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—"