up a bit and I can get down
+every day in time to have a game of golf before dinner."
+
+"Shall Mrs. Ruyler migrate with the rest?"
+
+"Hardly."
+
+"It will be dull for her in town. No reflections on your charming
+society, but of course she does not get much of it, and she will miss her
+young friends. After all, she is a child and needs playmates."
+
+Ruyler darted at her a sharp look, but she was smiling amiably. Doremus
+and the men he lived with, in town had a bungalow at Burlingame and they
+bought their commutation tickets at precisely the fashionable moment.
+"She will stay in town," he said shortly. "She needs a rest, and San
+Francisco is the healthiest spot on earth."
+
+"But trying to the nerves when what we inaccurately call the trade winds
+begin. Why not let her stay with me? Of course she would be lonely in her
+own house, and is too young to stay there alone anyhow, but I'd like to
+put her up, and you certainly could run down week-ends--possibly oftener.
+American men are always obsessed with the idea that they are twice as
+busy as they really are."
+
+"You are too good. I'll put it up to Helene. Of course it is for her to
+decide. I'd like it mighty well." But grateful as he was, his uneasiness
+deepened at her evident desire to place her forces at his disposal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I
+
+"And you won't take me to the party?" Helene pouted charmingly as her
+husband laid her pink taffeta wrap over her shoulders. "I thought you
+said you might make it, and it would be too delightful to dance with you
+once more."
+
+"I'm afraid not. The Australian mail came in just as business closed and
+it's on my mind. I want to go over it carefully before I dictate the
+answers in the morning, and that means two or three hours of hard work
+that will leave me pretty well fagged out. Mrs. Thornton has offered to
+take you home."
+
+"I hate her."
+
+"Oh, please don't!" Ruyler smiled into her somber eyes. "She wants the
+drive, and it would be taking the Gwynnes so far out of the way. Mrs.
+Thornton very kindly suggested it."
+
+"I hate her," said Helene conclusively. "I wish now I'd kept my own car.
+Then I could always go home alone."
+
+"You shall have a car next winter. And this time I shall not permit you
+to pay for it out of your allowance--which in any case I hope to increase
+by that time."
+
+Her eyes flamed, but not with anger. "Then I'll sell my electric to
+Aileen Lawton right away. We have the touring car in the country, and
+she has been trying to make her father buy her an electric--"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed in your bargain. Second-hand cars, no
+matter what their condition, always go at a sacrifice, and old Lawton is
+a notorious screw. Better not let it go for two or three hundreds; you
+look very sweet driving about in it.... Oh, by the way--I had
+forgotten." He slipped his hand under her coat, unfastened the chain and
+slipped the jewel into his pocket. "I am sorry," he said, with real
+contrition, "and almost wish I had forgotten the thing; but I am a little
+superstitious about keeping that old promise."
+
+She laughed. "And yet you will not permit poor maman a little
+superstition of her own! But I am rather glad. Everybody at the ball will
+hear of the ruby, and I shall be able to keep them in suspense until the
+Thornton fete. Good night. Don't work too hard. Couldn't you get there
+for supper?"
+
+"'Fraid not."
+
+
+II
+
+He did go down to the office and glance through the Australian mail,
+but at a few moments before twelve he took a California Street car up
+to the Fairmont Hotel and went directly to the ballroom. Mrs.
+Thornton was standing just within the doorway, but came toward him
+with lifted eyebrows.
+
+"This is like old times," she said playfully.
+
+"I found less mail than I expected and thought I would come and have a
+dance with my wife." His eyes wandered over the large room, gayly
+decorated, and filled with dancing couples.
+
+Mrs. Thornton laughed. "A belle like your wife? She is always engaged for
+every dance on her program before she is halfway down this corridor."
+
+"Oh, well, husbands have some rights. I'll take it by force. I don't see
+her--she must be sitting out."
+
+Mrs. Thornton slipped her arm through his. "This dance has just begun.
+Walk me up and down. I am tired of standing on one foot."
+
+They strolled down the corridor and through the large central hall. Older
+folks sat or stood in groups; a few young couples were sitting out.
+Ruyler did not see his wife, and concluded she had been resting at the
+moment in the dowager ranks against the wall of the ballroom. The music
+ceased sooner than he expected and Mrs. Thornton, who had been talking
+with animation on the subject of several fine pictures she had bought
+while abroad for the Museum in Golden Gate Park, including one by
+Masefield Price, broke off with an impatient exclamation: "Bother! I must
+run up to my room at once and telephone. Wait for me here."
+
+She steered him toward a group of men. "Mr. Gwynne, keep Mr. Ruyler from
+causing a riot in the ballroom. He insists upon dancing with his wife.
+Hold him by force."
+
+They were standing near the staircase and some distance from the lift.
+Mrs. Thornton ran up the stairs, pausing for an irresistible moment and
+looking down at the company. As she stood there, poised, she looked a
+royal figure with her cloth of gold train covering the steps below her
+and her high and flashing head. "Wait for me," she said, imperiously to
+Price. "I cannot meander down that corridor, deserted and alone."
+
+Ruyler smiled at her, but said to Gwynne: "I'll just go and engage my
+wife for a dance and be back in a jiffy--"
+
+Gwynne clasped his hand about Ruyler's arm. "Just a moment, old chap. I
+want your opinion--"
+
+"But there is the music again. I'll be knocking people over--"
+
+"You will if you go now, and there'll be dancing for hours yet. Your wife
+has been dividing up--now, tell me if you back me in this proposition or
+not. I'm going to Washington to represent you fellows--"
+
+But Ruyler had broken politely away and was walking down the long
+corridor. When he arrived at the ballroom he saw at a glance that his
+wife was not there, for the floor was only half filled. But there were
+other rooms where dancers sat in couples or groups when tired. He went
+hastily through all of them, but saw nothing of his wife. Nor of Doremus.
+
+Mrs. Thornton had gone in search of her.
+
+And Gwynne knew.
+
+This time the hot blood was pounding in his head. He felt as he imagined
+madmen did when about to run amok. Or quite as primitive as any
+Californian of the surging "Fifties."
+
+He was in one of the smaller rooms and he sat down in a corner with his
+back to the few people in it and endeavored to take hold of himself; the
+conventional training of several lifetimes and his own intense pride
+forbade a scene in public. But his curved fingers longed for Doremus'
+throat and he made up his mind that if his awful suspicions were
+vindicated he would beat his wife black and blue. That was far more
+sensible and manly than running whining to a divorce court.
+
+The effort at self-control left him gasping, but when he rose from his
+shelter he was outwardly composed, and determined to seek Gwynne and
+force the truth from him. He would not discuss his wife with another
+woman. And whatever this hideous tragedy brooding over his life he would
+go out and come to grips with it at once.
+
+
+III
+
+And in the corridor he saw his wife chatting gayly with a group of young
+friends. Her color was paler than usual, perhaps, but that was not
+uncommon at a party, and otherwise she was as unruffled, as normal in
+appearance and manner, as when they had parted at the Gwynnes'.
+
+Nevertheless, he went directly up to her, and as she gave a little cry of
+pleased surprise, he drew her hand through his arm. "Come!" he said
+imperiously. "You are to dance this with me. I broke away on purpose--"
+
+"But, darling, I am full up--"
+
+"You have skipped at least two. I have been looking everywhere for you--"
+
+"Polly Roberts dragged me upstairs to see the new gowns M. Dupont brought
+her from Paris. They came this afternoon--so did Mrs. Thornton's--but of
+course I'll dance this with you. You don't look well," she added
+anxiously. "Aren't you?"
+
+"Quite, but rather tired--mentally. I need a dance...."
+
+He wondered if she had gently propelled him down the corridor. They were
+some distance from the group. It was impossible for him to go back and
+ask if his wife's story were true. Mrs. Thornton was nowhere to be seen,
+neither in the corridor nor in the ballroom. Nor was Doremus. He set his
+teeth grimly and managed to smile down upon his wife.
+
+"I shall insist upon having more than one," he said gallantly. "At least
+three hesitations."
+
+She drew in her breath with a mock sigh and swept from under her long
+lashes a glance that still had the power to thrill him. "Outrageous, but
+I shall try to bear up," and the next moment they were giving a graceful
+exhibition of the tango.
+
+"I don't see your friend Doremus," he said casually, as he stood fanning
+her at the end of the dance.
+
+She lifted her eyebrows haughtily. "My friend? That parasite?"
+
+"You seemed very friendly at dinner."
+
+"I usually am with my dinner companion. One's hostess is to be
+considered. Oh--I remember--he was telling me some very amusing gossip,
+although he teased me into fearing he wouldn't. Now, if you are going to
+dance this hesitation with me you had better whirl me off. It is Mr.
+Thornton's, and I see him coming."
+
+Ruyler did not see Doremus until supper was half over and then the young
+man entered the dining-room hurriedly, his usually serene brow lowering
+and his lips set. He walked directly up to Helene.
+
+"Beastly luck!" he exclaimed. "Hello, Ruyler. Didn't know you honored
+parties any more. I had to break away to meet the Overland train--beastly
+thing was late, of course. Then I had to take them to five hotels before
+I could settle them. They had two beastly little dogs and the hotels
+wouldn't take them in and they wouldn't give up the dogs. Some one ought
+to set up a high-class dog hotel. Sure it would pay. But you'll give me
+the first after supper, won't you?"
+
+Helene gave him a casual smile that was a poor reward for his elaborate
+apology. "So sorry," she said with the sweet distant manner in which she
+disposed of bores and climbers, "but Mr. Ruyler and I are both tired. We
+are going home directly after supper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+I
+
+On the following day at six o'clock Ruyler went to Long's to meet Jake
+Spaulding. By a supreme effort of will he had put his private affairs out
+of his mind and concentrated on the business details which demanded the
+most highly trained of his faculties. But now he felt relaxed, almost
+languid, as he walked along Montgomery Street toward the rendezvous. He
+met no one he knew. The historic Montgomery Street, once the center of
+the city's life, was almost deserted, but half rebuilt. He could saunter
+and think undisturbed.
+
+What was he to hear? And what bearing would it be found to have on his
+wife's conduct?
+
+He had gone to sleep last night as sure as a man may be of anything that
+his wife was no more interested in Doremus than in any other of the
+young men who found time to dance attendance upon idle, bored, but
+virtuous wives.
+
+If the man knew her secret and were endeavoring to exact blackmail he
+would pay his price with joy--after thrashing him, for he would have
+sacrificed the half of his fortune never to experience again not only the
+demoralizing attack of jealous madness of the night before, which had
+brought in its wake the uneasy doubt if civilization were as far advanced
+as he had fondly imagined, but the sensation of amazed contempt which had
+swept over him at the dinner table as he had seen his wife, whom he had
+believed to be a woman of instinctive taste and fastidiousness,
+manifestly upon intimate terms with a creature who should have been
+walking on four legs. Better, perhaps, the desire to kill a woman than to
+despise her--
+
+He slammed the door when he entered the little room reserved for him, and
+barely restrained himself from flinging his hat into a corner and
+breaking a chair on the table. His languor had vanished.
+
+Spaulding followed him immediately.
+
+"Howdy," he said genially, as he pushed his own hat on the back of his
+head and bit hungrily at the end of a cigar. "Suppose you've been
+impatient--unless too busy to think about it."
+
+"I'd like to know what you've found out as quickly as you can tell me."
+
+"Well, to begin with the kid. I had some trouble at the convent. They're
+a close-mouthed lot, nuns. But I frightened them. Told them it was a
+property matter, and unless they answered my questions privately they'd
+have to answer them in court. Then they came through."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Spaulding lit his cigar and handed the match to Ruyler, who ground it
+under his heel.
+
+"Just about nineteen years ago a Frenchwoman, giving her name as Madame
+Dubois, arrived one day with a child a year old and asked the nuns to
+take care of it, promising a fancy payment. The child had been on a farm
+with a wet-nurse (French style), but Madame Dubois wanted it to learn
+from the first to speak proper English and French, and to live in a
+refined atmosphere generally from the time it was able to take notice.
+She said she was on the stage and had to travel, so was not able to give
+the kid the attention it should have, and the doctor had told her that
+traveling was bad for kids that age, anyhow. Her lawyers would pay the
+baby's board on the first of every month--"
+
+"Who were the lawyers?"
