"You were equally sure a few days ago that she was Mrs. Lawton—"

"That was just my constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely theory, and I sort of hung on to it. But I had no real data to go on. Now I've got the evidence that Jim Garnett died two months before the fire burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that his body was shipped back to Holbrook Centre to be buried in the family plot. You see, he was sick for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death was registered where the fire didn't go—"

"But what put you on?" asked Ruyler impatiently. "I should almost rather it had been any one else. He seems to have been about as bad a lot as even this town ever turned out."

"He was, all right, and his father before him, although they came from mighty fine folks back east. His father came out in '49 with the gold rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life—San Francisco was a gay little burg those days—opened one of the crack gambling houses down on the Old Plaza. Plate glass windows you could look through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds of men playing at tables where the gold pieces—often slugs—were piled as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger with the sight of so much gold. They didn't try any funny business, for every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the table beside him.

"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up. Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife—she had followed him out here—persuaded him to go back home and live in the old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped off. Her name was Mary Garnett.

"That's what put me on—the G. in the middle of the name of the man Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood. He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.

"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself, either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome, distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as long as he lived.

"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.

"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time. But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old Lawton—who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days, and who was one of her best friends.

"Well, she also got Garnett to make a curious sort of a will, leaving his money to James Lawton, to 'dispose of as agreed upon.' She had a thrifty business head, had that French dame, and she had made him buy property when he was flush, and put it in her name, although she gave a written agreement never to sell out as long as he lived.

"He agreed to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the time, and, besides, she played on his family pride—lineal descendant of the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its being brought up wearing the old name, and gettin' rid of Marie at the same time.

"She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even in California; but I guess that didn't worry him much.

"If the earthquake and fire hadn't come so soon after the will was probated there might have been a lot of speculation about it, among men, at least. Those old gossips in the Club windows would soon have been putting two and two together; but the calamity that burnt up all the Club windows, just swept it clean out of their heads.

"I figger out that old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income she'd been havin' both from Jim and her properties, out of his own pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he could settle the estate. He had to borrow the money to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his wife's property, and when things got to a certain pass he wrote Madame D. to come along and take over her property. She'll be good and rich one of these days, when all the mortgages are paid off and Lawton paid back, but it was wise for her to stay on the job. Lawton is dead straight, but his partner is sowing wild oats in his old age—good old S.F. style, and I guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far. Get me?"

"It's atrocious!"

"Oh, not nearly so bad as it might be. Just think, if it had been Gabrielle, or Pauline-Marie, or even Mrs. Lawton. That's the worst kind of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie Garnett hung on like grim death to what the grand society you move in pretends to value most, and the Lord knows she'll never lose it now.

"Nor need there be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The thing to do is to hustle Madame Delano out of San Francisco. She'll go, all right, with you to look after her interests. She don't fancy being recognized and blackmailed, or I miss my guess. You may have to pay Bisbee something, but D. V.'s not that sort, and I don't think anybody else is on. If they've suspected they'll soon forget it when the old lady disappears from the Palace Hotel. Gee, but she has a nerve."

"She is an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her she'd be here to-night, rubbing elbows with the women who never knew of her existence twenty years ago, although their husbands did. It has satisfied her ironic French soul to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day after day and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnett in the obese Madame Delano, whose daughter is one of the great ladies of the city to whose underworld she once belonged, and from whose filthy profits she derives her income. Good God!"

He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spaulding, who had drawn out his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Come on," he said. "Time's gettin' short. The stunt is to be pulled off just before supper."



CHAPTER XII

I

They walked rapidly up the close avenue—planted far back in the Fifties by Ford Thornton's grandfather—the blaze of light at the end of the long perspective growing wider and wider. As they emerged they paused for a moment, dazzled by the scene.

The original home of the Thorntons had been of ordinary American architecture and covered with ivy; it might have been transplanted from some old aristocratic village in the East. Flora Thornton had maintained that only one style of architecture was appropriate in a state settled by the Spaniards, and famous for its missions of Moorish architecture. Fordy loved the old house, but as he denied his wife nothing he had given her a million, three years before the fire which so sadly diminished fortunes, and told her to build any sort of house she pleased; if she would only promise to live in it and not desert him twice a year for Europe.

The immense structure, standing on a knoll, bore a certain resemblance to the Alhambra, with its heavy square towers; its arched gateways leading into courtyards with fountains or sunken pools, the red brown of the stucco which looked like stone and was not. To-night it was blazing with lights of every color.

