"That's all I need to tell you, I think, except that you will meet my detectives outside this building at half past seven. I'm doing this to save the lives of the passengers on the 'Lark' and to show the people of Los Angeles that the detectives of the police department, as I have charged, aren't on their jobs. It should convince them that there is something at least in what I have been saying."

He glanced at his watch again.

"It's half past six now," he said. "I must get out of here. 'Red Mike' is waiting for me and I can't let him become suspicious."

He rose from his chair.

"By the way, have you boys guns?" he asked. Brennan and John answered negatively by shaking their heads. He reached into a drawer of his desk and drew out two automatic pistols.

"My detectives will carry rifles and sawed-off shotguns," he said, handing the pistols to the reporters. "You boys might as well have these."

He hesitated, a half-smile on his lips.

"You may need them," he added.

John saw Brennan look at Gibson with what he thought was unbounded admiration. The commissioner held out his hand.

"Well, Brennan," he said. "What do you think of it?"

"It's a peach," Brennan said, taking Gibson's hand. "And here's luck, Mr. Commissioner. I'll hand it to you, you've got nerve."

Gibson smiled again as he turned to John.

"And you, Gallant?" he asked.

"I hope——" he began.

"I know you do," Gibson said. "Do you know why I let you and Brennan in on this?"

Oddly, a thought of Consuello came into John's mind.

"Well," Gibson explained, "I saw you that night you mixed it with Battling Rodriguez out at Vernon. I knew I could trust any man who took what you got and kept going until you dropped."

"Thanks," John managed to say.

Gibson opened the door to his outer office and caught sight of Benton, the photographer, waiting there.

"What about your photographer?" he asked.

"We'll take care of him," Brennan gave the assurance.

"All right, see you later," said the police commissioner, going out and closing the door behind him. They heard him hurrying away. John looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes to seven. Brennan stood still, watching the door through which Gibson had gone for several minutes and then turned quickly.

"Well?" he said.

"What do you say?" said John.

"Let's go," Brennan said snapping out his words. "We're in on something big."

The photographer followed them to the elevator and down to the street where they waited for Gibson's detectives.

"What's doing?" Benton asked.

"Can you work that camera of yours with a load of buckshot whistling by your head?" asked Brennan.

"Hot stuff, huh?" Benton asked, eagerly. John saw that the photographer's face actually brightened at the prospect of something out of the usual. Brennan told him, in short graphic sentences, what was before them.

"Gosh darn!" Benton ejaculated. "Hot dog and sweet puppies!"

As an outlet for his excitement he danced a queer little jig on the sidewalk, muttering a rhythmic verse as he shuffled his feet. At the termination of each heavily accented line he slapped his right foot down loudly. As he jigged his voice grew louder until John could discern the familiar lines from Kipling:

"It was 'Din! Din! Din!' 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 'E's chawin' up the ground, An' he's kickin' all around; For Gawd's sake, git the water, Gunga Din!"

In a few minutes three automobiles, following each other closely, wheeled into the curb. A man in the front seat of the first car motioned to them.

"Brennan and Gallant?" he asked, brusquely. "Who's that with you?"

"Our photographer," Brennan explained.

"All right, get in."

They clambered into the tonneau and the machine shot away from the curb, followed by the other two.

"Well, we're on our way," said Brennan, settling back in the cushions.

Absent-mindedly Benton resumed his half chant song.

"You may talk o' gin and beer, When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Alder—SHOT-IT——"

The crowds on the streets as the three automobiles wove their way through the traffic were that curious mixture of workers leaving late for their homes and pleasure seekers coming downtown for the first performances at the motion picture theaters, which is such an interesting spectacle on Broadway, Spring, Hill and Main streets at twilight. In the fading light of the day the electric signs sparkled with less brilliancy than they show when it actually is night.

Like some huge disjointed monster with thousands of glaring eyes the long line of automobiles moved slowly along the streets, only a yard separating them. Street cars formed in an almost solid line along the tracks. Lights in the upper story rooms of the business blocks snapped out, one by one, like the blinking of fireflies.

John looked into the faces of the throng hurrying along the sidewalks and thought how strange it was that none of them even remotely realized that an attempt to wreck the "Lark" was to be foiled within a couple of hours. The automobiles passed unnoticed in the everlasting flow of traffic. Tomorrow morning, he thought, these people would read of what had occurred and hail Gibson as a hero. The police commissioner, already the most discussed man in the city, would then be accepted unqualifiedly as a crusader not only sincere but courageous.

It was a great move! There could be no doubt of Gibson's courage and rightful purpose now. He was facing death to save others and to defeat an attempted horror. How like a "thriller" it was to be rushing toward such a gripping scene!

What if "Red Mike" discovered at the last minute that he had been trapped? Then it would be only a question of the first shot between him and Gibson. Suddenly John thought of Consuello. How proud she would be made by Gibson's dramatic coup! John envied Gibson in that moment which he now pictured, when Gibson would meet Consuello after it was all over.

The automatic that Gibson had given him dug into his side as he slouched back in the seat. He drew it and put it into his coat pocket. The touch of the cold steel brought home to him that he, too, was to be a participant in the frustration of the train wrecking.

Out of the downtown traffic the three machines increased their speed. John glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past seven. At eight o'clock the "Lark" would pull out of the Arcade station loaded with men, women and children, little suspecting the danger from which they were to be saved. What if something should go wrong? Suppose "Red Mike" was already at the scene, making it impossible for Gibson's detectives to surround him without being seen?

Night was settling down rapidly. He noticed there was only a quarter moon and realized that the darkness had been a part of "Red Mike's" nefarious plotting. He turned to Brennan, whose tensely set face was lighted for a fraction of a second by the accelerated burning of his cigarette as he took a deep inhale.

"I don't like to be a 'Gloomy Gus,'" Brennan said, "but what was it General Wolfe said before the battle on the 'Plains of Abraham' at Quebec—'The paths of glory lead but to the grave'—wasn't it?"

John almost resented the inference of "glory seeking" by Gibson, and Brennan's cool way of suggesting that the commissioner might meet his death. Brennan seemed to sense his unspoken exception to what he had said.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me," he said. "It only popped into my head, I don't know why. And Wolfe, you know, was a braggart who made good. He died on the 'Plains of Abraham' after distributing Montcalm's army of Frenchmen all over the landscape."

John blamed Brennan's cynicism for preventing him from viewing Gibson as he did.

At a word from the man beside him the driver of their car slowed down the machine and brought it to a stop. They could hear the creaking of brakes on the other machines following them as they stopped close behind.

"Here we are," said the man, leaving the front seat of the car. "Duck that cigarette, Brennan. Remember, no smoking or talking. You boys follow me and do what I tell you. One misstep and you're liable to get the commissioner killed. And you"—he turned to Benton—"don't you try shooting any pictures until Mr. Gibson gives the word, understand?"

John counted fourteen men from the two other machines. They walked silently along a dusty, narrow path breaking off from the road until they reached a point where the steep slope of a hill confronted them.

"Now, boys, everyone understands what is to be done?" asked the man from the automobile that had carried the reporters and who John realized was in command.

The men nodded.

"Then scatter out the way we've planned it and remember, we close in on them when Gibson gives the signal, not before."

A queer, nervous feeling gripped the pit of John's stomach as he followed with Benton and Brennan behind the man who led them up the hill as the others branched out in pairs through the brush, spreading out in a semi-circle.

"They each have their stations," the man told Brennan. "They know what to do."

Reaching the crest of the hill they swung down the embankment to their right and stopped behind a clump of bushes. Below them, a hundred feet down, John made out the railroad track. To the left they looked down into a deep gully. On the other side of the track was a deep ravine, dropping abruptly from the roadbed.

"They'll wait down there," the detective explained, pointing to the gully. "He'll put the derailer on the track so as to throw the cars over to the other side in that ditch."

He squatted down behind the clump of bushes and the others followed his example. John looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to eight.

"It's due here at 8:18," said the detective.

"I'd give ten years of my bright young life for a cigarette," said Brennan, sighing heavily.

The detective produced a thick moist plug of chewing tobacco, gnawed at the corners.

"Here you are," he said, offering it to the sufferer.

"Don't, don't," said Brennan, waving it aside. "I'd swallow it sure."

John felt his heart thumping against his ribs. Try as he might he could not stop himself from breathing in quick, short little gasps. This detective and his men were so certain about things. How did they know but something might have gone wrong? Perhaps Gibson and "Red Mike" were "shooting it out" along the road somewhere now. He looked again at his watch. It was three minutes to eight. Only seven minutes had passed since they arrived. Incredulous he held the watch to his ear. It was ticking regularly.