+
+"Lawton and Cross."
+
+"I thought so. Go on."
+
+"The nuns, who, after all, knew their California, thought they smelt a
+rat, for the woman was extraordinarily handsome, magnificently dressed;
+the Mother Superior--who is a woman of the world, all right--read the
+newspapers, and had never seen the name of Dubois--and knew that only
+stars drew fat salaries. She asked some sharp questions about the father,
+and the woman replied readily that he was a scientific man, an inventor,
+and--well, it was natural, was it not? they did not get on very well. He
+disliked the stage, but she had been on it before she married him, and
+dullness and want of money for her own needs and her child's had driven
+her back. He had lived in Los Angeles for a time, but had recently gone
+East to take a high-salaried position. It was with his consent that she
+asked the nuns to take the child--possibly for two or three years. When
+she was a famous actress and could leave the road, she would keep house
+for her husband in New York, and make a home for the child.
+
+"The Mother Superior, by this time, had made up her mind that the father
+wished the child removed from the mother's influence, and although she
+took the whole yarn with a bag of salt, the child was the most beautiful
+she had ever seen, and obviously healthy and amiable. Moreover, the
+convent was to receive two hundred dollars a month--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Exactly. Can you beat it? The Mother Superior made up her mind it was
+her duty to bring up the little thing in the way it should go. As the
+woman was leaving she said something about a possible reconciliation with
+her family, who lived in France; they had not written her since she went
+on the stage. They were of a respectability!--of the old tradition! But
+if they came round she might take the child to them, if her husband would
+consent. She should like it to be brought up in France--
+
+"Here the Mother Superior interrupted her sharply. Was her husband a
+Frenchman? And she answered, no doubt before she thought, for these
+people always forget something, that no, he was an American--her family,
+also, detested Americans. The Mother Superior once more interrupted her
+glibness. How, then, did he have a French name? Oh, but that was her
+stage name--she always went by it and had given it without thinking. What
+was her husband's name? After a second's hesitation she stupidly give the
+name Smith. I can see the mouth of the Mother Superior as it set in a
+grim line. 'Very well,' said she, 'the child's name is Helene Smith'; and
+although the woman made a wry face she was forced to submit.
+
+"The child remained there four years, and the Mother Superior had some
+reason to believe that 'Madame Dubois' spent a good part of that time in
+San Francisco. She came at irregular intervals to see the child--always
+in vacation, when there were no pupils in the convent, and always at
+night. The Mother Superior, however, thought it best to make no
+investigations, for the child throve, they were all daffy about her, and
+the money came promptly on the first of every month. When the mother came
+she always brought a trunk full of fine underclothes, and left the money
+for a new uniform. Then, one day, Madame Dubois arrived in widow's weeds,
+said that her husband was dead, leaving her quite well off, and that she
+was returning to France."
+
+"And Madame Delano's story is that he died on the way to Japan--if it is
+the same woman--"
+
+"Haven't a doubt of it myself. I did a little cabling before I left last
+night to a man I know in Paris to find out just when Madame Delano
+returned with her child to live with her family in Rouen. He got busy and
+here is his answer--just fifteen years ago almost to the minute."
+
+"Then who was her husband?"
+
+"There you've got me--so far. He was no 'scientist, who later accepted
+a high-salaried position.' A decent chap of that sort would have
+written to his child, paid her board himself, most likely taken it away
+from the mother--"
+
+"But she may have kidnapped it--"
+
+"People are too easy traced in this State--especially that sort. Nor do
+I believe she was an actress. There never was any actress of that
+name--not so you'd notice it, anyhow, and that woman would have been
+known for her looks and height even if she couldn't act. Moreover, if
+she was an actress there would be no sense in giving the nuns a false
+name, since she had admitted the fact. No, it's my guess that she was
+something worse."
+
+"Well, I've prepared myself for anything."
+
+"I figure out that she was the mistress of one of our rich highfliers,
+and that when he got tired of her he pensioned her off, and she made up
+her mind to reform on account of the kid, and went back to Rouen, and
+proceeded to identify herself with her class by growing old and shapeless
+as quickly as possible. She must have adopted the name Delano in New York
+before she bought her steamer ticket, for although I've had a man on the
+hunt, the only Delanos of that time were eminently respectable--"
+
+"Why are you sure she was not a--well--woman of the town?"
+
+"Because, there again--there's no dame of that time either of that name
+or looks--neither Dubois nor Delano. Of course, they come and go, but
+there's every reason to think she stayed right on here in S.F. Of
+course, I've only had twenty-four hours--I'll find out in another
+twenty-four just what conspicuous women of fifteen to twenty years ago
+measure up to what she must have looked like--I got the Mother Superior
+to describe her minutely: nearly six feet, clear dark skin with a
+natural red color--no make-up; very small features, but well made--nose
+and mouth I'm talking about. The eyes were a good size, very black with
+rather thin eyelashes. Lots of black hair. Stunning figure. Rather large
+ears and hands and feet. She always dressed in black, the handsomest
+sort. They generally do."
+
+"Well?" asked Ruyler through his teeth. He had no doubt the woman was his
+mother-in-law. "The Jameses? What of them?"
+
+"That's the snag. Rest is easy in comparison. Innumerable Jameses must
+have died about that time, to say nothing of all the way along the line,
+but while some of the records were saved in 1906, most went up in smoke.
+Moreover, there's just the chance that he didn't die here. But that's
+going on the supposition that the man died when she left California,
+which don't fit our theory. I still think he died not so very long before
+her return to California, and that she probably came to collect a legacy
+he had left her. Otherwise, I should think it's about the last place she
+would have come to. I put a man on the job before I left of collecting
+the Jameses who've died since the fire. Here they are."
+
+He took a list from his pocket and read:
+
+"James Hogg, bookkeeper--races, of course. James Fowler, saloon-keeper.
+James Despard, called 'Frenchy,' a clever crook who lived on
+blackmail--said to have a gift for getting hold of secrets of men and
+women in high society and squeezing them good and plenty--"
+
+He paused. "Of course, that might be the man. There are points. I'll have
+his life looked into, but somehow I don't believe it. I have a hunch the
+man was a higher-up. The sort of woman the Mother Superior described can
+get the best, and they take it. To proceed: James Dillingworth, lawyer,
+died in the odor of sanctity, but you never can tell; I'll have him
+investigated, too. James Maston--I haven't had time to have had the
+private lives of any of these men looked into, but I knew some of them,
+and Maston, who was a journalist, left a wife and three children and was
+little, if any, over thirty. James Cobham, broker--he was getting on to
+fifty, left about a million, came near being indicted during the Graft
+Prosecutions, and although his wife has been in the newspapers as a
+society leader for the last twenty years, and he was one of the founders
+of Burlingame, and then was active in changing the name of the high part
+to Hillsboro when the swells felt they couldn't be identified with the
+village any longer, and he handed out wads the first of every year to
+charity, there are stories that he came near being divorced by his
+haughty wife about fifteen years ago. Of course, those men don't parade
+their mistresses openly like they did thirty years ago--I mean men with
+any social position to keep up. But now and again the wife finds a note,
+or receives an anonymous letter, and gets busy. Then it's the divorce
+court, unless he can smooth her down, and promises reform. Cobham seems
+to me the likeliest man, and I'm going to start a thorough investigation
+to-morrow. These other Jameses don't hold out any promise at
+all--grocers, clerks, butchers. It's the list in hand I'll go by, and if
+nothing pans out--well, we'll have to take the other cue she threw out
+and try Los Angeles."
+
+"Do you know anything about a man named Nicolas Doremus?" asked
+Ruyler abruptly.
+
+"The society chap? Nothing much except that he don't do much business on
+the street but is supposed to be pretty lucky at poker and bridge. But he
+runs with the crowd the police can't or don't raid. I've never seen or
+heard of him anywhere he shouldn't be except with swell slumming or
+roadhouse parties. He's never interested me. If Society can stand that
+sort of bloodsucking tailor's model, I guess I can. Why do you ask? Got
+anything to do with this case?"
+
+"I have an idea he has found out the truth and is blackmailing my wife.
+You might watch him."
+
+"Good point. I will. And if he's found out the truth I guess I can."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+I
+
+Helene, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs.
+Thornton's invitation.
+
+"Do you think I'd leave you--to come home to a dreary house every night?
+Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if
+you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any
+engagement--you have always known that!"
+
+Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet--she was lunching with
+him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with
+Spaulding--that he hastened to assure her affectionately that the
+certainty of his wife's desire for his constant companionship was both
+his torment and his consolation.
+
+Helene continued radiantly:
+
+"Besides, darling, Polly Roberts is staying on. Rex can't get away yet."
+
+"Polly Roberts is not nearly good enough for you. She hasn't an idea in
+her head and lives on excitement--"
+
+Helene laughed merrily. "You are quite right, but there's no harm in her.
+After all, unless one goes in for charities (and I can't, Price, yet;
+besides the charities here are wonderfully looked after), plays bridge,
+has babies, takes on suffrage--what is there to do but play? I suppose
+once life was serious for young women of our class; but we just get into
+the habit of doing nothing because there's nothing to do. Take to-morrow
+as an example: I suppose Polly and I will wander down to The Louvre in
+the morning and buy something or look at the new gowns M. Dupont has just
+brought from Paris.
+
+"Then we'll lunch where there's lots of life and everybody is chatting
+gayly about nothing.
+
+"Then we'll go to the Moving Pictures unless there is a matinee, and then
+we'll motor out to the Boulevard, and then back and have tea somewhere.
+
+"Or, perhaps, we'll motor down to the Club at Burlingame for lunch and
+chatter away the day on the veranda, or dance. This afternoon we'll
+probably ring up a few that are still in town, and dance in Polly's
+parlor at the Fairmont."
+
+Helene's lip curled, her voice had risen. With, all her young enjoyment
+of wealth and position, she had been bred in a class where to idle is a
+crime. "Just putting in time--time that ought to be as precious as
+youth and high spirits and ease and popularity! But what is one to do?
+I have no talents, and I'd lose caste in my set if I had. I don't
+wonder the Socialists hate us and want to put us all to work. No doubt
+we should be much happier. But now--even if you retired from business,
+you'd spend most of your time on the links. We poor women wouldn't be
+much better off."
+
+"It does seem an abnormal state of affairs; I've barely given it a
+thought, it has always been such a pleasure to find you, after a hard
+day's work, looking invariably dainty, and pretty, and eloquently
+suggestive of leisure and repose. But--to the student of history--I
+suppose it is a condition that cannot last. There must be some sort of
+upheaval due. Well, I hope it will give me more of your society."
+
+They smiled at each other across the little table in perfect confidence.
+They were lunching in the court, and after she had blown him a kiss over
+her glass of red wine, her eyes happened to travel in the direction of
+the large dining-room. She gave a little exclamation of distaste.
+
+"There is maman lunching with that hateful old Mr. Lawton. He was in her
+sitting-room when I ran in to call on her yesterday, and nearly snapped
+my head off when I asked him if he wouldn't buy my electric for Aileen.
+He said it was time she began to learn a few economies instead of more
+extravagances. Poor darling Aileen. She has to stay in town, too, for he
+won't open the house in Atherton until he is ready to go down himself
+every night."
+
+"Is he an old friend of your mother's?"
+
+"She and Papa met him when they were here, and Mrs. Lawton was very kind
+when I was born. It's too bad Mrs. Lawton's dead. She'd be a nice friend
+for maman."
+
+"Perhaps your mother is asking Mr. Lawton's advice about the investment
+of money."
+
+He had been observing his wife closely, but it was more and more apparent
+that if Mr. Lawton held the key to her mother's past she had not been
+informed of the fact. She answered indifferently:
+
+"Possibly. One can get much higher interest out here than in France, and
+maman would never invest money without the best advice. She loves me, but
+money next. Oh, la! la!"
+
+"Has she said anything more about going back to Rouen?"
+
+"I didn't have a word with her alone yesterday, but I'll ask her to-day.
+Poor maman! I fancy the novelty has worn off here, and she would really
+be happier with her own people and customs. She hates traveling, like all
+the French; but don't you think that, after a bit we shall be able to go
+over to Europe at least once a year?"