So were the ancient oaks, which were old when the Alhambra was built, the shrubberies, the vast rose garden. The surface of the pool in the sunken garden reflected the green or red masses of light that shot up every few moments from the four corners of the terrace surrounding it. On the lawn just above and to the right of the house, a platform had been built for dancing; it was enclosed on three sides with an arbor of many alcoves, lined with flowers, soft lights concealed in depending clusters of oranges.

And everywhere there were people dressed in costumes, gorgeous, picturesque, impressive, historic, or recklessly invented, but suggesting every era when dress counted at all. They danced on the great platform to the strains of the invisible band, strolled along the terraces above the sunken garden, wandered through the groves and "grounds," or sat in the windows of the great house or in its courts. All wore the little black satin mask prescribed by Mrs. Thornton, and created an illusion that transported the imagination far from California. Ruyler had a whimsical sense of being on another star where the favored of the different periods of Earth had foregathered for the night.

But there was nothing ghostly in the shrill chatter as incessant as the twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them and hardly knew whether to scold or join in the chorus.

Ruyler had always protested against the high-pitched din made by even six American women when gathered together, and to the infernal racket at any large entertainment; but to-night he sighed, forgetting his apprehensions for the moment.

He had exquisite memories of these lovely grounds; he and Helene had spent several days with Mrs. Thornton during their engagement, and she had lent them the house for their honeymoon; he would have liked to wander through the pleasant spaces with his wife to-night and make love to her, instead of spying on her in the company of a detective.

For that, he was forced to conclude, was what he had been brought for. Spaulding had mentioned her name casually, when telling him that he must be on hand to nab the "party" who was at the bottom of the whole trouble; but Spaulding hardly could have watched the person who was blackmailing without including her in his surveillance. He wished now that he had left that part of the mystery to take care of itself, trusting to his mother-in-law's departure to relieve the situation. No doubt she would have told him the truth herself rather than leave her daughter to the mercy of the men who knew her secret.

But he was still far from suspecting the worst of the truth.

There were a number of men in fancy dominoes; he and Spaulding crossed the lawn in front of the house unchallenged and, passing under the frowning archway, entered the first of the courts.

The oblong sunken pool was banked with myrtle, and above, as well as in the great inner court with the fountain, there were narrow arcaded windows with fluttering silken curtains. Mrs. Thornton had too satiric a sense of humor to have had the famous arabesques of the Alhambra reproduced any more than the massive coats-of-arms above the arches, but the walls were delicately colored, the delicate columns looked like old ivory, and the greatest of the local architects had been entirely successful in combining the massiveness of the warrior stronghold with the airy lightness and spaciousness of the pleasure house.

The bedrooms, Ruyler told Spaulding, were all as modern as they were luxurious, and the library, living-rooms, and dining-room, were in the best American style. Fordy had rebelled at too much "Spanish atmosphere," his blood being straight Anglo-Saxon, and Mrs. Thornton always knew when to yield. Nevertheless, Flora Thornton had built the proper setting for her barbaric beauty, and, possibly, spirit.

People were sitting about the courts on piles of colored silken cushions, those that had got themselves up in Eastern costumes having drifted naturally to the suitable surroundings; for, after all, the Moors had been Mohammedans.

"Don't let's hang round here," said the detective, "and don't stand holding yourself like a ramrod—like that gent out there with the ruff that must be taking the skin off his chin. I kinder thought I'd like to see the whole show, but we'd best go now and wait for our little turn."

He led the way round the building to the rear of the southwest tower. There was a little grove of jasmine trees just beneath it, that made the air overpoweringly sweet, but there were no lights on this side, as the garages, stables, vegetable gardens, and servants' quarters would have destroyed the picture.

Spaulding glanced about sharply, but there was not even a strolling couple, and even the moon was shining on the other side of the heavy mass of buildings.

"Now, listen," he said. "You see this window?"—he indicated one directly over their heads. "At exactly one o'clock, when everybody is flocking to the supper tables on the terraces, I expect some one to lean out of that window and talk to some one who will be waiting just below. There may be no talk, but I think there will be, and I want you to listen to every word of it without so much as drawing a long breath, no matter what is said, until I grab your elbow—like this—then I want you to put up your hand in a hurry while I'm also attendin' to business.