Benton pulled himself on his elbows to John's side.

"You may talk o' gin and beer, When you're quartered safe out 'ere—"

he began.

"That's enough of that," ordered Brennan, and Benton's chant stopped.

The detective raised himself to his knees and held his head high, listening. The roar of a motor being raced as it was switched off came to their ears.

"That's them," said the detective. "That was Gibson's signal. He was driving and he raced his engine to let us know when they got here."

They waited for years, it seemed to John, until two dark figures, scarcely discernible came down the tracks toward them and turned into the gully. He saw that Gibson and "Red Mike" were carrying something heavy between them and that "Red Mike" also carried a short-handled sledge hammer.

He strained his eyes trying to follow the figures into the darker shadows of the gully from which they emerged shortly.

"That's the derailer they're carrying—they're going to slap it on the rail," breathed the detective.

They could hear "Red Mike" grunting as he and Gibson struggled up the side of the roadbed. They saw "Red Mike" adjust the derailer to the rail and Gibson kneel to hold a spike as it was hammered into the tie by "Red Mike" wielding the sledge hammer. The blows of the hammer sounded sharply on the still night air. They heard "Red Mike" curse viciously as he missed hitting the spike and Gibson jerked his hand away a fraction of a second before the sledge would have smashed it against the rail.

Four spikes were driven to hold the derailer. Then Gibson and "Red Mike" scrambled back into the gully, their figures hidden in the darkness.

"All set down there," whispered the detective, thus conveying to the others the realization that the derailer was in place to swerve the guiding wheels of the big locomotive of the "Lark" and send it crashing into the ditch, pulling and overturning the coaches with it.

The horror of what might happen terrorized John for a moment. His body tingled and perspiration broke out on his forehead. He closed his eyes. He imagined he would hear the roar of the train as it crashed into the derailer and rolled over the embankment—the screams and cries of the dying and injured. A sickening feeling swept him. He was faint. He could hear Brennan breathing deeply, the breath whistling out through his teeth from his lungs.

"Gosh darn!" Benton gasped, as though he could hold himself no longer.

John reached for his watch. He was tugging to pull it from his pocket when the blast of an engine whistle sounded, it seemed, almost beside them.

It was the "Lark" whistling for a crossing a mile away as it pounded on toward the derailer, where death and destruction yawned.



CHAPTER VII

"Thrillers," as he called them, had always disgusted John. A book wherein the hero overcame the villain by desperate means and won the girl by a single stroke of manly dauntlessness was to him like so much trash. Melodramatic plays he despised. Griffith's pictures were the only ones in which he could tolerate a "staged" thrill.

It never came into his mind as he heard the whistle of the "Lark" flying a mile a minute over the rails to what might be a horrible disaster that here was a real "thriller" exceeding the imagination of any cheap novelist, aspiring playwright or industrious scenario writer. Later when he rehearsed in his mind what happened that night, he realized that in fact truth was often stranger than fiction. Every newspaper man eventually comes to the same realization.

In striking contrast to his feeling that minutes were hours a few moments before, it seemed only five or six seconds before the headlight of the oncoming train pierced through the darkness of the night. He felt that it was coming toward them faster than any train had ever traveled. A fear that there had been a mistake and that the engineer could not possibly bring the heavy train to a stop before the locomotive wheels struck the derailer seized him.

The detective was on his feet, rifle ready to be thrown to his shoulder. Brennan leaped up and John saw that he held the automatic in his hand.

Then the sound for which they had so anxiously waited came up to them from the track below. They could hear the brakes grinding and shrieking against the wheels of the locomotive and the coaches.

The detective dashed through the brush, stumbling and falling almost headlong as he pitched himself down into the gully. Brennan, John and Benton were at his heels. John's right hand gripped the automatic Gibson had loaned him.

There was a shot, a curse, another shot. Then it seemed to John a thousand shots were fired. He saw the detective throw the rifle to his shoulder and there was a spurt of flame after a quick aim. In a descending circle he saw the flash of guns fired by the other detectives coming down from the hilltop. He saw Brennan—and it surprised him—shooting down into the gully "throwing" his shots in the cowboy fashion he had read of.

He tripped and fell, the automatic flew from his hand. When he got to his feet, slightly stunned by his fall, the shooting had stopped. He ran into the pit of the gully at reckless speed.

He saw Gibson on his back on the ground, two men kneeling at his side, tearing his shirt from his shoulder. He saw a crimson stain spreading on Gibson's shirt. A few yards away he saw "Red Mike" spilled in a heap, hemmed in by a ring of Gibson's detectives each with a sawed-off shotgun pointed down at him.

"Where's that damned photographer?" Brennan demanded.

"Coming," they heard a voice shout and Benton was beside them, screwing his camera into his tripod as he hurried forward.

"Gibson?" asked John, panting.

"He's all right—bullet scratch on the shoulder—that's all—he got 'Red Mike,' I guess," Brennan answered in jerks.

John looked toward the train. The cowcatcher of the locomotive, which stood panting like some frightened, trembling animal, was less than five feet from the derailer! He saw the engineer of the train lift his cap from his head and scratch his forehead with a finger as he contemplated how close his engine had been to destruction.

Turning he found Gibson on his feet, pale and haggard, his hair tousled, his arm bandaged to his side, posing in the center of a group of detectives for Benton and his camera. The flashlight boomed and a ghastly white light lit up the scene for the briefest fraction of a second.

He followed Gibson and the detectives to where "Red Mike" lay sprawling on the ground. Electric torches held by other detectives put the desperado's prone figure in an arc of light.

Gibson looked down at "Red Mike" in silence.

The wounded man—John could tell that "Red Mike" was fatally wounded—turned over on his back, groaning. His face, covered with a stubble of red beard, was drawn in pain and his eyes seemed dulled. Groaning again he lifted his head and his eyes fixed on Gibson.

"You —— —— —— ——!" he snarled. "You crossed me, you —— —— —— ——!"

Then he dropped back into unconsciousness.

Six of the detectives lifted his limp body and, staggering under the load, started toward the road and the automobile Gibson had driven. They paused only long enough for Benton to snap another flashlight.

By that time the passengers—who, when the train pulled to a sudden stop that was followed by a fusillade of shots, believed it had been halted by bandits—had recovered from their confusion and were pouring out of the coaches, swarming toward the locomotive. A stout woman, whose short hair straggling to her bare shoulders indicated that she had been preparing to retire, screamed and fainted into the arms of a little man who struggled desperately to save her from falling to the ground. Benton set up his camera on the track and his flashlight boomed again as he made a photograph of Gibson standing beside the derailer, the locomotive in the background.

With much pointing of fingers and nodding of heads it was whispered through the crowd that Gibson was the man who had prevented the wreck and shot "Red Mike," who had been rushed away to a hospital in the machine in which he and Gibson had driven to the scene. Men and women in various stages of dishabille, unconscious of their appearance, pressed around him, shaking his hand. A girl threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. To John it was strikingly similar to the scene of an averted train wreck he had once inadvertently seen in a motion picture—if the girl had been Consuello, dressed, say, in a neat and dashing riding habit or some other altogether inappropriate costume.

A fat, white-haired man—typical bank president, John thought—wrote out a check, using the cowcatcher for a desk, and handed it to Gibson with a bow.

John, standing near them, saw the check was for $5,000.

"I cannot accept this for myself, sir," Gibson said. "I am a police commissioner of the city of Los Angeles and if you will permit me to make such disposition of it I will turn it over to some well deserving charity."

"It's yours—do what you want with it," the fat man said. As he walked away John thought that he was fully pleased with himself for having given Gibson the check, that he had paid the man who had saved his life in dollars and cents and what more could he do?

"Somebody give me a cigarette," he heard a voice plead and, turning, he found himself face to face with Brennan.

"Quick, someone, that man has a weapon!" a woman shrieked.

John saw Brennan's automatic protruding from his coat pocket. Brennan, who was talking to Gibson, did not notice him take the pistol from him.

"How did it happen, Mr. Commissioner?" Brennan asked.

"Come along, I'll tell you as we ride back to the city," promised Gibson, who shook the hands thrust out in the path that was opened for him as he walked through the crowd toward the road and the waiting automobiles.