+
+"I am sure of it. And while I am attending to business in London you
+could visit your mother in Rouen. Tell her that one way or another I'll
+manage it."
+
+And this seemed to him an ideal arrangement!
+
+
+II
+
+When they left the table and walked through the more luxurious part of
+the court, they saw Madame Delano alone and enthroned as usual in the
+largest but most upright of the armchairs. And as ever she watched under
+her fat drooping eyelids the passing throng of smartly dressed women,
+hurrying men, sauntering, staring tourists. Here and there under the
+palms sat small groups of men, leaning forward, talking in low earnest
+tones, their faces, whether of the keen, narrow, nervous, or of the
+fleshy, heavy, square-jawed, unimaginative, aggressive, ruthless type,
+equally expressing that intense concentration of mind which later would
+make their luncheon a living torment.
+
+Helene threw herself into a chair beside her mother and fondled her hand.
+Ruyler noted that after Madame Delano's surprised smile of welcome she
+darted a keen glance of apprehension from one to the other, and her tight
+little mouth relaxed uncontrollably in its supporting walls of flesh. But
+she lowered her lids immediately and looked approvingly at her daughter,
+who in her new gown of gray, with gray hat and gloves and shoes, was a
+dainty and refreshing picture of Spring. Then she looked at Ruyler with
+what he fancied was an expression of relief.
+
+"I wonder you do not do this oftener," she said.
+
+"I never know until the last moment when or where I shall be able to take
+lunch, and then I often have to meet three or four men. Such is life in
+the city of your adoption."
+
+"There is no city in the world where women are so abominably idle and
+useless!" And at the moment, whatever Madame Delano may have been, her
+voice and mien were those of a virtuous and outraged bourgeoisie. "You
+are all very well, Ruyler, but if I had known what the life of a rich
+young woman was in this town, I'd have married Helene to a serious young
+man of her own class in Rouen; a husband who would have given her
+companionship in a normal civilized life, who would have taken care of
+her as every young wife should be taken care of, and who would have
+insisted upon at least two children as a matter of course. With us The
+Family is a religion. Here it is an incident where it is not an
+accident."
+
+Ruyler, who was still standing, looked down at his mother-in-law with
+profound interest. He had never heard her express herself at such length
+before. "Do you think I fail as a husband?" he asked humbly. "God knows
+I'd like to give my wife about two-thirds of my time, but at least I have
+perfect confidence in her. I should soon cease to care for a wife I was
+obliged to watch."
+
+"Young things are young things." Madame Delano looked at Helene, who had
+turned very white and had lowered her own lids to hide the consternation
+in her eyes. But as her mother ceased speaking she raised them in swift
+appeal to Ruyler.
+
+"Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price
+wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long
+skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of
+the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that you
+don't really mean it. I can't have Price jealous. That would be too
+humiliating. I'm afraid I do flirt as naturally as I breathe, but Price
+knows I haven't a thought for a man on earth but him." The color had
+crept back into her cheeks, but there was still anxiety in her soft black
+eyes, and Price was sure that the little pointed toe once more made its
+peremptory appeal.
+
+Madame Delano looked squarely at her son-in-law.
+
+"That's all right--so far," she said grimly. "Helene is devoted to
+you. But so have many other young wives been to busy American husbands.
+Now, take my advice, and give her more of your companionship before it
+is too late. _Watch over her_. There always comes a time--a
+turning-point--European husbands understand, but American husbands are
+fools. Woman's loyalty, fed on hope only, turns to resentment; and then
+her separate life begins. Now, I've warned you. Go back to your office,
+where, no doubt, your clerks are hanging out of the windows, wondering if
+you are dead and the business wrecked. I want to talk to Helene."
+
+
+III
+
+In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt
+lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than
+he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly
+understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past,
+and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the
+result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman
+who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it
+alarming, and--unwelcome, but inevitable thought--peculiarly dangerous to
+a young and beautiful creature with wild and lawless blood in her veins.
+
+However, it was patent that so far her apprehensions were merely the
+result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own
+threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San
+Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with
+which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no
+doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on the city she
+must hate.
+
+He renewed his determination to keep what guard he could over his young
+wife, and wondered if his brother Harold, who also had elected to enter
+the old firm, could not be induced to come out and take over a certain
+share of the responsibility. The young man had paid him a visit a year
+ago and been enraptured with life in California.
+
+True, he was accustomed to make quick decisions without consulting any
+one, and he should find a partner irksome, but he was beginning to
+realize acutely that business, even to an American brain, packed with its
+traditions and energies, was not even the half of life, should be a means
+not an end; he set his teeth as he walked rapidly along Montgomery Street
+and vowed that he would keep his domestic happiness if he had to retire
+on what was available of his own fortune. He even wondered if it would
+not be wise to buy a fruit ranch, where he and Helene could share equally
+in the management, and begin at once to raise a family. They both loved
+outdoor life, and this life of complete frivolity, in which she seemed to
+be hopelessly enmeshed, might before long corrode her nature and blast
+the mental aspirations that still survived in that untended soil. When
+this great merging deal was over he should be free to decide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+I
+
+He arrived at home on the following afternoon at six and was
+immediately rung up by Spaulding, who demanded an interview. It was not
+worth while going down town again, as Helene was out and would no doubt
+return only in time to dress for dinner. They were to dine at half-past
+seven and go to the play afterward. He told Spaulding to take a taxi
+and come to the house.
+
+Nothing had occurred meanwhile to cause him anxiety. He had taken Helene
+out to the Cliff House to dinner the night before, and afterward to see
+the road-houses, whose dancing is so painfully proper early in the
+evening. Polly Roberts had come into the most notorious of them at
+eleven, chaperoning a party, which included Aileen Lawton, a girl as
+restless and avid of excitement as herself. Rex Roberts and several other
+young men had been in attendance, and Polly had begged Ruyler to stay on
+and let his wife see something of "real life."
+
+"This is one of the sights of the world, you know," she said, puffing her
+cigarette smoke into his face. "It's _too_ middle-class to be shocked,
+and not to see occasionally what you really cannot get anywhere else.
+Why, there'll even be a lot of tourists here later on, and these dancers
+don't do the real Apache until about one. At least leave Helene with me,
+if you care more for bed than fun."
+
+But Ruyler had merely laughed and taken his wife home. Helene had made
+no protest; on the contrary had put her arm through his in the car and
+her head on his shoulder, vowing she was worn out, and glad to go home.
+It was only afterward that it occurred to him that she had clung to him
+that night.
+
+Spaulding entered the library without taking off his hat, and chewing a
+toothpick vigorously. He began to talk at once, stretching himself out in
+a Morris chair, and accepting a cigar. This time Price smoked with him.
+
+"Well," said the detective, "it's like the game of button, button, who's
+got the button? Sometimes I think I'm getting a little warmer and then I
+go stone cold. But I've found out a few things, anyhow. How tall should
+you say Madame Delano is? I've only seen her sitting on her throne there
+in the Palace Court lookin' like an old Sphinx that's havin' a laugh all
+to herself."
+
+"About five feet ten."
+
+"The Mother Superior said six feet, but no doubt when she had figger
+instead of flesh she looked taller. Well, I've discovered no less than
+five tall handsome brunettes that sparkled here in the late Eighties and
+early Nineties, but it's the deuce and all to get an exact description
+out of anybody, especially when quite a few years have elapsed. Most
+people don't see details, only effects. That's what we detectives come up
+against all the time. So, whether these ladies were five feet eight, five
+feet ten, or six feet, whether they had large features or small, big
+hands and feet or fine points, or whether they added on all the inches
+they yearned for by means of high heels or style, is beyond me. But here
+they are."
+
+He took his neat little note-book from his pocket and was about to read
+it, when Ruyler interrupted him.
+
+"But surely you know whether these women were French or not?"
+
+"Aw, that's just what you can't always find out. Lots of 'em pretend to
+be, and others--if they come from good stock in the old country--want you
+to forget it. But the queens generally run to French names, as havin' a
+better commercial value than Mary Jane or Ann Maria. One of these was
+Marie Garnett, who wasn't much on her own but spun the wheel in Jim's
+joint down on Barbary Coast, which was raided just so often for form's
+sake. She always made a quick getaway, was never up in court, and died
+young. Gabrielle ran an establishment down on Geary Street and was one of
+the swellest lookers and swellest togged dames in her profession till the
+drink got her. I can't find that she ever hooked up to a James or any one
+else. Pauline-Marie was another razzle-dazzle who swooped out here from
+nowhere and burrowed into quite a few fortunes and put quite a few of our
+society leaders into mourning. She disappeared and I can't trace her, but
+she seems to have been the handsomest of the bunch, and was fond of
+showing herself at first nights, dressed straight from Paris, until some
+of our war-hardened 'leaders' called upon the managers in a body and
+threatened never to set foot inside their doors again unless she was kept
+out, and the managers succumbed. Then there was the friend of a rich
+Englishman, whose first name I haven't been able to get hold of. They
+lived first at Santa Barbara, then loafed up and down the coast for a
+year or two, spending quite a time in San Francisco. She was 'foreign
+looking' and a stunner, all right. All of these dames drifted out about
+the same time--"
+
+"What was the Englishman's name?"
+
+"J. Horace Medford. Front name may or may not have been James. I doubt if
+his name could be found on any deeds, even in the south, where there was
+no fire. He doesn't seem to have bought any property or transacted any
+business. Just lived on a good-sized income. Of course, all the hotel
+registers here were burnt, but I wired to Santa Barbara and Monterey and
+got what I have given you.
+
+"He had a yacht, and he took the woman with him everywhere. There was
+always a flutter when they appeared at the theater. Of course she went by
+his name, but as he never presented a letter all the time he was here and
+it was quite obvious he could have brought all he wanted, and as men are
+always 'on' anyhow, there was but one conclusion."
+
+"Where did he bank? They might have his full name."
+
+"Bank of California, but his remittances were sent to order of J. Horace
+Medford, and, of course, he signed his cheques the same way."
+
+"That sounds the most likely of the lot--and the most hopeful."
+
+"Well, haven't handed you the fifth yet, and to my mind she's the most
+likely of all. Ever hear of James Lawton's trouble with his wife?"
+
+"Trouble? I thought she died."
+
+"She--did--not. She went East suddenly about fifteen years ago, and soon
+after a notice of her death appeared in the San Francisco papers. But
+there was a tale of woe (for old Lawton) that I doubt if most of her own
+crowd had even a suspicion of."
+
+"Good heavens!" Ruyler recalled the apparent intimacy of his
+mother-in-law and the senior member of the respectable firm of Lawton and
+Cross. If "Madame Delano" were the former Mrs. Lawton, how many things
+would be explained.
+
+"This woman's name was Marie all right, and she was French, although she
+seems to have been adopted by some people named Dubois and brought up in
+California. She was quite the proper thing in high society, but the
+trouble was that she liked another sort better. She was a regular
+fly-by-night. It began when Norton Moore, a rotten limb of one of the
+grandest trees in San Francisco Society--so respectable they didn't know
+there was any side to life but their own--sneaked Mrs. Lawton and three
+girls out of his mother's house one night when she was givin' a ball, put
+'em in a hack and took 'em down to Gabrielle's. There they spent an hour
+lookin' at Gabrielle's swell bunch dressed up and doin' the grand society
+act with some of the men-about-town. Then they danced some and opened a
+bottle or two.
+
+"I never heard that this little jaunt hurt the girls any, but it woke up
+something in Mrs. Lawton. After that--well, there are stories without
+end. Won't take up your time tellin' them. The upshot was that one night
+Lawton, who took a fling himself once in a while, met her at Gabrielle's
+or some other joint, and she went East a day or two after. I suppose he
+didn't get a divorce, partly on account of the kid--Aileen--partly
+because he had no intention of trying his luck again."
+
+"But is there any evidence that she had another child--that she
+hid away?"