"That's all I'll say now. But by the time a few words have been said, later, I guess you'll be on.

"Now, we must resign ourselves to a long wait without a smoke and to keeping perfectly still. I dared not risk comin' any later for fear the others might be beforehand, too."

Ruyler ground his teeth. He felt ridiculous and humiliated. It was no compensation that he was holding up the wall of a stucco Moorish palace and that some three hundred masked people in fancy dress were within earshot... or did the way he was togged out make him feel all the more absurd? The whole thing was beastly un-American....

But, was it, after all? If he and Helene had been here together to-night, not married and harrowed, but engaged and quick with romance, would he have thought it absurd to conspire and maneuver to separate her from the crowd and snatch a few moments of heavenly solitude? Would he have despised himself for suffering torments if she flouted him or for wanting to murder any man who balked him?

Love, and all the passions, creative and destructive, it engendered, all the sentiments and follies and crimes, to say nothing of ambition and greed and the lust to kill in war—these were instincts and traits that appeared in mankind generation after generation, in every corner civilized and savage of the globe. The world changed somewhat in form during its progress, but never in substance.

And mystery and intrigue were equally a part of life, as indigenous to the Twentieth Century as to those days long entombed in history when the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella sat down on the plain before Grenada.

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others—in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance—they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.

In these days men took a bath morning and evening, ate daintily, had a refined vocabulary to use on demand, dressed in tweeds instead of velvet. There were longer intervals between the old style of warfare when men were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly after the strain and nervous worry of the day.

It suddenly felt quite normal to be here flattened against a wall waiting for some impossible denouement.

Nevertheless, he was sick with apprehension.

Would it merely be the prelude to another drama? Was his life to be a series of unwritten plays, of which he was both the hero and the bewildered spectator? Or would it bring him calm, the terrible calm of stagnation, of an inner life finished, sealed, buried?

It was inevitable in these romantic surroundings and conditions that he should revert to his almost forgotten jealousy. Suppose Spaulding had stumbled upon something.... But he had been asked for no such evidence.... It would be a damnable liberty.... It might be inextricably woven with the business in hand.... There were other men besides Doremus whom Helene saw constantly.... Spaulding may have seen his chance to nip the thing in the bud, and had taken the risk....

He felt the detective's lips at his ear: "Hear anything? Move a little so's you can look up."

Ruyler heard his wife's voice above him, then Aileen Lawton's. He parted the branches and saw the two girls lean over the low sill of the casement. Both had removed their masks, but their faces were only dimly revealed. Their voices, however, were distinct enough, and his wife's was dull and flat.

"Oh, I can't," she said. "I can't."

"Well, you'll just jolly well have to. You've got it, haven't you?"

"Oh, yes, I've got it!"

"Well, he'll never suspect you."

"I shall tell him."

"Tell him? You little fool. And give us all away?"

"I'd mention no other names."

"As if he wouldn't probe until he found out. Don't you know Price Ruyler yet? My father said once he'd have made a great District Attorney. What's the use of telling him later, for that matter? Why not now?"

"I haven't the courage yet. I might have one day—at just the right moment. I never thought I was a coward."

"You're just a kid. That's what's the matter. We ought to have left you out. I told Polly that—"

"You couldn't! Oh, don't you see you couldn't. That's the terrible part of it! Left me out? I'd have found my way in."

"I'm not so sure. You were interested in heaps of things, and in love, and all that—"

"Oh, I'd like to excuse myself by blaming it on being bored, and tired of trying to amuse myself doing nothing worth while, but it's bad blood, that's what it is, bad blood, and you know it, if none of the others do."

"Oh, I'm not one of your heredity fiends. When did your mother tell you?"

"Only the other day."

"Well, she ought to have told you long ago. I believe you'd have kept out if you'd known."