Returning to the city, Gibson told his story. "Red Mike," he said, did not become suspicious until a second or so before the engineer applied the brakes to the train and then his suspicion seemed born of instinct. At the first sound of the screeching brakes, he said "Red Mike" shot at him and he fired back.

"I was lucky—my first shot got him," Gibson said. "He went down, but he continued firing. He was shooting wild and I wasn't half as afraid of his shots as those my men were raining down from the sides of the hill.

"I hope," he said, with a touch of regret, "that 'Red Mike' doesn't die. He's a bad one, as bad as they come, and should be put some place where he can't do harm. I hope, though, that he recovers."

"He hasn't much to live for," Brennan put in.

"No," said Gibson. "He told me that he had been blacklisted by the railroads because he was an I. W. W. Revenge was as much a part of his motive in attempting to wreck the 'Lark' as robbery. I really believe he might have got away with it if——"

"If you hadn't been there," John completed the sentence for Gibson.

"Thanks, Gallant," Gibson acknowledged. "Of course, boys, I'll have to talk to the morning newspapermen when they find me, but you saw the whole thing for yourselves and you've got the only pictures made out there where it happened."

"The A. M.'s will get the break on the story, but we'll have the edge on them at that," said Brennan. "It was too late, you know, for us to come out with an extra unless you had permitted us to tell our city editor what was coming off."

They left the automobile when it reached their office.

"I'm on my way home now to get this doctored up," said Gibson, inclining his head to his bandaged shoulder. "I want a bath and a sound sleep. I haven't had either since I met 'Red Mike.' Good night, boys, see you, tomorrow."

As they went into the office to telephone P. Q. what they had seen and what the [text not readable - some words missing] the first edition in the morning, John, feeling certain of a different answer than those he had received in the past, asked Brennan what he thought of Gibson now.

"He's got nerve, all right," Brennan said. "But——"

"But what?" asked John, wondering what possible criticism Brennan could have in view of Gibson's display of courage.

"But," said Brennan, "he's a grandstander."

"A grandstander?" exclaimed John.

"You said it, after me," said Brennan. "A grandstander, a man who plays to the crowd instead of playing the game for what it's worth."

A surge of exasperation went through John. Was this man incapable of ever believing anything or in anyone?

"Good heavens, Brennan!" he said, hotly. "He risked his life, didn't he?"

"I said he had nerve."

"He did it to save others, didn't he?"

"Others?" said Brennan sarcastically. "Others? Bosh! He did it to be a hero, for public acclamation, for glory, for power. Others? Why, don't you see that he risked the lives of all those others you say he saved just to make himself a hero?"

Brennan's answer, the sarcastic way he gave it, maddened John.

"Ah, you make me tired," he said in his aggravation. "What do you want to look at it that way for? You tell me to keep my faith in men, to believe as much as I can, and then you talk this way."

Apparently ignoring what John said, Brennan telephoned to P. Q.

"Hello, P. Q.," he said. "This is Brennan. Gibson has pulled off a great stunt, great story. The mornings' will have the break on it, but we have the only pictures and lots of eye-witness stuff."

He proceeded to give what even John admitted to himself was an accurate account of the attempt to wreck the "Lark" and how Gibson had saved the train and "shot it out" with "Red Mike."

Hanging up the receiver he looked around to find John standing waiting for him. Lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of the one he had finished he motioned to John to sit down.

"Now, Gallant, you listen to me for a while," he said. "You can believe what I'm going to say or not, but I'm going to tell you a few things. And don't get the idea I'm just talking for the sake of hearing myself blatt.

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that Gibson didn't have to go through with this business tonight at all? When he discovered that 'Red Mike' was going to try to wreck the 'Lark' he could have had him arrested right then and sent him up for a good long stretch.

"He didn't have to let things go as far as he did. He could have stopped it right there. Why, he actually endangered the lives of everyone on that train simply to make a big show of it. There wouldn't have been so much glory in it for him to have arrested 'Red Mike' when he found out what he was planning to do.

"Sure, he had nerve. He did what few of us would want to do, even if we were forced to. 'Red Mike' got no more than he deserved, but I can't help thinking of him as something of a victim of Gibson's lust for glory and power just the same. A really great man doesn't have to make a display of his courage like Gibson did. A really great man would have been satisfied by the realization that he had prevented a disaster without endangering the lives of others.

"That's why I say Gibson is a grandstander, Gallant. Understand, when I say he's a grandstander I don't mean that he isn't sincere in his crusade to clean up the city. He's simply a grandstander in the way he does things and that makes it impossible for him to ever be a truly big man.

"Grandstanders often make good, but not in the way some of us would like. Oftener they fall down, tripped up by their insatiable desire for public acclaim. Full reward should be given to those who do big things, but they shouldn't do them for the reward. They should work for the satisfaction their accomplishments bring to themselves, within themselves."

"I saw you shooting at 'Red Mike' yourself," said John.

"Certainly," said Brennan. "Don't think I class Gibson with criminals like 'Red Mike.' It was either his life or 'Red Mike's' and what choice was there? I confess, though, it was the excitement more than anything else that made me shoot."

They were silent for a few minutes.

"Think it over, Gallant," said Brennan, rising and putting a hand on John's shoulder. "I may sound like a cynic, but I'm not. There's one thing that disgusts me more than anything else and that's selfish hypocrisy. I look for the real things in life and I've been disappointed so often that I frequently misjudge.

"Remember we're newspaper reporters. Whatever we think, whatever we feel, about things must be kept to ourselves. It isn't our opinion that people want to read. It isn't how things look to us, but facts, truth, accuracy, that we must write. Opinions we must leave to the readers to form for themselves and it is unfair to give them untrue impressions for them to form their opinions from."

John carried Brennan's words home with him. Until he dropped off to sleep he thought them over. Perhaps Gibson was a grandstander, a glory seeker, after all—but was he to be blamed if what he sought above all else was the admiration of one like Consuello?

Gibson's heroism in preventing the wreck of the "Lark" covered the front pages and scattered throughout the inside pages of the morning papers. The whole city talked of him. There were more resolutions of commendation and he was termed the "fighting crusader," the "man of the hour."

Spread across the front page was a statement issued by Gibson and carried under the headline of "Gibson Hits at Police." In this statement Gibson again condemned Sweeney as inefficient.

"If my detectives, working where Sweeney's men ought to be, had not discovered 'Red Mike's' plot the 'Lark' would have been wrecked last night, scores killed, the mail car robbed and 'Red Mike' would have been over the border today," a part of the statement read.

It was a telling blow to the mayor and Police Chief Sweeney. Gibson was sweeping everything before him. For the mayor or the chief to have detracted from Gibson's act by hinting that he should have informed the police and caused "Red Mike's" arrest without going through with the plot to the point of assisting in placing the derailer on the track would have been instantly resented as an embittered and ungrateful move—a cry of "sour grapes."

During the day John received his first praise from P. Q., who called him to his desk.

"Brennan tells me that if it had not been for you we wouldn't have been in on Gibson's little party last night," the city editor said. "I told you Gibson would be a man worth knowing. You're coming along splendidly, Gallant. Just keep it up and practice writing. Read Brennan's stuff and study how he does it. I'll give you all the chance you want and there'll be a little more in your pay envelope this week."

John thanked him and hunted up Brennan.

"It was mighty kind of you to tell P. Q. that I've helped you," he said.

"Forget it," said Brennan.

"Your story had all the others beaten to death," he said, referring to what Brennan had written of the attempted train wreck.

"Forget that, too," said Brennan.

Later in the afternoon he heard from Consuello. He was considerably surprised when he recognized her voice.

"I do so want to thank you for what appeared in your paper about Mr. Gibson," she said. "He tells me that it was the best account of what occurred that appeared in any of the papers."

"I'm sorry," John confessed, "but it happens that I did not write a word of it."

"Really? I thought—he said you were there——"

"I was, but you must remember I'm only a cub. I couldn't be trusted with a big story like that. It was written by our star man."

"Wasn't it wonderful?"

"You mean what Mr. Gibson did?"

"Yes," before he realized he added, "and I have an idea that to hear you say so means more to him than all that has been written."

"He has—been kind enough—to say—something like that."

Then she laughed.

"I suppose," she said, "he wouldn't care very much to have me tell you such things. You wouldn't believe me if I told you that what he said didn't please me, would you?"

"Well——"

"I won't insist that you answer that."

"You spoke of wishing to meet mother?" he ventured. "You were so kind Sunday—could you—would you—visit us at home? It's not much but—it's home, you know."