+
+"No, but it might easy have been. This life went on for about eight
+years, and it was at least five that she and Lawton merely lived under
+the same roof for the sake of Aileen. They never did get on. That much,
+at least, was well known. It might easy be--"
+
+Ruyler made a rapid calculation. Aileen Lawton was just about three years
+older than Helene. She was fair like her father. There was no resemblance
+between her and his wife, but the intimacy between them had been
+spontaneous and had never lapsed. She had grown up quite unrestrained and
+spoilt, and broken three engagements, and was always rushing about
+proclaiming in one breath, that California was the greatest place on
+earth and in the next that she should go mad if she didn't get out and
+have a change. Another grievance was that although her father let her
+have her own way, or rather did not pretend to control her, he gave her a
+rather niggardly allowance for her personal expenses and she was supposed
+to be heavily in debt. Ruyler thought he could guess where a good deal of
+his wife's spare cash had gone to. He disliked Aileen Lawton as much as
+he did Polly Roberts; more, if anything, because she might have been
+clever and she chose to be a fool. Both of these intimate friends of his
+wife were the reverse of the superb outdoor type he admired.
+
+"Good Lord!" he said. "I don't think there's much choice."
+
+But in a moment he shook his head. "Too many things don't connect. Where
+did she get the money to go to her relations in Rouen--"
+
+"He pensioned her off, of course."
+
+"And the child? How did he consent to let her return here with a daughter
+he probably never had heard of--"
+
+"I figger out, either that she came into some money from a relation over
+in France, or else she has something on the old boy, and wanting to come
+back here and marry her daughter, she held him up. He's a pillar of the
+church, been one of the Presidents of the Pacific-Union Club, has argued
+cases before the Supreme Court that have been cabled all over the
+country. When a man of that sort gets to Lawton's time of life he don't
+want any scandals."
+
+"All the same," said Ruyler positively, "I don't believe it. I think it
+far more likely that he was a friend of Madame Delano's husband--assuming
+that she had one--and that some money was left with him in trust for her
+or the child."
+
+"Well, it may be, but I incline to Lawton--"
+
+"There's one person would know--"
+
+"'Gene Bisbee. But I never went to that bunch yet for any information,
+and I don't go this time except as a last resort. Of course he knows, and
+that is one reason I believe she is Mrs. Lawton. He was Gabrielle's
+maquereau for years--when he'd wrung enough out of her he set up for
+himself--Well, I ain't through yet, by a long sight. Beliefs ain't
+proof." He rose slowly from the deep chair, stretched himself, and
+settled his hat firmly on his head.
+
+"What's this I hear about a wonderful ruby your wife wore up to Gwynne's
+the other night? Gosh! I'd like to see a sparkler like that."
+
+"Why, by all means."
+
+Ruyler swung the bookcase outward, opened the safe and handed him the
+ruby. Spaulding regarded it with bulging eyes, and touched it with his
+finger tips much as he would a newborn babe. "Some stone!" he said, as he
+handed it back, "but why in thunder don't you keep it in a safe deposit
+box? There are crooks that can crack any safe, and if they got wise to
+this--oh, howdy, ma'am--"
+
+Helene had come in and stood behind the two men.
+
+Spaulding snatched off his hat and she acknowledged her husband's
+introduction graciously. She was dressed for the evening in white. Her
+eyes looked abnormally large, and she kept dropping her lids as if to
+keep them from setting in a stare. Her lovely mouth with its soft curves
+was faded and set. The whole face was almost as stiff as a mask, and even
+her graceful body was rigid. Ruyler saw Spaulding give her a sharp
+"sizing-up" look, as he murmured,
+
+"Well, so long, Guv. See you to-morrow. Hope the man'll turn out all
+right after all."
+
+"I hope so. He's a good chap otherwise."
+
+"Good night, ma'am. Tell your husband to put that ruby in a safe
+deposit box."
+
+"Oh, nobody knows the safe is there except Mr. Ruyler and myself--"
+
+"There have been safes hidden behind bookcases before," said Spaulding
+dryly. "And crooks, like all the other pests of the earth, just drift
+naturally to this coast. If I were you I'd have a detective on hand
+whenever you wear that bit o' glass--not at a friendly affair like the
+Gwynnes' dinner, of course, but--"
+
+"Good idea!" exclaimed Ruyler. "My wife will wear the ruby to the
+Thornton fete on the fourteenth. Will you be on hand to guard it?"
+
+"Won't I? About half our force is engaged for that blow-out, but no one
+but yours truly shall be guardian angel for the ruby. Well, good night
+once more, and good luck."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as the detective had gone Ruyler drew his wife to him anxiously,
+"What is it, Helene? You look--well, you don't look yourself!"
+
+"I have a headache," she said irritably. "Perhaps I'm developing nerves.
+I do wish you would take me to New York. Other women get away from this
+town once in a while."
+
+"But you told me on Sunday that you adored California, that it was like
+fairy land--"
+
+"Oh, all the women out here bluff themselves and everybody else just
+so long and then suddenly go to pieces. It's a wonderful state, but
+what a life! What a life! Surely I was made for something better. I
+don't wonder--"
+
+"What?" he asked sharply.
+
+"Oh, nothing. I feel ungrateful, of course. I really should be quite
+happy. Think if I had to go back to Rouen to live--after this taste of
+freedom, and beauty--for California has all the beauties of youth as well
+as its idiocies and vices--"
+
+"There is not the remotest danger of your ever being obliged to live in
+Rouen again--"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. You might get tired of me. We might fight like cat and
+dog for want of common interests, of something to talk about. You would
+never take to drink like so many of the men, but I might--well, I'm glad
+dinner is ready at last."
+
+But she played with her food. That she was repressing an intense and
+mounting excitement Ruyler did not doubt, and he also suspected that she
+wished to broach some particular subject from which she turned in panic.
+They were alone after coffee had been served, and he said abruptly:
+
+"What is it, Helene? Do you want money? I have an idea that Polly Roberts
+and Aileen Lawton borrow heavily from you, and that they may have cleaned
+you out completely on the first--"
+
+"How dear of you to guess--or rather to get so close. It's worse than
+that. I--that is--well--poor Polly went quite mad over a pearl necklace
+at Shreve's and they told her to take it and wear it for a few days,
+thinking, I suppose, she would never give it up and would get the money
+somehow. She--oh, it's too dreadful--she lost it--and she dares not tell
+Rex--he's lost quite a lot of money lately--and she's mad with
+fright--and I told her--"
+
+"Where did she lose it? It's not easy to lose a necklace, especially when
+the clasp is new."
+
+"She thinks it was stolen from her neck at the theater--you heard what
+that man said."
+
+"Ah! What was the price of the necklace?"
+
+"Twenty thousand dollars. The pearls weren't so very large, of course,
+but Polly never had had a pearl necklace--"
+
+"I'll let her have the money to pay for it on one condition--that it is a
+transaction, between Roberts and myself--"
+
+"No! No! Not for anything!"
+
+"I've lent him money before--"
+
+"But he'd never forgive Polly. He--he's one of those men who make an
+awful fuss on the first of every month when his wife's bills come in."
+
+"There must be a bass chorus on the first of every month in San
+Francisco--"
+
+"Oh, please don't jest. She must have this money."
+
+"She may have it--on those terms. I'll have no business dealings with
+women of the Polly Roberts sort. That would be the last I'd ever see of
+the twenty thousand--"
+
+"I never thought you were stingy!"
+
+Ruyler, in spite of his tearing anxiety, laughed outright. "Is that your
+idea of how the indulgent American husband becomes rich?"
+
+"Oh--of course I wouldn't have you lose such a sum. I really have learned
+the value of money in the abstract, although I can't care for it as much
+as men do."
+
+"I have no great love of money, but there is a certain difference between
+a miser and a levelheaded business man--"
+
+"Price, I must have that money. Polly--oh, I am afraid she will
+kill herself!"
+
+"Not she. A more selfish little beast never breathed. She'll squeeze the
+money out of some one, never fear! But I think I'll lock up your jewels
+in case you are tempted to raise money on them for her--Darling!"
+
+Helene, without a sound, had fainted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at
+once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with
+cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she
+kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the
+wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a
+quartz mine.
+
+"I shall put this in the safe," he said incisively, "for, while I admire
+your stanchness in friendship, even for such an unworthy object as Polly
+Roberts, I do not propose that my wife shall be selling or pawning her
+jewels for any reason whatever. Think over the proposal I made
+downstairs. If Polly is willing I'll lend Roberts the money to-morrow."
+
+She had thrown an arm over her face and she made no reply. He went down
+stairs and put the box in the safe. It occurred to him that she had
+watched him open and close the safe several times but she certainly never
+had written the combination down, and it had taken him a long while to
+commit it to memory himself.
+
+He had glanced over the contents of the box before he locked it in. The
+jewels were all there, the string of pearls that he had given her on
+their marriage day, a few wedding presents, and several rings and
+trinkets he had bought for her since. The value was perhaps twenty
+thousand dollars, for he had told her that she must wait several years
+before he could give her the jewels of a great lady. When she was thirty,
+and really needed them to make up for fading charms--it had been one of
+their pleasant little jokes.
+
+As Ruyler set the combination he sighed and wondered whether their days
+of joking were over. Their life had suddenly shot out of focus and it
+would require all his ingenuity and patience, aided by friendly
+circumstance, to swing it into line again. He did not believe a word of
+the necklace story. Somebody was blackmailing the poor child. If he could
+only find out who! He made up his mind suddenly to put this problem also
+in the hands of Spaulding for solution. The question of his
+mother-in-law's antecedents was important enough, but that of his wife's
+happiness and his own was paramount.
+
+He decided to go to the theater himself, for he was in no condition for
+sleep or the society of men at the club, nor could any book hold his
+attention. He prayed that the play would be reasonably diverting.
+
+He walked down town and as he entered the lobby of the Columbia at the
+close of the first act he saw 'Gene Bisbee and D.V. Bimmer, who was now
+managing a hotel in San Francisco, standing together. He also saw Bisbee
+nudge Bimmer, and they both stared at him openly, the famous hotel man
+with some sympathy in his wise secretive eyes, the reformed peer of the
+underworld with a certain speculative contempt.
+
+Ruyler, to his intense irritation, felt himself flushing, and wondered if
+the man's regard might be translated: "Just how much shall I be able to
+touch him for?" He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the
+damnable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her
+bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented
+his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever
+enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful
+past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society
+seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.
+
+Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price
+Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of
+social brigands.
+
+He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first
+act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to
+make the story negligible.
+
+At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try
+to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make
+her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject
+to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically
+analogous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.
+
+During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had
+placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that
+Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a
+connection. Helene had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to
+"maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San
+Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and
+that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon
+the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally
+occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom....
+
+Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for
+him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the
+gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating
+Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's
+position would be most likely to befriend.
+
+The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no
+frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle,
+he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and
+Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely
+doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the
+foundling asylum.
+
+There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the
+probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton
+had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and
+foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.
+
+When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her
+trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt,
+Medford found it in the way.
+
+After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman,
+driving her on the stage?--or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and
+did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell
+her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when
+Helene was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives
+with some trumped up story and been received by them.
+
+Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Helene's father
+was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the
+young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent--possibly at one
+of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with
+tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the
+Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in
+hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances,
+regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and
+disappear into her forgotten dust.
+
+His own romance? What was to be the end of that!
+
+But he returned to his argument. He wanted a coherent story to tell his
+wife, and he wanted also to believe that his wife's father had been a
+gentleman.
+
+Medford, like so many of his eloping kind, had made instinctively for
+California with the beautiful woman he loved but could not marry. Santa
+Barbara, Ruyler had heard, had been the favorite haven for two
+generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of
+England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild
+independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an
+equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating,
+shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport
+if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and told a
+plausible story.
+
+Breeding was a part of Ruyler's religion, as component in his code as
+honor, patriotism, loyalty, or the obligation of the strong to protect
+the weak. Far better the bend sinister in his own class than a legitimate
+parent of the type of 'Gene Bisbee or D.V. Bimmer. Ruyler was a "good
+mixer" when business required that particular form of diplomacy, and the
+familiarities of Jake Spaulding left his nerves unscathed, but in bone
+and brain cells he was of the intensely respectable aristocracy of
+Manhattan Island and he never forgot it. He had surrendered to a girl of
+no position without a struggle, and made her his wife, but it is doubtful
+if he would even have fallen in love with her if she had been underbred
+in appearance or manner. He had never regretted his marriage for a
+moment, not even since this avalanche of mystery and portending scandal
+had descended upon him; if possible he loved his troubled young wife more
+than ever--with a sudden instinct that worse was to come he vowed that
+nothing should ever make him love her less.