"Wouldn't I? But of course she hated to tell the truth to me—"

"Well, if I'd known that you didn't know I'd have told you, all right. I wormed it out of Dad soon after you arrived, and at first I thought it was a good joke on Society, to say nothing of Price Ruyler, with his air of God having created heaven first, maybe, but New York just after. Then I got fond of you and I wouldn't have told for the world. But I would have put you on your guard if I'd known."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if Price doesn't find out about this, if he learns the other—who my father was, and that awful men have recognized my mother—I suppose he'll hate me, and in time I'll go back to Rouen—"

"Now, you don't think as ill as that of him, do you? He makes me so mad sometimes I could spit in his face, but if he's one thing he's true blue. He's the straight masculine type with a streak of old romance that would make him love a woman the more, the sorrier he was for her, and the weaker she was—I mean so long as she was young. After this, just get to work on your character, kid. When you're thirty maybe he won't feel that it's his whole duty to protect you. You'll never be hard and seasoned like me, nor able to take care of yourself. I like danger, and excitement, and uncertainty, and mystery, and intrigue, and lying, and wriggling out of tight places. I'd have gone mad in this hole long ago, if I hadn't, for I don't care for sport. But you were intended to develop into what is called a 'fine woman,' surrounded by the right sort of man meanwhile. And Price Ruyler is the right sort. I'll say that much for him. He'd have driven me to drink, but he's just your sort—"

"And what am I doing? I am the most degraded woman in the world."

"Oh, no, you're not. Not by a long sight. You don't know how much worse you could be. One woman who is here to-night I saw lying dead drunk in the road between San Mateo and Burlingame the other day when I was driving with Alice Thorndyke, and Alice is having her fourth or fifth lover, I forget which—"

"They are no worse than I."

"Listen. He's coming. Got it ready?"

"I can't."

"You must. He'll hound you in the Merry Tattler until the whole town knows you're a welcher, and not a soul would speak to you. That is the one unpardonable sin—"

"I wish I'd told Price—"

"Oh, no, you don't. This is just a lovely way out. Glad he had the inspiration. Hello, Nick."

A man had groped his way between the trees and stood just under the window.

"What are you doing here?" asked Doremus sourly.

"Witness, witness, my dear Nick. Besides, poor Helene never would have come alone, so there you are."

"To hell with all this melodramatic business. It could have been done anywhere—"

"Not much. Dark corners for dark doings."

"Well, hand it over."

Ruyler had given his brain an icy shower bath as soon as he heard his wife's voice, and was now as cool and alert as even the detective could have wished. He did not wait for the promised impulse to his elbow; his hand shot up just ahead of Doremus's and closed over his wife's hand, which, he felt at once, held the ruby. At the same moment Spaulding caught Doremus by his medieval collar and shook him until the man's teeth chattered, then he slapped his face and kicked him.

"Now, you," he said standing over the panting man, who was mopping his bleeding nose, and holding the electric torch so that it would shine on his own face. "You get out of California, d'you hear? You're a gambler and a blackmailer and a panderer to old women, and I've got some evidence that would drag you into court however it turned out, so's you'd find this town a live gridiron. So, git, while you can. Go while the going's good."

Doremus, too shaken to reply, slunk off, and Spaulding after a glance upward, left as silently.



CHAPTER XIII

I

Aileen had shrieked and fled. Ruyler stood in the room with the ruby in his open hand. He saw that Helene was standing quite erect before him. She had made no attempt to leave the room, nor did she appear to be threatened with hysterics.

He groped until he found the electric button. The room, as Ruyler had inferred, was Mrs. Thornton's winter boudoir, a gorgeous room of yellow brocade and oriental stuffs.

"Will you sit down?" he asked.

Helene shook her head. She was very white and she looked as old as a young actress who has been doing one night stands for three months. Behind the drawn mask of her face there was her indestructible youth, but so faint that it thought itself dead.

She looked at her hands, which she twisted together as if they were cold.

"Will you tell me the truth now?" asked Price.

"Don't you guess it?"

"When I came here to-night I believed that you were the victim of blackmail. I was not watching you—I hope you will take my word for that. We—I had a detective on the case—Spaulding merely wanted to nab the man who was blackmailing you—"

"Do you still believe that?"

"I overheard your conversation with Aileen Lawton. I don't know what to believe."

"I am a gambler. My father was a gambler. He kept a notorious place in San Francisco. His name out here was James Garnett. My grandfather was a gambler. He was even more spectacular—"

"I know all that. Don't mind."

"You knew it?" For the first time she looked at him, but she turned her eyes away at once and stared at the oblong of dark framed by the window. "Why—"

"Spaulding told me to-night only."

"Mother told me a week or so ago. She'd been recognized. Shortly after I married, when she found out how the women played bridge and poker here, she made me promise I'd never touch a card, never play any sort of gambling game. I promised readily enough, and I thought nothing of her insistence. Maman was old-fashioned in many ways—I mean the life we lived in. Rouen was so different from this that I could understand how many things would shock her. I never thought about it—but—it was about six months ago—you were away for a week and I stayed with Polly Roberts at the Fairmont. I knew of course that she played and that Aileen and a lot of the others did, but I hadn't given the matter a thought. One heard nothing but bridge, bridge, bridge. I was sick of the word.