"I've been waiting for you to say that," she replied. "Make it whenever you wish. I do want to meet your mother."

"Sunday—for dinner?"

"Yes."

"At three."

"At three," she repeated.

Mrs. Gallant rejoiced with him that evening over the increase in salary P. Q. had promised him. She had learned of Consuello from the talks they had each evening, when John recounted to her the events of the day.

"I'll do my best to make things nice for her," Mrs. Gallant said when John spoke to her of having invited Consuello for dinner Sunday. "It is so good of her to wish to meet me."

"Mother," he said, taking her in his arms, "no one can be a friend of mine who is not a friend of yours."

"Not even Consuello?" she asked him, banteringly.



CHAPTER VIII

Acclamation of Gibson's frustration of the plot of "Red Mike" to wreck the "Lark" grew in volume the following day. The train wrecker hovered between life and death at the receiving hospital and, during his conscious periods, cursed the police commissioner incessantly. There was talk of Gibson as a recall candidate for mayor, but he met it with repeated declarations that he had no political ambitions.

During the morning, at P. Q.'s order, Brennan and John with reporters from the other papers, besieged the city hall seeking an interview with, or statement from, the mayor on Gibson's demand for Chief Sweeney's removal and the situation in general.

"Nothing to say at all, boys, nothing at all," the mayor said. "If I have anything for you I'll call you."

Regardless of this promise the reporters camped in the ante-room to the mayor's office, listing those who entered for conference with the city's chief executive officer and speculating on the outcome of the political war. It was John's first sight of the mayor and he considered him a rather mild little man, pleasant faced and of an attractive although somewhat easy-going personality. The men with whom he conferred were his political advisers, most of them business men whose names were familiar to John as interested in civic enterprise.

While the other reporters were busily engaged in conversation John saw the mayor's secretary signal with a nod of his head for Brennan to step into another room. With a remark that he was going to the telephone Brennan slipped into the room and John saw the secretary whisper in his ear.

At one o'clock, an interval between editions, the other reporters went out for lunch. Brennan and John followed them into the corridor and John saw Brennan wink to him.

"See you later, boys," Brennan said, "got some stuff I have to get out."

When they were alone Brennan told John to follow him and they returned to the mayor's office. They were met in the ante-room by the secretary, who ushered them into the room where the mayor was leaning back in a big easy chair, his feet crossed and perched on his desk, and blowing thin clouds of smoke into the air from a slender cigar.

The secretary closed the door behind them and John heard the lock click shut. The mayor looked at them without changing his position.

"Who's your friend?" he asked, nodding to John.

"John Gallant, Mr. Mayor," Brennan said. "Gallant is helping me on this story. You can trust him as much as you trust me."

John shook hands with the mayor.

"As you say, Brennan," he said. "I suppose you have an idea why I sent for you."

Brennan nodded.

"Whatever we say here now isn't for publication, you understand," admonished the mayor.

"Perfectly."

The mayor puffed at his cigar and gazed up at the ceiling. For fully a minute nothing was said. Then he jerked his feet from the desk, sat upright in the chair and leaned forward.

"Brennan," he said, "am I a fool?"

John almost gasped in astonishment at the mayor's question. He was about to smile when he noticed that the faded blue eyes of the mild little man at the desk were glittering with anything but an amused light.

"I've never thought so," said Brennan.

"Well," said the mayor, leaning back in his chair again, "everyone I've talked with here today says I am and I was beginning to think they might be right."

"For appointing Gibson?" asked Brennan.

"No, for thinking what I can't help thinking about him," said the mayor, rising from his chair and beginning to pace back and forth across the room, his hands thrust into his pockets, the cigar clenched between his teeth.

They waited for him to continue.

"Brennan," he said, stopping short in his striding, "you know what I think of you. You've helped me before and if I'm right this time you can help me again and land the biggest story you ever got in your life. If I'm wrong, then I am a fool and the sooner I get out of office the better it will be for me and the city."

He went back to his chair.

"Do you know what I've been thinking?" he asked.

"That Gibson isn't straight," said Brennan.

"Exactly," said the mayor. "And you can guess who I think is behind him."

"'Gink' Cummings," said Brennan.

"You're right again," the mayor thumped the desk with his fist. "It's the 'Gink,' as sure as I'm sitting here. That's what I told those who were here to see me today and everyone of them called me a fool. I may be, but I have a man-sized hunch that I'm not."

"Gink" Cummings, boss of the underworld, behind Gibson? Impossible. It was nothing but a weak attempt at retaliation, John thought. The mayor's advisers were right. He was a fool! Why did Brennan sit there and listen to such stuff?

"Now, get me right," continued the mayor. "I have nothing except a hunch that Gibson is backed by the 'Gink.' I haven't the slightest bit of real evidence to form a basis for my suspicion, but I believe I can see a pretty deep game in this."

"Go ahead, let's see if you figure it out the way I do," said Brennan.

"All right," said the mayor. "In the first place, the 'Gink' has been against me, trying to get me ever since I took office, you know that?"

Brennan nodded.

"He tried everything he could think of and I've beat him every time. He knows he can't stay in Los Angeles unless I'm out of office. So what's he to do? He gets a man like Gibson, starts this so-called clean-up campaign to get Gibson political power, stages or directs this 'Lark' wreck business and figures I'll quit so that Gibson can slip in here under the guise of a reformer, but really a figurehead, a puppet, to appease the churches and other organizations standing for a clean city and law enforcement while the 'Gink' bosses things from behind the scenes.

"It's been done before. It's an old trick and it works almost every time. Haven't you noticed that Gibson began his attack as soon as I appointed him commissioner and that he has never said a word about the 'Gink' whom he knows just as well as I do is the city's worst enemy? This fellow Gibson is only a masquerader."

"That's the way I figured it might be," said Brennan, as the mayor paused, "but there is one obstacle. How did the 'Gink' ever get Gibson? How did Gibson, who seems to have plenty of money and a social position, ever fall into the 'Gink's' hands? What was his motive?"

The mayor smiled for the first time since they entered the room.

"Ah, Brennan, my boy, that's exactly what everyone asks me," he said. "But I haven't been asleep. When Gibson started all this business I got busy and I know a few things that help a lot. There seems to be plenty of reason for Gibson to be working for the 'Gink.'"

"How?" asked Brennan.

"Well," continued the mayor, "I'll only tell you what I know now. Gibson was highly recommended to me when I appointed him; you may be sure the 'Gink' was that careful. But I wasn't the only one who was tricked. There were others, the ones who recommended him.

"I've been digging into Gibson's past a little and I find that about three years ago, at the time I was elected, he was broke, flat broke. He had a social position through his family. His father and mother, who are well known and well respected and who are dead, left him only a little. Three years ago he was in debt and then, suddenly, from some mysterious source, money began to flow into his hands. I don't know where it comes from, but he has it.

"He paid all he owed and began building up a reputation as a fine young fellow, so that he now has the esteem of men and women and organizations that count for much. His motive? Money!"

"That's a long shot, Mr. Mayor," said Brennan, "a long, long shot."

"I know it," said the mayor. "That's why I called you in here, today."

"That's all the information you have?" asked the reporter.

"That's all I have," the mayor said. "But it's been done before and it seems to me that Gibson isn't so smart that he could make the moves he has alone. You know the 'Gink.' You know how clever he is and how painstaking and patient he is in everything he does. What do you say?"

"It's a long shot, but it's worth it," Brennan said. "If you're going through with it you can begin by sitting tight, keeping Sweeney in office and working as hard as you can to get evidence that will break Gibson and the 'Gink'—if they are partners—once and for all."

The mayor rose from his chair and began his pacing back and forth again. He pushed out his short, thin legs to twice the length of his ordinary stride. He tossed the stub of his cigar over his shoulder and it fell at John's feet. He snapped his teeth on the end of a fresh cigar and thrust his hands into his pockets.

He crossed over to a window looking down on Broadway and his nervousness disappeared as he gazed into the throbbing thoroughfare below him. From where he was sitting John could see that the mayor had a fond look in his eyes as he watched the roaring traffic of the principal street of the great city that had honored him by electing him to its highest office.

Finally he turned and came slowly back to his desk. He stood erect beside it and John saw a look of determination come over the features he had considered so mild and pleasing.

"By God"—he used the name of the Creator softly, reverently, as if he were invoking aid from the Almighty—"Brennan, I'll do it."