+
+When he arrived at his house he found two notes on the hall table
+addressed to himself. The first was from Helene and read:
+
+"Polly telephoned that she would send her car for me to go down to the
+Fairmont and dance. I cannot sleep so I am going. _She cannot sleep
+either_! Forgive me if I was cross, but I am terribly worried for her.
+Don't wait up for me. Helene."
+
+He read this note with a frown but without surprise. It was to be
+expected that she would seek excitement until her present fears were
+allayed and her persecutors silenced.
+
+He determined to order Spaulding to have her shadowed constantly for at
+least a fortnight and note made of every person in whose company she
+appeared to be at all uneasy, whether they were of her own set or not. It
+would also be worth while to have Madame Delano's rooms watched, for it
+was possible that she would summon Helene there to meet Bisbee or others
+of his ilk.
+
+Then he picked up the other note. It was from Spaulding, and as he read
+it all his finespun theories vanished and once more he was adrift on an
+uncharted sea without a landmark in sight.
+
+"Dear Sir," began the detective, who was always formal on paper. "I've
+just got the information required from Holbrook Centre. We didn't half
+believe there was such a place, if you remember? Well there is, and
+according to the parish register Marie Jeanne Perrin was married to James
+Delano on July 25th, 1891. She was there, visiting some French
+relations--they went back soon after--and he had left there when he was
+about sixteen and had only come back that once to see his mother, who was
+dying. Nothing seems to have been known about him in his home town except
+a sort of rumor that he was a bad lot and lived somewheres in California.
+Can you beat it? But don't think I'm stumped. I'm working on a new line
+and I'm not going to say another word until I've got somewheres.
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"J. SPAULDING."
+
+"Delano's father was a Forty-niner, and lived in California till 1860,
+when he went home to H. C. and died soon after. There were wild stories
+about him, too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+I
+
+During the next few days Ruyler saw little of his wife. He was obliged to
+take two business trips out of town and as he could not return until ten
+o'clock at night he advised her to have company to dinner and take her
+guests to the play. But she preferred to dine with Polly Roberts and
+Aileen Lawton, and she spent her days for the most part at Burlingame,
+motoring down with one or more of her friends, or sent for by some
+enthusiastic girl admirer already established there for the summer.
+
+Ruyler was quite willing to forego temporarily his plan of personal
+guardianship, as the more she roamed abroad unattended the better could
+Spaulding watch her associates. The detective had his agents in society,
+as well as in the Palace Hotel, and on the third day he sent a brief note
+to Ruyler announcing that he had "lit on to something" that would make
+his employer's "hair curl, but no more at present from yours truly."
+
+"This time," he added, "I'm on the right track and know it. No more fancy
+theories. But I won't say a word till I can deliver the goods. Give your
+wife all the rope you can."
+
+Price and Helene met briefly and amiably and she did not again broach the
+subject of the loan for her friend, nor did she ask for her jewels. It
+was apparent that she was proudly determined to conceal whatever terrors
+or even worries that might haunt her, but the effort deprived her of all
+her native vivacity; she was almost formal in manner and her white face
+grew more like a classic mask daily.
+
+On the evening before the Thornton fete, however, Price was able to dine
+at home. They met at table and he saw at once that she either had
+recovered her spirits or was making a deliberate attempt to create the
+impression of a carefree young woman happy in a tete-a-tete dinner with a
+busy husband.
+
+Her talk for the most part was of the great entertainment at San Mateo.
+The weather promised to be simply magnificent. Wasn't that exactly like
+Flora Thornton's luck? The immense grounds were simply swarming with
+workmen; wagon-loads of all sorts of things went through the gates after
+every train--simply one procession after another; but no one else could
+so much as get her nose through those gates.
+
+Helene, with all her old childish glee, related how she and Aileen, Polly
+(who apparently had forgotten her impending doom), and two or three other
+girls, had called up Mrs. Thornton on the telephone every ten minutes for
+an hour--pretending it was long distance to make sure of a personal
+response--and begged to be allowed to go over and see the preparations,
+until finally, in a towering rage, her ladyship had replied that if they
+called her again she would withdraw her invitations.
+
+"How we did long for an airship. It would have been such fun, for she
+does so disapprove of all of us; thinks us a little flock of silly geese.
+Well, we are, I guess, but wasn't she one herself once? She has a pretty
+hard time even now making life interesting for herself--out here, anyhow.
+
+"Yesterday we motored down to Menlo and dropped in at the Maynards. There
+were a lot of the props of San Francisco society, all as rich as croesus,
+sitting on the veranda crocheting socks or sacks for a crop of new babies
+that are due. One or two were hemstitching lawn, or embroidering a
+monogram, or something else equally useless or virtuous. They were
+talking mild gossip, and didn't even have powder on. It was ghastly--"
+
+"Helene," said Ruyler abruptly, "what do you think is the secret of
+happiness--I mean, of course, the enduring sort--perhaps content would be
+the better word. Happiness is too dependent upon love, and love was never
+meant for daily food. You are not by nature frivolous, and you are
+capable of thought. Have you ever given any to the secret of content?"
+
+"Yes, work," she answered promptly. "Everybody should have his daily job,
+prescribed either by the state or by necessity; but something he must do
+if both he and society would continue to exist."
+
+Ruyler elevated his eyebrows and looked at her curiously. "Socialism. I
+didn't know you had ever heard of it."
+
+"Aileen and I are not such fools as we look--as you were good enough to
+intimate just now. We went to a series of lectures early last winter over
+at the University, on Socialism--a lot of us formed a class, but all
+except Aileen and I dropped out.
+
+"We continued to read for a time after the lectures were over, but of
+course that didn't last. One drops everything for want of stimulus, and
+when one begins to flutter again one is lost.
+
+"But I heard and read and thought enough to deduce that the only vital
+interest in life after one's secret happiness--which one would not dare
+spread out too thin if one could in this American life--is necessary work
+well done. And that is quite different from those fussy interests and
+fads we create or take up for the sake of thinking we are busy and
+interested.
+
+"Polly's mother once told me she never was so happy in her life as during
+those weeks after the earthquake and fire when all the servants had run
+away and she had to cook for the family out in the street on a stove they
+bought down in a little shop in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on
+three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for
+cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a
+towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got
+the daily rations from the Government. She never thought once of--"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had
+been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped
+excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't
+lift a finger as long as the Government was feeding them."
+
+"There you are! Their ideal is complete leisure, and that of our delicate
+products of the highest civilization--compulsory jobs! What does progress
+mean but the leisure to enjoy the arts and all the finer fruits of
+progress? What else do we men really work for?"
+
+"Progress has gone too far and defeated its own ends. Every healthy human
+being should be forced to work six hours a day.
+
+"That would leave eight for sleep and ten for enjoyment of the arts and
+luxuries. Then we really should enjoy them, and if we couldn't have them
+unless we did our six hours' stint, ennui and the dissipations that it
+breeds would be unknown.
+
+"I can tell you it is demoralizing, disintegrating, to wake up morning
+after morning--about ten o'clock!--and know that you have nothing worth
+while to do for another day--for all the days!--that you have no place in
+the world except as an ornament! Women of limited incomes and a family of
+growing children have enough, to do, of course--too much--they never can
+feel superfluous and demoralized--except by envy--but as for us! Why, I
+can tell you, it is a marvel we don't all go straight to the devil."
+
+They were alone with the coffee, and she was pounding the table with her
+little fist. Her cheeks were deeply flushed and her black somber eyes
+were opening and closing rapidly, as if alternately magnetized by some
+ugly vision and sweeping it aside.
+
+Price watched her with deep interest and deeper anxiety. "A good many
+women go to the devil," he said. "But you are not that sort."
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I never could get up enough interest in another man to
+solve the problem in the usual way--but there are other
+resources--I--well--"
+
+"What?" Price sat up very straight.
+
+"Oh, dance ourselves into tuberculosis," she said lightly, and dropping
+her eyelashes. "And tuberculosis of the mind, certainly. On the whole, I
+think I prefer physical to spiritual death....
+
+"However--I found out one thing to-day. The dancing is to be out of
+doors. There will be an immense arbor or something of the sort erected
+on the lawn above the sunken garden. My gown is a dream and I shall wear
+the ruby."
+
+"Yes," he said smiling. "You shall wear the ruby. But you must expect me
+to keep very close to you--"
+
+"The closer the better." She smiled charmingly. "Have you tried on
+your costume?"
+
+"I haven't even looked at it. Who am I?"
+
+"Caesar Borgia. You are not much like him yourself, darling, but I
+thought he was not so very unlike modern American business, as a whole."
+
+Ruyler laughed. "Why not Machiavelli? But as no doubt it is black velvet,
+much puffed and slashed, I may hope it will be becoming to my nondescript
+fairness. You must promise not to wander off for long walks with any of
+your admirers. Not that I fear the admirers, but the thieves that are
+bound to get into that crowd one way or another. They have a way of
+unclasping necklaces even of the most circumspect wives in the company of
+not too absorbing men."
+
+Her eyes opened and flashed, but he had no time to analyze that fleeting
+expression before she was promising volubly not to wander from the
+illuminated spaces.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He interrupted her suddenly. They were in the library now, and sat down
+on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant
+and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the
+islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green
+and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming
+liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a
+landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions hardly
+could rival.
+
+"Are you not grateful for this?" he asked whimsically and a little
+wistfully.
+
+"Oh, Price, dear, I am more grateful than you will ever know. I have not
+a fault on earth to find with you. You would be the prince of the fairy
+tale if you were not so busy.
+
+"But that is the tragedy. You are busy--I am not."
+
+"Well, let us have the personal solution--one that fits ourselves. You
+have time to think it out. I, alas! have not." He took her hand and
+fondled it, hoping for her confidence.
+
+"I don't know." She had a deep rich voice and she could make it very
+intense. "I only know there must--must--be a change--if--if--I am
+to--Can't you take me abroad for a year? That might not be work, but at
+least I should be learning some thing--I have traveled almost not at
+all--and, at least, I should have you."
+
+"But later? Most of your friends have spent a good deal of time in
+Europe. I doubt if any state in the Union goes to Europe as often as
+California! They are all the more discontented when they come back here
+to vegetate--as Mrs. Thornton would express it.
+
+"It would be a blessed interval, but no more."
+
+"We should have time to think out a new and different life....
+
+"You know--in the class I come from--in France--the women are the
+partners of their husbands. Even in the higher bourgeoisie, that is,
+where they still are in business, not living on great inherited
+fortunes--
+
+"My uncle had a small silk house in Rouen, and my aunt kept the books
+and attended to all the correspondence. He always said she was the
+cleverer business man of the two; but French women have a real genius
+for business. Some of our great ladies help their husbands manage
+their estates.
+
+"It is only the few that live for pleasure and glitter in the most
+glittering city in the world that have furnished the novelists the
+material to give the world a false impression of France.
+
+"The majority live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest
+genius could make people read about them.
+
+"Of course, young girls dream of something far more brilliant, and wait
+eagerly for the husband who shall deliver them from their narrow
+restricted little spheres... perhaps take them to the great world of
+Paris; but they settle down, even in Paris, and devote themselves to
+their husbands' interests, which are their own, and to their children....
+
+"That is it! They are indispensable--not as women, but as partners. I
+barely know what your business is about--only that you are in some
+tremendous wholesale commission thing with tentacles that reach half
+round the world.
+
+"Only the wives of politicians are any real help to their husbands in
+this country. Isabel Gwynne! What a help she will be--has been--to Mr.
+Gwynne. But then she was always busy. When her uncle died he left her
+that little ranch and scarcely anything else, she took to raising
+chickens--not to fuss about and fill in her time, but to keep a roof over
+her head and have enough to eat and wear. I doubt if she ever was bored
+in her life."
+
+"I can't take you into the business, sweetheart," said Ruyler slowly.
+"For that would violate the traditions of a very old conservative house.
+But I can quite see that something must be done....
+
+"I married you to make you happy and to be happy myself. I do not intend
+that our marriage shall be a failure. It is possible that Harold would
+consent to come out here and take my place. The business no longer
+requires any great amount of initiative, but the most unremitting
+vigilance. I have thought--it has merely passed through my mind--but you
+might hate it--how would you like it if I bought a large fruit ranch,
+several thousand acres, and put up a canning factory besides? I would
+make you a full partner and you would have to give to your share of the
+work considerably more than six hours of the day--
+
+"We could build a large, plain, comfortable house, take all our books and
+pictures, subscribe to all the newspapers, magazines and reviews, keep up
+with everything that is going on in the world, have house parties once in
+a while, come to town for a few weeks in summer for the plays.
+
+"We should live practically an out-of-door life--if you preferred we
+could buy a cattle ranch in the south. That would mean the greater part
+of the day in the saddle--
+
+"How does it appeal to you?"
+
+He had turned off the electricity, but as he fumbled with his
+embryonic idea he saw her eyes sparkle and a light of passionate hope
+dawn on her face.
+
+"Oh, I should love it! But love it! Especially the fruit ranch. That
+would be like France--our orchards are as wonderful as yours, even if
+nothing could be as big as a California ranch--
+
+"That is, if it would not be a makeshift. Another form of playing at
+life."
+
+"I can assure you that we will have to make it pay or go to the wall. My
+father would probably disinherit me, for it would be breaking another
+tradition, and he compliments me by believing that I am the best business
+man in the firm at present.
+
+"My only capital would be such of my fortune as is not tied up in the
+House--about a hundred thousand dollars in Government bonds. Of course,
+in time, if all goes well, and California does not have another
+setback--if business improves all over the world--I shall be able to take
+the rest of my money out, that I put into this end of the business after
+the fire; but that may be ten years hence. I shouldn't even ask for
+interest on it--that would be the only compensation I could offer for
+deserting the firm.
+
+"Perhaps I had better buy a cattle ranch. Then, if we fail, I shall at
+least have had the training of a cowboy and can hire out."
+
+Helene laughed and clapped her hands.
+
+"Fail? You? But I should help you to make it a success--I should be
+really necessary?"
+
+"Indispensable. Either you or another partner."
+
+"No! No! I shall be the partner--"
+
+"And you mean that you would be willing to bury your youth, your beauty,
+on a ranch? I have heard bitter confidences out here from women forced to
+waste their youth on a ranch. You are one of the fine flowers of
+civilization--"
+
+"That soon wither in the hothouse atmosphere. I wish to become a hardy
+annual. And when the ranch was running like a clock we could take a month
+or two in Europe every year or so--"
+
+"Rather! And I could show you off--Bother! I'll not answer."
+
+The telephone bell on the little table in the corner (his own private
+wire) rang so insistently that Ruyler finally was magnetized reluctantly
+across the room. He put the receiver to his ear and asked, "Well?" in his
+most inhospitable tones.
+
+The answer came in Spaulding's voice, and in a moment he sat down.
+
+At the end of ten minutes he hung the receiver on the hook and returned
+to find Helene standing by the window, all the light gone from her eyes,
+staring out at the hard brilliant scene with an expression of
+hopelessness that had relaxed the very muscles of her face.
+
+Ruyler was shocked, and more apprehensive than he had yet been. "Helene!"
+he exclaimed. "What is the matter? Surely you may confide in me if you
+are in trouble."
+
+"Oh, but I am not," she replied coldly. "Did I look odd? I was just
+wondering how many really happy people there were behind those
+lights--over on Belvedere, at Sausalito--the lights look so golden and
+steady and sure--and glimpses of interiors at night are always so
+fascinating--but I suppose most of the people are commonplace and just
+dully discontented--"
+
+"Well, I am afraid I have something to tell you that hardly will restore
+your delightful gayety of a few moments ago. I am sorry--but--well, the
+fact is I must leave for the north to-morrow morning and hardly shall be
+able to return before the next night. I am really distressed. I wanted so
+much to take you to-morrow night--"
+
+"And I can't wear the ruby?" Her voice was shrill. Ruyler wondered if his
+stimulated imagination fancied a note of terror in it.
+
+"I--I--am afraid not--darling--"
+
+"But that Spaulding man will be there to watch--"
+
+"Unfortunately--I forgot to tell you--he cannot go--he is on an important
+case. Besides--when I make a promise I usually keep it."
+
+"But--but--" She stammered as if her brain were confused, then turned and
+pressed her face to the window. "I suppose nothing matters," she said
+dully. "Perhaps you will let me wear my own little ruby. After all, that
+was maman's, and she gave it to me before I was married. I should like to
+wear one jewel."
+
+"You shall have all your jewels, if you will promise not to give them to
+Polly Roberts or any one else."
+
+"I promise."
+
+He went over and opened the safe, and when he rose with the gold jewel
+case he saw that she was standing behind him. Once more it flitted
+through his mind that she had watched him manipulate the combination
+several times, but he had little confidence in any but a professional
+thief's ability to memorize such an involved assortment of figures as had
+been invented for this particular safe. It was only once in a while that
+he was not obliged to refer to the key that he carried in his pocketbook.
+
+Nor was she looking at the safe, but staring upward at a maharajah,
+covered with pearls of fantastic size. She took the box from his hand
+with a polite word of thanks, offered her cheek to be kissed, and
+left the room.
+
+Price threw himself into a chair and rehearsed the instructions Spaulding
+had given him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing
+colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in
+San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the
+stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.
+
+The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get
+closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through
+the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so
+seductive in the distance.
+
+They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps
+had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching
+their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought
+the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley.
+They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns--San
+Mateo, Redwood City--or the wives of the proletariat--or the servants of
+the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they
+made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered
+gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.
+
+Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly
+dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this
+melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
+He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as
+long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police
+by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them
+all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for
+mere foot passengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging
+conspirators.
+
+He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private
+conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had
+walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its
+thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat
+deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the
+seat beside him.
+
+"It is time you gave me some sort of a hint," he said. "After all, it is
+my affair--"
+
+"I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you
+balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never."
+
+"I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position
+where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the
+rest of my life."
+
+Ruyler's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led round by the nose,
+and his nerves were jumping.
+
+"Now! Now!" said Spaulding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. "When you hire
+a detective you hire him to do things you wouldn't do yourself; and if
+you won't give him the little help he's got to have from you or quit,
+what's the use of hiring him at all?
+
+"I know perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes would convince you
+of what it's up to me to prove--to say nothing of the fact that I count
+on your entrance at the last minute to put an end to the whole bad
+business. For it is a bad business--believe me. But not a word of that
+now. You couldn't pry open my lips with a five dollar Havana."
+
+"Well--you say you had a talk with Madame Delano to-day. Surely you can
+tell me some of the things you have discovered."
+
+"A whole lot. I've been waiting for the chance. Not that I got anything
+out of her. She's one grand bluffer and no mistake. I take off my hat to
+her. When I told her that I could lay hands on the proof that she was
+Marie Garnett--although Jim had married her in his home town under his
+own name--and that she'd gone home to France with the kid when it was
+five, taking the cue from her friend, Mrs. Lawton, and sending word back
+she was dead--"
+
+"You were equally sure a few days ago that she was Mrs. Lawton--"
+
+"That was just my constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely
+theory, and I sort of hung on to it. But I had no real data to go on. Now
+I've got the evidence that Jim Garnett died two months before the fire
+burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that his body was shipped
+back to Holbrook Centre to be buried in the family plot. You see, he was
+sick for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death was registered
+where the fire didn't go--"
+
+"But what put you on?" asked Ruyler impatiently. "I should almost rather
+it had been any one else. He seems to have been about as bad a lot as
+even this town ever turned out."
+
+"He was, all right, and his father before him, although they came from
+mighty fine folks back east. His father came out in '49 with the gold
+rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life--San
+Francisco was a gay little burg those days--opened one of the crack
+gambling houses down on the Old Plaza. Plate glass windows you could look
+through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds
+of men playing at tables where the gold pieces--often slugs--were piled
+as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles
+either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger
+with the sight of so much gold. They didn't try any funny business, for
+every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the
+table beside him.
+
+"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in
+front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up.
+Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep
+away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold
+up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife--she
+had followed him out here--persuaded him to go back home and live in the
+old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to
+death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped
+off. Her name was Mary Garnett.
+
+"That's what put me on--the G. in the middle of the name of the man
+Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what
+his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he
+was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood.
+He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and
+took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.
+
+"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her
+back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then
+he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself,
+either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome,
+distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as
+long as he lived.
+
+"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the
+gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that
+kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and
+she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy
+with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but
+even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.
+
+"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept
+her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and
+came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time.
+But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old
+Lawton--who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days,
+and who was one of her best friends.
+
+"Well, she also got Garnett to make a curious sort of a will, leaving his
+money to James Lawton, to 'dispose of as agreed upon.' She had a thrifty
+business head, had that French dame, and she had made him buy property
+when he was flush, and put it in her name, although she gave a written
+agreement never to sell out as long as he lived.
+
+"He agreed to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the
+time, and, besides, she played on his family pride--lineal descendant of
+the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was
+taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its
+being brought up wearing the old name, and gettin' rid of Marie at the
+same time.
+
+"She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in
+California; but I guess that didn't worry him much.
+
+"If the earthquake and fire hadn't come so soon after the will was
+probated there might have been a lot of speculation about it, among men,
+at least. Those old gossips in the Club windows would soon have been
+putting two and two together; but the calamity that burnt up all the Club
+windows, just swept it clean out of their heads.
+
+"I figger out that old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income
+she'd been havin' both from Jim and her properties, out of his own
+pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he could settle the estate. He had
+to borrow the money to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his wife's
+property, and when things got to a certain pass he wrote Madame D. to
+come along and take over her property. She'll be good and rich one of
+these days, when all the mortgages are paid off and Lawton paid back, but
+it was wise for her to stay on the job. Lawton is dead straight, but his
+partner is sowing wild oats in his old age--good old S.F. style, and I
+guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far. Get me?"
+
+"It's atrocious!"
+
+"Oh, not nearly so bad as it might be. Just think, if it had been
+Gabrielle, or Pauline-Marie, or even Mrs. Lawton. That's the worst kind
+of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie Garnett hung on like grim
+death to what the grand society you move in pretends to value most, and
+the Lord knows she'll never lose it now.
+
+"Nor need there be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The thing
+to do is to hustle Madame Delano out of San Francisco. She'll go, all
+right, with you to look after her interests. She don't fancy being
+recognized and blackmailed, or I miss my guess. You may have to pay
+Bisbee something, but D. V.'s not that sort, and I don't think anybody
+else is on. If they've suspected they'll soon forget it when the old lady
+disappears from the Palace Hotel. Gee, but she has a nerve."
+
+"She is an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here
+to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence
+twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her
+ironic French soul to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day after day
+and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnett in the obese Madame
+Delano, whose daughter is one of the great ladies of the city to whose
+underworld she once belonged, and from whose filthy profits she derives
+her income. Good God!"
+
+He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spaulding, who had drawn out
+his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Time's gettin' short. The stunt is to be pulled off
+just before supper."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+I
+
+They walked rapidly up the close avenue--planted far back in the Fifties
+by Ford Thornton's grandfather--the blaze of light at the end of the long
+perspective growing wider and wider. As they emerged they paused for a
+moment, dazzled by the scene.
+
+The original home of the Thorntons had been of ordinary American
+architecture and covered with ivy; it might have been transplanted from
+some old aristocratic village in the East. Flora Thornton had maintained
+that only one style of architecture was appropriate in a state settled by
+the Spaniards, and famous for its missions of Moorish architecture. Fordy
+loved the old house, but as he denied his wife nothing he had given her a
+million, three years before the fire which so sadly diminished fortunes,
+and told her to build any sort of house she pleased; if she would only
+promise to live in it and not desert him twice a year for Europe.
+
+The immense structure, standing on a knoll, bore a certain resemblance to
+the Alhambra, with its heavy square towers; its arched gateways leading
+into courtyards with fountains or sunken pools, the red brown of the
+stucco which looked like stone and was not. To-night it was blazing with
+lights of every color.
+
+So were the ancient oaks, which were old when the Alhambra was built,
+the shrubberies, the vast rose garden. The surface of the pool in the
+sunken garden reflected the green or red masses of light that shot up
+every few moments from the four corners of the terrace surrounding it.