* * * * *

Sunday morning John and his mother prepared for Consuello's visit to their modest little bungalow home. There was little that he could do to help, as Mrs. Gallant had arranged everything and spent most of the time in the kitchen preparing the dinner which he saw was to be one of the repasts his father had so often termed a "feast fit for a king."

"My boy is truly a man now," she said to him. "Do you realize that this is the first time you have ever invited a girl to your home?"

He laughed as he took her in his arms to pet her.

"Mother, dearest," he said, "I know what you have been thinking, but you are wrong. Consuello is a wonderful girl and sometimes I cannot understand why she has been so kind to me. She is only a friend, dearest, and you mustn't think that your boy is in love with her or that she is in love with him."

Mrs. Gallant smiled up to him.

"You think a lot of her," she said.

"I do," he admitted. "She has been so very kind. She believes I am helping someone she seems really to care for."

"Yes, yes, I understand," Mrs. Gallant said. "You run along now and let me finish what I have to do."

In the living room he picked up the volume of "David Copperfield" he had been reading through for the first time since his father's death. Musing as he turned the pages he thought how thankful he was to his father for having made reading interesting to him. He remembered that the books his father had read to him and had given him to read, books that crammed the small bookcase near the fireplace and filled every shelf and table in the room, were the very best—Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Addison, and of the later writers, Kipling, O. Henry, Anatole France, Mark Twain, Barrie.

"If I ever have a boy I will teach him to read as my father taught me," he said to himself.

Consuello arrived a few minutes before three. He saw through the window the machine in which they had ridden to her father's ranch the previous Sunday draw up to the curb outside. He watched her descend from the tonneau, speak to the chauffeur, who touched his cap, and turn toward the walk leading to the house. She wore the same dainty white dress she wore each time he had seen her and a white, summery, wide-brimmed hat.

He went out to meet her.

"You see," she said, "I'm not one of those who believe in being fashionably late. What a pretty little place you have."

His mother met them at the door. She had doffed her kitchen apron and her face was slightly flushed—from the heat of the range, he knew—as she smiled at Consuello with an extended hand.

"Miss Carrillo, my mother," John said.

"I'm happy to meet you, Miss Carrillo," Mrs. Gallant said. "John has spoken so often to me of you that I really feel I know you."

"I have been so anxious to meet you—to know you," Consuello said. "I, too, feel I know you because he has told me so much about you. I only wish I had been thoughtful enough to have had you with us last Sunday. The next time you must be with us."

Consuello was unaffected, John thought, in her praise of his mother's dinner. She insisted upon aiding in the removal of plates from the table and for the most part her conversation was with Mrs. Gallant. What delicious salad, she must have the dressing recipe if Mrs. Gallant would be so kind as to give it to her. She told in details that were meaningless to John of the Spanish dishes her mother prepared, of the barbecue feasts of the old days she remembered as a child.

He could see that his mother was interested, pleased, and he was relieved that Consuello alleviated the awkwardness imposed by the absence of someone to wait upon them. He left the table once to answer a ring at the door and found Mrs. Sprockett's husband there, coatless and collarless as usual.

"Is Maude here?" asked Mrs. Sprockett's husband, trying to appear as though he was not peering past John, which he was.

John was certain that Mrs. Sprockett's husband knew as well as he did that Mrs. Sprockett was not with them. He had more than a suspicion that Mr. Sprockett, having seen the automobile bring Consuello, had crossed the street out of pure curiosity.

"No," he said, shortly, an impulse rising in him to add, "and you know it."

"I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband, humbly. "She didn't say, you know—I thought she might have—the baby——"

As on the night of his father's death John heard the Sprockett infant, who, he had a vague idea, was the eleventh or twelfth, wailing somewhere in the Sprockett home.

"No trouble," he said, shutting the door in the other's face.

They had been in the living room an hour after dinner when Mrs. Gallant rose.

"You must excuse me, Miss Carrillo," she said. "There is a neighborly duty I must attend to. Please remain until I return; it won't be long."

John was rather disappointed that his mother should leave them, but he understood how she was constantly being required for one reason or another by the neighbors. Alone, their conversation took another course.

"And as things are now, after he has demonstrated his courage in a way that leaves no doubt, are there still those who are horrid enough to doubt Mr. Gibson?" she asked.

He was bound by the confidence he had entered into with Brennan not to reveal any part of the mayor's view of Gibson and his suspicion that the commissioner was the tool of "Gink" Cummings. The mayor, however, had publicly taken his stand of "sitting tight," as Brennan had suggested, and had flatly refused to oust Chief Sweeney.

"Yes," he answered. "Their doubt seems to have been made even stronger by what he did in preventing the wreck of the 'Lark.'"

Her eyes opened in astonishment.

"How?" she asked. "How can they possibly doubt him now?"

He explained to her Brennan's view that Gibson's frustration of "Red Mike's" plot was a "grandstand play," without mentioning Brennan. She sat silent for several minutes after he had concluded. Then, raising her head and looking directly at him, she said:

"Because we are friends I will tell you why I know so certainly that what you say cannot be true. Mr. Gibson and I have known each other since our school days. His father and mother were near and dear to my father and mother. He has been almost like a brother to me.

"I believe I know him for what he is, a gentleman. I don't think there is anything of his plans in this crusade that he has not told me. He is kind enough to feel that I have his interest at heart, that I want him to succeed, for his own sake, for the sake of his family and his name.

"He has no other motive in all this but to do what he has pledged himself to do—make Los Angeles a better place to live in. He is purely an altruist. When he has accomplished what he has set out to do he will retire from public life altogether with the satisfaction of knowing he has stood for law and order and decency, that he has done something for the city in which he lives and which he loves. That will be his only reward, the satisfaction he feels within himself."

She paused, her eyes downcast.

"There is one other reward—that is, he says it will be a reward—that he tells me he will claim if he is successful," she said, softly.

He knew what she meant and he wondered if she would say it.

"There is a girl he loves and who believes she loves him," she said.

So, perhaps, Brennan had guessed it when he speculated, "Sometimes it's a girl."

"The girl, has she—the reward, has it been promised him?" he asked.

He saw the tinge of crimson steal into her cheeks.

"She—it has," she answered, softly.

"I understand now," he said. "I know now why he faced death the way he did. What man would not?"

This last he spoke quietly, as if to himself.

"Can you think of him as insincere, as faithless, as selfish, as greedy for power?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I've told you things that are sacred," she said. "I have told you because I regard you as a friend. I liked you from the moment we met——"

"And I said you were beautiful?" he interrupted.

She smiled back to him.

"And you said I was beautiful," she repeated. "But not simply because you said it, but because I thought you meant it."

"I often wonder how I had courage to say that to you and to tell you I dreamed of meeting you again," he said. "I have often wondered why you have been so kind, why you are interested in me at all. At first I thought it was only—only what you might call pity and I resented it."

"Why is it we have such thoughts?" she said. "Why must we always impute a misconceived motive?"

"Because deceit has its place in the human heart, I suppose," he said, and, strangely, he thought of the mayor's regard of Gibson as a figurehead of hypocritical virtue who sold himself for money. How terrible it would be if that were true!

As if by mutual unspoken assent they talked of other things, of books, of plays, of life, until Mrs. Gallant returned, apologizing again for her absence. A few minutes later the automobile which had brought Consuello glided up to a halt in front of the house and, glancing at her wrist watch, she arose.

"I must be going," she said. "It's my turn now to thank you for a wonderful day, Mrs. Gallant; you will promise to meet father and mother, won't you?"

"I would be delighted," Mrs. Gallant said.

They escorted her to the waiting automobile. John imagined he saw Mrs. Sprockett and her husband peering out of the window of the Sprockett house across the street.



CHAPTER IX

The trust that Consuello reposed in him when she told him of her promise to marry Gibson, John held inviolable to the extent that he did not mention it to his mother. It strengthened his belief that Brennan and the mayor were in error in their suspicion that Gibson was linked with the notorious "Gink" Cummings and that his clean-up crusade was only aimed to overthrow the administration and make the "Gink" the boss of the city.

Had he been free to tell the mayor and Brennan that Gibson was striving to accomplish his crusade with the principal motive of winning the girl he loved, John felt that the suspicion against the police commissioner would be undermined. He could not bring himself to believe that Brennan would deliberately lend himself to the mayor's plan to attack Gibson unless he actually believed that there was some reason to suspect the commissioner.