+On the lawn just above and to the right of the house, a platform had
+been built for dancing; it was enclosed on three sides with an arbor of
+many alcoves, lined with flowers, soft lights concealed in depending
+clusters of oranges.
+
+And everywhere there were people dressed in costumes, gorgeous,
+picturesque, impressive, historic, or recklessly invented, but suggesting
+every era when dress counted at all. They danced on the great platform to
+the strains of the invisible band, strolled along the terraces above the
+sunken garden, wandered through the groves and "grounds," or sat in the
+windows of the great house or in its courts. All wore the little black
+satin mask prescribed by Mrs. Thornton, and created an illusion that
+transported the imagination far from California. Ruyler had a whimsical
+sense of being on another star where the favored of the different periods
+of Earth had foregathered for the night.
+
+But there was nothing ghostly in the shrill chatter as incessant as the
+twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them
+and hardly knew whether to scold or join in the chorus.
+
+Ruyler had always protested against the high-pitched din made by even six
+American women when gathered together, and to the infernal racket at any
+large entertainment; but to-night he sighed, forgetting his apprehensions
+for the moment.
+
+He had exquisite memories of these lovely grounds; he and Helene had
+spent several days with Mrs. Thornton during their engagement, and she
+had lent them the house for their honeymoon; he would have liked to
+wander through the pleasant spaces with his wife to-night and make love
+to her, instead of spying on her in the company of a detective.
+
+For that, he was forced to conclude, was what he had been brought for.
+Spaulding had mentioned her name casually, when telling him that he must
+be on hand to nab the "party" who was at the bottom of the whole trouble;
+but Spaulding hardly could have watched the person who was blackmailing
+without including her in his surveillance. He wished now that he had left
+that part of the mystery to take care of itself, trusting to his
+mother-in-law's departure to relieve the situation. No doubt she would
+have told him the truth herself rather than leave her daughter to the
+mercy of the men who knew her secret.
+
+But he was still far from suspecting the worst of the truth.
+
+There were a number of men in fancy dominoes; he and Spaulding crossed
+the lawn in front of the house unchallenged and, passing under the
+frowning archway, entered the first of the courts.
+
+The oblong sunken pool was banked with myrtle, and above, as well as in
+the great inner court with the fountain, there were narrow arcaded
+windows with fluttering silken curtains. Mrs. Thornton had too satiric a
+sense of humor to have had the famous arabesques of the Alhambra
+reproduced any more than the massive coats-of-arms above the arches, but
+the walls were delicately colored, the delicate columns looked like old
+ivory, and the greatest of the local architects had been entirely
+successful in combining the massiveness of the warrior stronghold with
+the airy lightness and spaciousness of the pleasure house.
+
+The bedrooms, Ruyler told Spaulding, were all as modern as they were
+luxurious, and the library, living-rooms, and dining-room, were in the
+best American style. Fordy had rebelled at too much "Spanish atmosphere,"
+his blood being straight Anglo-Saxon, and Mrs. Thornton always knew when
+to yield. Nevertheless, Flora Thornton had built the proper setting for
+her barbaric beauty, and, possibly, spirit.
+
+People were sitting about the courts on piles of colored silken cushions,
+those that had got themselves up in Eastern costumes having drifted
+naturally to the suitable surroundings; for, after all, the Moors had
+been Mohammedans.
+
+"Don't let's hang round here," said the detective, "and don't stand
+holding yourself like a ramrod--like that gent out there with the ruff
+that must be taking the skin off his chin. I kinder thought I'd like to
+see the whole show, but we'd best go now and wait for our little turn."
+
+He led the way round the building to the rear of the southwest tower.
+There was a little grove of jasmine trees just beneath it, that made the
+air overpoweringly sweet, but there were no lights on this side, as the
+garages, stables, vegetable gardens, and servants' quarters would have
+destroyed the picture.
+
+Spaulding glanced about sharply, but there was not even a strolling
+couple, and even the moon was shining on the other side of the heavy mass
+of buildings.
+
+"Now, listen," he said. "You see this window?"--he indicated one directly
+over their heads. "At exactly one o'clock, when everybody is flocking to
+the supper tables on the terraces, I expect some one to lean out of that
+window and talk to some one who will be waiting just below. There may be
+no talk, but I think there will be, and I want you to listen to every
+word of it without so much as drawing a long breath, no matter what is
+said, until I grab your elbow--like this--then I want you to put up your
+hand in a hurry while I'm also attendin' to business.
+
+"That's all I'll say now. But by the time a few words have been said,
+later, I guess you'll be on.
+
+"Now, we must resign ourselves to a long wait without a smoke and to
+keeping perfectly still. I dared not risk comin' any later for fear the
+others might be beforehand, too."
+
+Ruyler ground his teeth. He felt ridiculous and humiliated. It was no
+compensation that he was holding up the wall of a stucco Moorish palace
+and that some three hundred masked people in fancy dress were within
+earshot... or did the way he was togged out make him feel all the more
+absurd? The whole thing was beastly un-American....
+
+But, was it, after all? If he and Helene had been here together to-night,
+not married and harrowed, but engaged and quick with romance, would he
+have thought it absurd to conspire and maneuver to separate her from the
+crowd and snatch a few moments of heavenly solitude? Would he have
+despised himself for suffering torments if she flouted him or for wanting
+to murder any man who balked him?
+
+Love, and all the passions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all
+the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and
+greed and the lust to kill in war--these were instincts and traits that
+appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner
+civilized and savage of the globe. The world changed somewhat in form
+during its progress, but never in substance.
+
+And mystery and intrigue were equally a part of life, as indigenous to
+the Twentieth Century as to those days long entombed in history when the
+troops of Ferdinand and Isabella sat down on the plain before Grenada.
+
+Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be
+recognized, in others--in that of certain men and women in the public
+eye, for instance--they were almost in the nature of a continuous
+performance.
+
+In these days men took a bath morning and evening, ate daintily, had a
+refined vocabulary to use on demand, dressed in tweeds instead of velvet.
+There were longer intervals between the old style of warfare when men
+were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or
+disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right
+against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like
+Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his
+capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly
+after the strain and nervous worry of the day.
+
+It suddenly felt quite normal to be here flattened against a wall waiting
+for some impossible denouement.
+
+Nevertheless, he was sick with apprehension.
+
+Would it merely be the prelude to another drama? Was his life to be a
+series of unwritten plays, of which he was both the hero and the
+bewildered spectator? Or would it bring him calm, the terrible calm of
+stagnation, of an inner life finished, sealed, buried?
+
+It was inevitable in these romantic surroundings and conditions that he
+should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had
+stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such
+evidence.... It would be a damnable liberty.... It might be inextricably
+woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus
+whom Helene saw constantly.... Spaulding may have seen his chance to nip
+the thing in the bud, and had taken the risk....
+
+He felt the detective's lips at his ear: "Hear anything? Move a little
+so's you can look up."
+
+Ruyler heard his wife's voice above him, then Aileen Lawton's. He parted
+the branches and saw the two girls lean over the low sill of the
+casement. Both had removed their masks, but their faces were only dimly
+revealed. Their voices, however, were distinct enough, and his wife's was
+dull and flat.
+
+"Oh, I can't," she said. "I can't."
+
+"Well, you'll just jolly well have to. You've got it, haven't you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I've got it!"
+
+"Well, he'll never suspect you."
+
+"I shall tell him."
+
+"Tell him? You little fool. And give us all away?"
+
+"I'd mention no other names."
+
+"As if he wouldn't probe until he found out. Don't you know Price Ruyler
+yet? My father said once he'd have made a great District Attorney. What's
+the use of telling him later, for that matter? Why not now?"
+
+"I haven't the courage yet. I might have one day--at just the right
+moment. I never thought I was a coward."
+
+"You're just a kid. That's what's the matter. We ought to have left you
+out. I told Polly that--"
+
+"You couldn't! Oh, don't you see you couldn't. That's the terrible part
+of it! Left me out? I'd have found my way in."
+
+"I'm not so sure. You were interested in heaps of things, and in love,
+and all that--"
+
+"Oh, I'd like to excuse myself by blaming it on being bored, and tired of
+trying to amuse myself doing nothing worth while, but it's bad blood,
+that's what it is, bad blood, and you know it, if none of the others do."
+
+"Oh, I'm not one of your heredity fiends. When did your mother tell you?"
+
+"Only the other day."
+
+"Well, she ought to have told you long ago. I believe you'd have kept out
+if you'd known."
+
+"Wouldn't I? But of course she hated to tell the truth to me--"
+
+"Well, if I'd known that you didn't know I'd have told you, all right. I
+wormed it out of Dad soon after you arrived, and at first I thought it
+was a good joke on Society, to say nothing of Price Ruyler, with his air
+of God having created heaven first, maybe, but New York just after. Then
+I got fond of you and I wouldn't have told for the world. But I would
+have put you on your guard if I'd known."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if Price doesn't find out about this, if he
+learns the other--who my father was, and that awful men have recognized
+my mother--I suppose he'll hate me, and in time I'll go back to Rouen--"
+
+"Now, you don't think as ill as that of him, do you? He makes me so mad
+sometimes I could spit in his face, but if he's one thing he's true blue.
+He's the straight masculine type with a streak of old romance that would
+make him love a woman the more, the sorrier he was for her, and the
+weaker she was--I mean so long as she was young. After this, just get to
+work on your character, kid. When you're thirty maybe he won't feel that
+it's his whole duty to protect you. You'll never be hard and seasoned
+like me, nor able to take care of yourself. I like danger, and
+excitement, and uncertainty, and mystery, and intrigue, and lying, and
+wriggling out of tight places. I'd have gone mad in this hole long ago,
+if I hadn't, for I don't care for sport. But you were intended to develop
+into what is called a 'fine woman,' surrounded by the right sort of man
+meanwhile. And Price Ruyler is the right sort. I'll say that much for
+him. He'd have driven me to drink, but he's just your sort--"
+
+"And what am I doing? I am the most degraded woman in the world."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not. Not by a long sight. You don't know how much worse
+you could be. One woman who is here to-night I saw lying dead drunk in
+the road between San Mateo and Burlingame the other day when I was
+driving with Alice Thorndyke, and Alice is having her fourth or fifth
+lover, I forget which--"
+
+"They are no worse than I."
+
+"Listen. He's coming. Got it ready?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"You must. He'll hound you in the _Merry Tattler_ until the whole town
+knows you're a welcher, and not a soul would speak to you. That is the
+one unpardonable sin--"
+
+"I wish I'd told Price--"
+
+"Oh, no, you don't. This is just a lovely way out. Glad he had the
+inspiration. Hello, Nick."
+
+A man had groped his way between the trees and stood just under
+the window.
+
+"What are you doing here?" asked Doremus sourly.
+
+"Witness, witness, my dear Nick. Besides, poor Helene never would have
+come alone, so there you are."
+
+"To hell with all this melodramatic business. It could have been done
+anywhere--"
+
+"Not much. Dark corners for dark doings."
+
+"Well, hand it over."
+
+Ruyler had given his brain an icy shower bath as soon as he heard his
+wife's voice, and was now as cool and alert as even the detective could
+have wished. He did not wait for the promised impulse to his elbow; his
+hand shot up just ahead of Doremus's and closed over his wife's hand,
+which, he felt at once, held the ruby. At the same moment Spaulding
+caught Doremus by his medieval collar and shook him until the man's teeth
+chattered, then he slapped his face and kicked him.
+
+"Now, you," he said standing over the panting man, who was mopping his
+bleeding nose, and holding the electric torch so that it would shine on
+his own face. "You get out of California, d'you hear? You're a gambler
+and a blackmailer and a panderer to old women, and I've got some
+evidence that would drag you into court however it turned out, so's
+you'd find this town a live gridiron. So, git, while you can. Go while
+the going's good."
+
+Doremus, too shaken to reply, slunk off, and Spaulding after a glance
+upward, left as silently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I
+
+Aileen had shrieked and fled. Ruyler stood in the room with the ruby in
+his open hand. He saw that Helene was standing quite erect before him.
+She had made no attempt to leave the room, nor did she appear to be
+threatened with hysterics.
+
+He groped until he found the electric button. The room, as Ruyler had
+inferred, was Mrs. Thornton's winter boudoir, a gorgeous room of yellow
+brocade and oriental stuffs.
+
+"Will you sit down?" he asked.
+
+Helene shook her head. She was very white and she looked as old as a
+young actress who has been doing one night stands for three months.
+Behind the drawn mask of her face there was her indestructible youth, but
+so faint that it thought itself dead.
+
+She looked at her hands, which she twisted together as if they were cold.
+
+"Will you tell me the truth now?" asked Price.
+
+"Don't you guess it?"
+
+"When I came here to-night I believed that you were the victim of
+blackmail. I was not watching you--I hope you will take my word for that.
+We--I had a detective on the case--Spaulding merely wanted to nab the man
+who was blackmailing you--"
+
+"Do you still believe that?"
+
+"I overheard your conversation with Aileen Lawton. I don't know what
+to believe."
+
+"I am a gambler. My father was a gambler. He kept a notorious place in
+San Francisco. His name out here was James Garnett. My grandfather was a
+gambler. He was even more spectacular--"
+
+"I know all that. Don't mind."
+
+"You knew it?" For the first time she looked at him, but she turned her
+eyes away at once and stared at the oblong of dark framed by the
+window. "Why--"
+
+"Spaulding told me to-night only."
+
+"Mother told me a week or so ago. She'd been recognized. Shortly after I
+married, when she found out how the women played bridge and poker here,
+she made me promise I'd never touch a card, never play any sort of
+gambling game. I promised readily enough, and I thought nothing of her
+insistence. Maman was old-fashioned in many ways--I mean the life we
+lived in. Rouen was so different from this that I could understand how
+many things would shock her. I never thought about it--but--it was about
+six months ago--you were away for a week and I stayed with Polly Roberts
+at the Fairmont. I knew of course that she played and that Aileen and a
+lot of the others did, but I hadn't given the matter a thought. One heard
+nothing but bridge, bridge, bridge. I was sick of the word.
+
+"But I found they played poker. Polly and Aileen, Alice Thorndyke, Janet
+Maynard, Mary Kimball, Nick Doremus, Rex and one or two other men who
+could get off in the afternoons.
+
+"I never had dreamed any one in society played for such high stakes.
+Janet Maynard and Mary Kimball could afford it, but Polly and Alice and
+Aileen couldn't. Still they often won--enough, anyhow, to clean up and go
+on. Doremus is a wonderful player. That is how I got interested, watching
+him after he had explained the game to me.
+
+"It was a long time before I was persuaded to take a hand. It was so
+interesting just to watch. And not only the game, but their faces. Some
+would have a regular 'poker face,' others would give themselves away.
+Once Aileen had the most awful hysterics. We were afraid some one outside
+would hear her; the deadening was burnt out of the walls of the Fairmont
+at the time of the fire. But we were in the middle room of the suite.
+
+"Nick told her in his dreadful cold expressionless voice that if she ever
+did that again he'd never play another game with her. That meant that
+they'd all drop her, and she came to and promised, and she kept her word.
+Poker is the breath of life to her. I think she'd become a drug fiend if
+she couldn't have it.
+
+"At last they persuaded me to play. We were playing at Nick's, and after
+a light dinner served by his Jap, we went right on playing until
+midnight. I never thought of you or anything. I seemed to respond with
+every nerve in my body and brain. I won and won and won, and even when I
+lost I didn't mind. The sensation, the tearing excitement just under a
+perfectly cool brain was wonderful.
+
+"I only ceased to enjoy it when I realized what it meant. When I couldn't
+keep away from it. When I lived for the hour when we would meet,--at
+Polly's, or at Nick's or at Aileen's--any of the places where we were
+supposed to be dancing, but where there was no danger of being found out.
+Of course I dared not have them at home, and the others lived with their
+families, or had too many servants....
+
+"I came fully to my senses one day when Nick told me I was a born
+gambler if ever there was one. Then, when I realized, I became
+desperately unhappy.
+
+"I was the slave of a thing. I was deceiving you. When I was at the table
+I loved poker better than you, better than anything on earth. When I was
+alone I hated it. But I couldn't break away. Besides, I didn't always
+win. I had to play in the hope of winning back. Or if I won a lot it was
+a point of honor to go on and play again, and give them their chance.
+
+"Mrs. Thornton found out. She gave me a terrible talking to. I am afraid
+I was very insolent.
+
+"But she came up that night of the Assembly and warned me that you were
+down stairs. I was playing in Polly's room. We had all danced two or
+three times and then slipped up to the next floor by different stairs and
+lifts. I liked her better then. Of course she did it for your sake, not
+mine. But she's a good sort, not a cat.
+
+"You have not noticed, but I have not bought a new gown this season
+except that little gray one and this--which was made in the house. I
+dared not pawn my jewels, for fear you would miss them.
+
+"I have been in hell.
+
+"Then--it was that evening you heard maman reproach me for breaking my
+promise--I had lost a dreadful lot of money and Nick had scurried round
+and borrowed it for me. I didn't know then that he meant all the time to
+get hold of the ruby--I am sure now that he cheated and made me lose.
+
+"Well, I sent the maid away that night and told maman. She was nearly off
+her head. I never saw her excited before. Then she told me the truth. I
+felt as if I had been turned to stone. But I felt suddenly cool and wary.
+I knew I must keep my head. It was as if my father had suddenly come
+alive in my brain. I had never lied to you before, merely put you off.
+But how I lied that night! I felt possessed. But I knew I must not be
+found out, and I made up my mind to stop playing as soon as I came out
+even. If I had known that my father and my grandfather had been gamblers
+I never should have touched a card. I'd far rather have drunk poison.
+
+"I made up my mind then, and there to stop and I felt quite capable of
+it. But I had to go on and square myself, for I owed that money to Nick.
+But when I played it was with my head only. All the fever had gone out of
+my veins. I loathed it. I loathed still more deceiving you.
+
+"I won and won and won. I thought I was delivered. I was almost happy
+again. Some day I meant to tell you--when it was all over.
+
+"Then I began to lose horribly. Thousands. It ran up to twenty thousand.
+I did not betray myself, and the girls thought I had money of my own and
+could pay my losses quite easily. They didn't know that Nick always
+helped me out. He was never the least bit in love with me--he couldn't
+love any woman--but he said I played such a wonderful game and was such a
+sport, never lost my head, that he wouldn't lose me for the world--when I
+threatened to stop and never play again.
+
+"But all the time he wanted the ruby. I found that out when he told me he
+must have the money inside of a week; he'd taken it out of his business,
+and it really belonged to his partners, and they'd find him out and send
+him to prison--
+
+"I offered him my jewels. They would have brought half their value at
+least. I could have told you they were stolen--only one more lie. It was
+then he said he must have the ruby. He had known about it ever since you
+came out here, but after he saw it on me that night at the Gwynnes' he
+was more than ever determined to have it.
+
+"I laughed at him at first. It seemed preposterous that he could demand a
+ruby worth two or three hundred thousand dollars in payment for a debt of
+twenty thousand. I thought of selling my jewels and furs and laces, or
+pawning them and raising the amount--he only had my I.O.U. for that sum.
+But I didn't know where to go. So I told Aileen. She wouldn't hear of my
+disposing of my things, said it would, be all over town in twenty-four
+hours. She advised me to get the twenty thousand out of you on one
+pretext or another.
+
+"I tried. You will remember. Then Nick began to haunt me. He whispered in
+my ear wherever we met. I was nearly frantic. He said he could hold me up
+to shame without compromising himself. I had written him some frantic
+letters, and he said they read just like--like--the other thing.
+
+"I felt perfectly helpless. I knew that even if I did manage to pawn the
+jewels, you would miss them from the safe and trace them. I ceased to
+feel cool. I nearly went off my head. But I stopped gambling. I felt sure
+by this time that he could make me lose, but I couldn't prove it. Aileen
+told me I must give him the ruby. He promised me before Aileen that he
+would give me back my I.O.U.'s as well as my notes if I would hand over
+the ruby. He knew I was to wear it to-night.
+
+"Finally I gave in. Yesterday Nick called me up on the telephone and told
+me to come down to the California Market to lunch, and to bring Aileen.
+He told me there that unless I promised to give him the ruby to-night,
+and kept my word, he'd either give my I.O.U.'s and my notes to you or to
+the _Merry Tattler_. He didn't care which. I could have my choice.
+
+"I said I would do it. But it was terribly conspicuous. Everybody would
+notice when it was gone. He said I must conceal it anyhow until we
+unmasked after supper, and then I could pretend I had lost it. He
+discussed several plans for having me slip it to him, but it was Aileen
+who insisted we should come here. Mrs. Thornton never opens her boudoir
+at a party. Everywhere else would be a blaze of light. In this dark
+corner we should be safe, especially if he came from the outside and I
+from inside. How did your detective find out?"
+
+"I think Aileen did a decent thing for once in her life."
+
+She went on in her monotonous voice. "I felt reckless after that and I
+really was gay and almost happy at dinner last night. The die was cast. I
+didn't much care for anything. I thought perhaps it was my last night
+with you--that when I told you I had lost the ruby you would suspect and
+turn me out of your house, tell maman to take me back to Rouen.
+
+"Then came that awful moment when you said you had to go away and I could
+not wear it. For a few moments I thought I should scream and tell you
+everything. But I was both too proud and too much of a coward. Then I
+knew I should have to rob the safe, and somehow I hated that part more
+than anything else. I did it just ten minutes before Rex and Polly called
+for me to motor down here. It had seemed the most horrible thing in the
+world to be a gambler, but it was worse to be a thief.
+
+"I remembered the combination perfectly. I have that sort of memory: it
+registers photographically. I had seen you move the combination several
+times. Perhaps I deliberately registered it. I can't say. I have lived in
+such a maze of intrigue lately. I can't say. That is all--except that I
+didn't get the letters and the other things."
+
+"He had an envelope in one hand. Spaulding has it beyond a doubt."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly: "It is a
+pity you haven't the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of
+the evening."
+
+She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him. "I have the
+chain--" She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice--"but--but--you
+can't mean--it isn't possible that you can forgive me."
+
+"I think I have taken very bad care of you. What are you, after all, but
+a brilliant child? I am thirty-three--"
+
+He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeling of rage, and thrust his
+hands into his friendly pockets. He had never made many verbal
+protestations to her, although the most exacting wife could have found no
+fault with his love-making. But to-night he felt dumb; he was mortally
+afraid of appearing high and noble and magnanimous.
+
+"You see, things always happen during the first years of married life.
+Perhaps more happens--I mean in a pettier way--when the man has leisure
+and can see too much of his wife. In my case--our case--it was the other
+way--and something almost tragic happened. So I vote we treat it
+casually, as something that must have been expected sooner or later to
+disturb our--our--even tenor--and forget it."
+
+"Forget it?"
+
+"Well, yes. I can if you can."
+
+"And can you forget who I am?"
+
+"You are exactly what you were before those scoundrels recognized your
+mother, and--and--set me going. Of course I had to find out the truth. I
+thought you knew and tried to make you tell me. But you
+wouldn't--couldn't--and I had to employ Spaulding."
+
+"Do you mean you would have married me if you had known the truth at
+the time?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"And--but--I told you--I became a regular gambler."
+
+He could not help smiling. "I have no fear of your gambling again. And I
+don't fancy you were a bit worse than the others who had no gambling
+blood in them--all the world has that. Gambling is about the earliest of
+the vices. I--if--you wouldn't mind promising--I know you will keep it."
+
+"Nothing under heaven would induce me to play again. But--but--I opened
+your safe like a thief and stole--"
+
+"Oh, not quite. After all it was yours as much as mine. If I had died
+without a will you would have got it.
+
+"Of course--I know what you mean--but men have always driven women into a
+corner, and they have had to get out by methods of their own. I wish now
+I had given you the twenty thousand. I prefer you should accept my
+decision that it was all my fault. Give me the chain."
+
+She drew it from her bosom and handed it to him. He fastened the ruby in
+its place and threw the chain over her neck. The great jewel lit up the
+front of her somber gown like a sudden torch in a cavern.
+
+The stern despair of Helene's tragic mask relaxed. She dropped her face
+into her hands and began to sob. Then Ruyler was himself again. He
+picked her up in his arms and settled comfortably into the deepest of
+the chairs.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Avalanche, by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
+
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