There were but few developments in the feud between Gibson and the mayor during the week after Consuello's visit to the Gallant home. Sentiment throughout the city was obviously in favor of Gibson, whose sensational capture of "Red Mike," averting, as it did, the wreck of the "Lark," gave him a strong hold upon the public. The mayor's refusal to remove Chief Sweeney, putting him on record as opposing the commissioner, was generally considered the last defiant move of a man cornered and doomed to defeat.

Later in the week John was upset by the first dissension that had ever arisen between him and his mother. They were on the porch of their home in the evening when John recalled that he had overlooked asking Mrs. Gallant her opinion of Consuello. As this recollection came into his mind, it also occurred to him that his mother had never volunteered to say anything of Consuello after her visit to their home the previous Sunday.

"Mother, dear," he said, "tell me, did you like Miss Carrillo?"

He felt that the question was almost unnecessary and asked it casually. He was surprised when she hesitated before answering. Looking up to her, he saw a hint of worry in her expression.

"She seemed a pleasant girl," she said slowly.

"Seemed?" he repeated, incredulously. "Why, mother, you speak as if you did not like her."

"I'm sure I would like her if I understood," she said, her eyes upon her needle and crochet work.

"Understood?" he gasped. "Understood what?"

"My dear boy, please do not become irritated by what I say," she said, lifting her head to look at him. "You know I would not hurt you for anything in the world."

"I know, mother, but I cannot imagine——"

"I know you can't," she said interrupting him. "If you had you would have explained it all to me days ago. Come, don't let us quarrel. I may be foolish to have thought what I have, but you must remember, my boy, that I am a mother and—a woman."

"What under the sun has come into your head to talk like this, mother?" he asked.

She placed her needlework in her lap and reached over to stroke his head.

"Don't be cross with your mother, John," she said. "I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding, something you can clear away with a few words, and when you do please do not ever hold it against me for having had such thoughts.

"You know, John, things have changed greatly since I was a girl, but I cannot help myself from having the viewpoint of other days."

"What is it, mother? Tell me, what is it?" he asked, somewhat impatiently.

"You won't be cross and hate me?"

"No."

"Then I'll tell you. My boy, I cannot understand why Miss Carrillo lives in the city alone and away from her parents."

He looked at her in amazement.

"Mother, surely you don't——" he began.

It was incomprehensible, unbelievable. If she had spoken against the name of his dead father John could not have been more startled than by this questioning in his mother's mind of Consuello.

"I don't think anything," she said, again stroking his head. "But, between you and me, John, there should be not even the slightest misunderstanding. That's why I have spoken to you like this. Probably, if she has not told you, you never thought to ask yourself that question. Perhaps I should not ask it, even to myself, but I am a mother and a woman and it's natural for us to doubt when it concerns one we love."

"You have no right to misjudge," he said.

"I don't misjudge, my boy; I only wait for your answer."

It flashed into his mind that he could not answer, could not tell her why Consuello lived in the city, but it did not cause him to waver. Consuello's words, "Why must we always impute a misconceived motive?" the question she had asked when they had discussed those who doubted Gibson's sincerity, and his answer, "Because deceit has its place in the human heart, I suppose," came back to him. He could not, however, imagine deceit in his mother's heart, and he knew that the seed of suspicion in her mind had been cultivated into an ugly weed of doubt by some one else. This thought calmed the indignation which was surging through him.

"Mother," he said, "I do not know why she lives alone in the city. She has never told me and I have never asked. I did not consider it my business. Not for a moment has a shadow of doubt entered my head. Can't you see—can't you tell by looking at her?

"She may be with friends. She may be studying. She may be working. Whatever she is doing, you nor I have no reason to let an evil thought about her stay with us for a moment."

For several minutes they said nothing. Then Mrs. Gallant broke the silence.

"Tell me," she said, "was that Miss Carrillo's automobile that brought her here, Sunday?"

"Oh, mother!" he exclaimed, exasperated.

"I'm sorry, John. I only thought you might tell me."

"I don't know and I don't care," he said, coming to his feet. "Mother, this is all foolishness—rank foolishness. Here you and I sit quarreling over things that are none of our business. I never thought it of you. I never thought you could think such things, let alone breathe a word about them. I never——"

"John, John," said Mrs. Gallant, pleadingly, "don't, don't!"

"I can't believe it's you," he said, angrily. "Some one has been putting these infernal thoughts into your head—some gossiping, scandal-loving, evil-thinking——"

"My boy!"

He stopped and the anger that had surged so swiftly slowly left him—left him ashamed that he had given way to his temper, ashamed that he had spoken so sharply to the one he loved more than any one in the world, and who, he knew, loved him as no one else would ever love him.

Her head was bowed in her hand, her arm resting on the side of her chair. He went to her and dropped on his knees at her feet.

"Mother, dearest," he said, softly, "please, please don't cry. I was a brute. I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did, but I was angry. Please, no misunderstanding must come between us. You are everything in the world to me, mother, and I trust you, believe in you."

"I only wanted to know—for your sake," she said.

"I know, mother, I know. That is what you have always done—thought of me first. But, don't you see, mother, she is nothing more than a friend to me. And she has been kind, so very kind and good, and I know she is only the sweet, dear girl I believe her to be. If you had only been with us when we went to her home, mother. If you only knew her as I know her, and you're going to. You're going to know her and like her."

"Yes, yes, my boy. I know I will. But, John, there is so much evil in this world, so much that we cannot understand, so many disappointments, so many cruel things, so much wickedness, and I only think of you, my boy—only of you. I could not bear to have you care for some one and then be——"

"I know, mother, dearest, I know," he said, petting her hands. "Now, we'll forget all about it, won't we? You'll not let doubt come into your mind again, will you? Don't be overcautious in your care over me, mother. And don't think I'm in love. I do think she is sweet and kind and beautiful, and I thought you would like her because she is—is—is what I would call an 'old-fashioned' girl."

"Old-fashioned girls are scarce these days," said Mrs. Gallant. "I do so hope she is all that you believe her to be."

"And I am forgiven for the things I said in haste, tonight?" he asked.

She kissed his forehead.

"And you'll forgive your foolish old mother who loves her boy so?"

She rose and moved toward the door.

"You'll be coming in soon?" she asked.

"In a little while, mother," he said. "It's such a wonderful evening I'm going to enjoy it for a few minutes more."

Alone, John speculated on Consuello's reason for living in Los Angeles while her parents remained at home on the ranch. The probability that she worked in the city became stronger in his mind when he thought of how her father had spoken to him of their reduced circumstances, the fact that but little remained of the vast estate once owned by the Carrillo family. He was reasonably certain that the automobile which Consuello told him was placed at her disposal by a "friend" was owned by Gibson, and that the long friendship between the two families, combined with privilege permitted by their engagement to be married, made it possible for her to accept such accommodation.

How unlike his mother it had been for her to question Consuello's mode of living! He excused her suspicion for two reasons—first, that the doubt had been put into her mind by some one else and, second, because her great love for him had carried her too far.

The mockingbird that had warbled on the night of his father's death began its song in a tree near by. As he listened, meditative, he saw Mrs. Sprockett glide across the street to the Sprockett house, returning from one of her unceasing visits to other homes than her own.

His instinctive dislike for Mrs. Sprockett caused him to blame her for creating suspicion against Consuello in his mother's mind.

* * * * *

During the following week John learned the answer to his mother's question of why Consuello lived in Los Angeles, away from her parents, the inquiry that had provoked him to anger because he took it as an insinuation against Consuello's character.

Consuello called him one morning by telephone.

"Have you an hour or so to spare, today?" she asked.

"It all depends——" he began.

"I know you are a busy man," she said, "but I thought you would like to see something interesting. It's a surprise I have been saving for you."

He had a premonition that she was about to give him the answer to his mother's question.

"What is it?" he asked. She laughed before she replied:

"Oh, it would spoil it all to tell you now. Didn't you hear me say it was a surprise? I want you to come out to an address I will give you if you say you are able to get away from your office."

"When?"

"This afternoon, as close to two o'clock as you can make it."

"May I call you in a few minutes and give you my answer?" he asked. "You see, I must have the permission of my city editor if I leave the office except on newspaper business."

"I'll wait for your answer," she said.

P. Q. gruffly gave him permission to go off duty at one o'clock. He hurried back to the telephone and told her that he would be able to see her. She gave him an address in Hollywood.

"You will be stopped at the door," she told him, "but tell whoever stops you that you are the gentleman I am expecting and there won't be any further difficulty. I'll look for you at two, then."

When he reached the address she gave him, shortly before two o'clock, John's first feeling was that he had misunderstood the directions she had given him. Before him, inclosed by a high fence over the horizon of which he could see the tops of queer structures, stood the rambling studio of the Peerless Pictures, Inc., one of the largest motion picture producing concerns in the capital of filmdom. At one side of a large open gateway, near an oddly shaped sentry box, was a fat, red-faced man tilted back in a kitchen chair.

The man was eyeing him as he approached the gateway.

"Hey, just a minute, son, where do you think you're going?" the man shouted, turning his head to glare at the intruder.

"Inside," John said.

"Well, you don't say—Hey, there, just a minute!" this last as John, who had a secret delight in baiting officiousness, continued toward the gateway.

"Who do you think you want to see in there?" demanded the guard.

"I don't THINK I want to see anyone; Miss Carrillo sent for me," said John, wondering if this would be the password and feeling a thrill go up his backbone at the thought he might be at the wrong place.

"What's your name?"

"Gallant—John Gallant."

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? What do you think I am, a mind reader? The clairvoyants are all east of Main street, son, all east of Main street. Keep right on going, you'll find her on stage number three."

His heels crunched into the finely-graveled driveway as he walked in the direction pointed out to him by the guard, who condescended to leave his chair for the purpose of guiding him. He passed two huge barn-like structures and found the third designated in large white letters, "Stage No. 3." A superstructure of black cloth and laths was built out from the doorway at right angles to the stage building, a precaution, he later learned, against daylight.

It was his first visit to a motion picture studio. He had no interest in pictures or the people who played in them. His father, from whom he inherited his love for books and the better class of spoken drama, had always regarded motion pictures as almost a profanation of art. Once he had noticed an advertising poster of a well known star referred to as a "man's man," wearing a shirt open at the neck, sleeves rolled to the elbows, riding trousers and shiny leather puttees, endeavoring desperately to appear like a combination of Sandow and a Northwest Mounted Police officer. He had had the satisfaction of hurling a rock to mar the "virile" face as it looked down defiantly at him from the billboard.

He had always imagined that all motion picture scenes were photographed in the open, on roofless stages, and the idea that Southern California's perpetual sunlight gave the best service for this purpose he believed to be the reason that Los Angeles was the principal producing point of the world. It surprised him when he realized that the barn-like structures were inclosed stages.

Was Consuello a screen player or had she some other work connected with the production of pictures, designer, scenario writer, director, art expert? Or was she only at the studio as a visitor, inviting him to be with her because some particular star was playing or some especially interesting scene being staged?

Entering the cloth and lath superstructure he found himself in pitch darkness. Unable to see his hand before his face he stopped to accustom his eyes to the absence of any light. A voice spoke out of the dark:

"Do you wish to see anyone?" it asked.

"Miss Carrillo," he answered, having an uncanny feeling as he spoke to someone he could not see and yet whom he know was close at hand.

"Miss Carrillo is on the set—was she expecting you?" the voice asked.

"She told me to be here and to mention that she was expecting me," he said.

"This way, then, please."

He turned in the direction from which the voice came and walked slowly, cautiously, until his feet encountered steps. He mounted the steps with a strange feeling that he was about to fall on his face.

Reaching the top step he felt himself on a level floor. Shafts of light, escaping from between tall objects before him, invaded the darkness. A stringed orchestra was playing something soft, plaintively sweet. He recognized the music as Schubert's "Serenade." He stumbled over a sawhorse and his guide turned upon him with a quick admonition to be more careful. Except for the music there was not a sound.

Turning past one of the tall dark objects, which he afterward discovered were painted canvas scenery, he halted at a signal from the man who was leading him and who continued to go forward on tiptoes, a muffled curse escaping him as a board squeaked under foot. John named his guide "Mr. John J. Silence" in his mind.

Before him two arc lamps threw a bluish white light on a set representing the interior of a finely furnished room. Between the lamps were two cameras which were being cranked by two tall young men in khaki trousers and leather puttees who wore the peaks of their caps turned backward like children playing "fireman." Near the cameras a man with horn-rim spectacles sat in a canvas chair, a manuscript in his hand. Scattered about were a dozen men and women, poised tensely, as if they were afraid to move a muscle. To the left was the orchestra, a violin, 'cello and bass viol. Why, thought John, do bass viol players always have that far-away, woebegone look on their faces as they saw at their instruments?

From where he stood it was impossible for John to see what was before the cameras. He strained his eyes in a vain attempt to identify Consuello as among those standing behind the lamps. He saw his guide speak to one of the figures—a man—and then turn to signal to him violently and silently to approach, pressing his forefinger to his lips as a final admonition to be quiet.

"Mr. John J. Silence bids me approach," John said to himself.

He tiptoed forward. A board creaked under his foot. It could not have had more effect if it had been a pistol shot. Instantly all except the cameramen turned on him quickly. He imagined little arrows darting at him from their eyes, those little arrows cartoonists use to illustrate a fixed stare by one of their subjects. Never had he seen such a look of mingled pain and exasperation as crossed the face of "John J. Silence." He stood stock-still, fearful that if he made another sound they would pounce upon him and tear him limb from limb while "John J. Silence," completely overcome, writhed in agony on the floor.

By carefully testing the flooring each time before he put his full weight on his foot, he managed to reach a point behind the cameras without having that battery of aggravated eyes turned upon him again. Now no one favored him even with a turn of the head. He saw that Consuello was not in the group. The man in the canvas chair spoke, softly, appealingly.

"Now, Miss Carrillo, you think of how happy you two were together—days that are never to be again—he's gone—gone forever—that's it—tears come up in your eyes—he's (deep voice) gone, (deeper voice) gone, (very deep) g-o-n-e."

Risking those reprimanding eyes again, John stepped to one side to enable himself to see around the man who was in front of him, blocking his view of the set.

He saw Consuello, a strange, sad Consuello, her face ghastly pale under the bluish white light, her naturally beautiful features hidden under a mask of paint and powder, but Consuello, just the same. Heavy tears that brimmed from her eyelids coursed down her cheek, sparkling in the glare of the lamps. Her thickly rouged lips trembled; the fingers of one of her hands, pressed tightly in her lap, beat wildly on the back of the other beneath it.

She was seated in a large plush chair facing the cameras. She wore an evening gown and her hair was arranged in a high coiffure that made her look taller, older.

"Cut!" commanded the man in the horn-rim glasses. "That was splendid, Miss Carrillo, splendid."

The cameras stopped grinding. Consuello rose—laughing. The orchestra stopped abruptly. She came toward them, touching lightly at her cheeks with a tiny handkerchief.

"It seems a shame to dry such perfectly real tears," she said.

Then she saw John and came to him, her hand outstretched. As if they were controlled by a single mind and impulse the heads of everyone in the group turned to him.

"I'm so glad you got here," she said.



CHAPTER X

"So that was your surprise for me," he said, taking her hand.

She smiled, a strange and, to him, an unnatural smile, made so by the rouged lips and painted face. Had it not been for the sound of her voice he would have doubted if the girl before him, still holding his hand while the others scrutinized him, was Consuello.

"Speak, or I won't know it's you," he said.

"Were you really surprised?" she asked.

"Beyond words," he assured her.

She turned to the man with the horn-rim spectacles.

"That is all?" she inquired.

"All for today, Miss Carrillo, thank you," she was answered. "Tomorrow at 2, same costume, but on the other set."

"Come," she said, turning to John. "We'll have tea and a talk as soon as I return to—to normalcy—that was Mr. Harding's way of expressing it, wasn't it?"

She led the way across the floor, along a twisting and turning path, through furniture, furnishings and an accumulation of "props" to the door. As they stepped out into the daylight again her face was more unlike the face of the Consuello John knew than it had been in the half gloom inside.

They crossed a narrow asphalt-paved road to a long two-story building.

"I won't be long," she said, opening the door to the section in which her dressing room was located. "When I'm ready the maid will call you. Will you wait here?"

"Don't hurry," he said. "I'll be right here where you left me."

While he was waiting "John J. Silence" emerged from the door of the stage building. John frowned, pressed his forefinger to his lips in the signal for silence that he had received inside. "John J. Silence," grinning, tiptoed away with ludicrous gestures.

In twenty minutes the maid called John to the door, holding it open for him as he entered.

"This way, please," she said, taking the lead.

A dozen steps brought them to a door marked with Consuello's name. John paused at the threshold while the maid entered, returning in a moment to hold the door open for him again. As he stepped inside she went out into the corridor, closing the door after her.

John found himself in a tiny room with brightly designed wallpaper, matted rugs, a wicker chaise longue, wicker glass-topped table, wicker tea wagon and wicker chairs, all decorated in a gay colored chintz. The heavy curtains at one side of the room parted, and Consuello—the real Consuello again—stood before him attired in a tailored suit gorgeous in its simplicity, setting off a dainty real biche lace and batiste blouse.

"Well?" she said, as if she had been waiting for him to speak.

"I'll say it again—you're beautiful," he said.

The same half credulous look that she had given him when he told her she was beautiful that day they met for the first time at the Barton Randolph lawn fete came into her eyes.

"I did not mean to ask you that," she said.

"I know," he returned, "but you are, and I couldn't help saying so."

She took a chair near the tea-table and he seated himself in the chair that was opposite to her.

"I meant, what do you think of me now?" she explained, pouring the tea into absurdly small cups, one of which she handed to him.

"It was a surprise," he said. "I'll confess to you now that you puzzled me. I could not understand why you were—well, exiled in the city during the week. I imagined you were either with friends as a sort of a permanent guest or studying."

"You never thought of me as working?" she asked.

"Yes," he admitted, "I have, but I could not picture you in any employment I could think of. It was impossible to think of you as a stenographer or a school teacher or a nurse or a shop girl."

"All because you met me at a lawn fete—a society affair," she concluded.

"No. All because—well, all because you are you."

Was that a glint of pleasure he saw for the briefest fraction of a second in her eyes?

"I asked you to come out here this afternoon because I knew that you would find it out some day, probably tomorrow or the next day, or next week, and I wanted you to know that I had not tried to keep it from you," she said. "I want you to know, too, from me, why it is I'm here."

She paused and he waited for her to continue.

"I entered picture work because—well, frankly, we—that is, father, mother and I—are alone in the world and poor," she said. "Really, honestly poor. The last that we could afford to spend from the little we have left was spent on my education. Father insisted.

"Once, and it was not so many years ago, our family was wealthy like other California families that received land grants. But father—the dear that he is—like so many of his friends, thought little of business or the future and slowly our land was sold until now only a few acres of what we once had remain—only the few acres of the home you visited.

"Of course, I was fortunate. My family name gave me entrance anywhere and still does, although there are those who think I have desecrated that name and who feel that because we are in reduced circumstances we have simply ceased to be.

"So when I was old enough to realize exactly what conditions were and what we faced I was determined to do something. It was a friend who was kind enough to believe and tell me that I had talent for acting who first interested me in motion picture work. And, not to tire you with long, boresome details, I was lucky. Somehow it was not difficult and I am now receiving enough to keep us comfortable without encroaching, as I said, on what little father has left.

"There, you have my story," she concluded, settling back in her chair.

"And the work, do you like it?" he asked.

"I do like it," she replied. "And, besides, what else could I do? You have said yourself that I could never be a stenographer, a school teacher or a nurse or a shop girl."

"You could be anything," he hastened to explain, "from a shop girl to a—to a—a queen."

"That's better," she concurred, smiling.

"Those tears you shed back there before the camera, who were they for?"

"For the man I loved—in the story," she explained. "I was 'emoting'—as they call it—over his death. The inspiration was provided by the orchestra you heard playing. My director thinks it's wonderful that I can shed tears whenever he asks me to. He says it's a relief not to have to substitute drops of glycerine or hold a raw onion under his leading woman's nose to bring about the required lachrymal effect. To be able to cry easily before the camera, he says, is the supreme test, because to shed real tears you must have imagination and imagination is everything."

"And how do you do it?"

"There are plenty of causes for tears in life, far too many, don't you think?" she said. "When my director calls for tears I simply think of one of the many—pictures I have seen of starving children, an empty stocking at Christmas time, a homeless kitten, an orphan baby."

"Don't you ever think of the story and cry because you are carried away by the imaginative sorrow of the death of the man you love?"

"No," she said, laughing. "How can I? Most of the time I'm really glad—not in the story, of course—that he's out of the picture. The publicity man always refers to me as a star of the emotional type and writes yards upon yards of stuff about how I actually 'live' the part I am playing. My imagination doesn't carry me that far, though, and if imagination is everything, as my director says, the publicity man should be the greatest actor living."

"I don't pay much attention to pictures, but I can't remember ever having seen your name or photograph in the advertisements," he said.

"Have you ever noticed the name of Jean Hope?"

"Often."

"That is the name I took when I had advanced far enough to be featured. It was suggested to me by the publicity man, who insisted upon it being short and snappy, as he said, something that would be easy to remember and easy to put into type. Of course, I am not obscured to my friends, who all know that I am Jean Hope. Only once have I had to be positively firm with the publicity man and that was when he wanted to make me the subject of a newspaper story that society girls, as he called them, were intent upon becoming motion picture actresses. That, for the sake of my friends, I simply had to refuse."

"I think," he said slowly, "that the name your father calls you is the prettiest of them all."

"Mi Primavera?"

"Yes, does anyone else call you that?"

"Only father," she said. "That is his pet name for me—'My Springtime.'"

"You know," he said, "the story you told me of the naming of Spring street; how Ord, the surveyor, named it for his sweetheart, whom he called 'Mi Primavera,' is incomplete. Tell me, if you know, did he eventually marry the beautiful Senorita Trinidad de la Guerra?"

"I have often wondered that, myself," she said. "Whether they were married or not—what a gallant, romantic thing it was for him to do."

"And how few know the story!" he added.

"What dreams he must have had for the upbuilding of that street he named for the one he loved," she said. "I imagine he little thought it was to become a business street, that he thought of it always as lined with quaintly beautiful Spanish homes, shaded and quiet, with couples strolling along it at twilight and rest and contentment everywhere."

"That was his dream," he agreed. "The dream of a practical man—a surveyor and a soldier."

"And after all," she said, "is it as you said once that it is only in books and plays that dreams come true?"

Her chin resting in her hand, she gazed out the small chintz bordered window of the room, preoccupied. He noticed the daintiness of her profile, the placid sweetness of her face in repose.

The silence was broken by a rap on the door that startled him.

"Come in," she called.

The door opened and on the threshold stood Gibson, the smile he had meant for her fading from his face.

For a moment he paused, his hand still on the knob of the door, as if he hesitated to disturb them. Then, with the appearance of putting whatever thoughts he might have had from his mind, he strode in.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "This is a surprise. How are you, Gallant? Haven't seen you since the night we had our little engagement with 'Red Mike,' who, I have just been told, will recover."

"I'm so glad to hear that," said Consuello.

"And so was I," Gibson said. "No, no, Gallant, stay where you are. I'll sit here."

John had risen to offer Gibson the chair opposite Consuello. He sought a way of relieving the embarrassment he for one, felt when Gibson made his unexpected entrance.

"Miss Carrillo has revealed herself to me as Jean Hope," he explained. "Until this afternoon I had no idea she played in pictures."

Was it because she too, felt it necessary to make some explanation that she said:

"You see, I realized that Mr. Gallant would eventually learn about it and I wanted to surprise him myself."

"I'm proud of my Consuello," Gibson said, patting her hand and speaking to John. "She is famous—really, truly famous—far more, I'm afraid than you or I will ever be, Gallant. Still, she deserves it, and we don't—that is, I don't, at least. She is so famous that I find it difficult to keep myself from becoming jealous of her."

"Jealous of my good luck?" she asked, smiling.

"No, no; jealous of the admiration that is showered upon you and those who give it. You can understand why, can't you, Gallant?"

While Gibson seemed absolutely frank and to have put the question only incidentally, John had a feeling that it was something more than a mere interrogation. He scanned Gibson's face for a trace of a betrayal of his purpose in putting the question to him.

"Easily," he replied.

"You are both more than kind to me," Consuello said. "Come, now that we three are together, let's talk of what you're doing, Reggie. It's far more interesting. I'll call for a fresh pot of tea."

She pressed a button in the wall and a maid responded.

"There's little more that is new," Gibson said. "The mayor is still standing pat, although I have reason to believe that he is feeling the pressure brought on him by those that are supporting me, because he refuses to remove Chief Sweeney. Most of the men who are his advisers are dropping away from him. His policy in the face of my attack apparently dissatisfies them. I am waiting for one of them to swing over to my side and tell exactly what his position is."

John remembered the interview Brennan and he had had with the mayor, and in his mind, as vivid as it was when it occurred, he saw the mayor solemnly pledge himself to seek to establish what he suspected—that Gibson was in league with "Gink" Cummings.