"But I found they played poker. Polly and Aileen, Alice Thorndyke, Janet Maynard, Mary Kimball, Nick Doremus, Rex and one or two other men who could get off in the afternoons.

"I never had dreamed any one in society played for such high stakes. Janet Maynard and Mary Kimball could afford it, but Polly and Alice and Aileen couldn't. Still they often won—enough, anyhow, to clean up and go on. Doremus is a wonderful player. That is how I got interested, watching him after he had explained the game to me.

"It was a long time before I was persuaded to take a hand. It was so interesting just to watch. And not only the game, but their faces. Some would have a regular 'poker face,' others would give themselves away. Once Aileen had the most awful hysterics. We were afraid some one outside would hear her; the deadening was burnt out of the walls of the Fairmont at the time of the fire. But we were in the middle room of the suite.

"Nick told her in his dreadful cold expressionless voice that if she ever did that again he'd never play another game with her. That meant that they'd all drop her, and she came to and promised, and she kept her word. Poker is the breath of life to her. I think she'd become a drug fiend if she couldn't have it.

"At last they persuaded me to play. We were playing at Nick's, and after a light dinner served by his Jap, we went right on playing until midnight. I never thought of you or anything. I seemed to respond with every nerve in my body and brain. I won and won and won, and even when I lost I didn't mind. The sensation, the tearing excitement just under a perfectly cool brain was wonderful.

"I only ceased to enjoy it when I realized what it meant. When I couldn't keep away from it. When I lived for the hour when we would meet,—at Polly's, or at Nick's or at Aileen's—any of the places where we were supposed to be dancing, but where there was no danger of being found out. Of course I dared not have them at home, and the others lived with their families, or had too many servants....

"I came fully to my senses one day when Nick told me I was a born gambler if ever there was one. Then, when I realized, I became desperately unhappy.

"I was the slave of a thing. I was deceiving you. When I was at the table I loved poker better than you, better than anything on earth. When I was alone I hated it. But I couldn't break away. Besides, I didn't always win. I had to play in the hope of winning back. Or if I won a lot it was a point of honor to go on and play again, and give them their chance.

"Mrs. Thornton found out. She gave me a terrible talking to. I am afraid I was very insolent.

"But she came up that night of the Assembly and warned me that you were down stairs. I was playing in Polly's room. We had all danced two or three times and then slipped up to the next floor by different stairs and lifts. I liked her better then. Of course she did it for your sake, not mine. But she's a good sort, not a cat.

"You have not noticed, but I have not bought a new gown this season except that little gray one and this—which was made in the house. I dared not pawn my jewels, for fear you would miss them.

"I have been in hell.

"Then—it was that evening you heard maman reproach me for breaking my promise—I had lost a dreadful lot of money and Nick had scurried round and borrowed it for me. I didn't know then that he meant all the time to get hold of the ruby—I am sure now that he cheated and made me lose.

"Well, I sent the maid away that night and told maman. She was nearly off her head. I never saw her excited before. Then she told me the truth. I felt as if I had been turned to stone. But I felt suddenly cool and wary. I knew I must keep my head. It was as if my father had suddenly come alive in my brain. I had never lied to you before, merely put you off. But how I lied that night! I felt possessed. But I knew I must not be found out, and I made up my mind to stop playing as soon as I came out even. If I had known that my father and my grandfather had been gamblers I never should have touched a card. I'd far rather have drunk poison.

"I made up my mind then, and there to stop and I felt quite capable of it. But I had to go on and square myself, for I owed that money to Nick. But when I played it was with my head only. All the fever had gone out of my veins. I loathed it. I loathed still more deceiving you.

"I won and won and won. I thought I was delivered. I was almost happy again. Some day I meant to tell you—when it was all over.

"Then I began to lose horribly. Thousands. It ran up to twenty thousand. I did not betray myself, and the girls thought I had money of my own and could pay my losses quite easily. They didn't know that Nick always helped me out. He was never the least bit in love with me—he couldn't love any woman—but he said I played such a wonderful game and was such a sport, never lost my head, that he wouldn't lose me for the world—when I threatened to stop and never play again.

"But all the time he wanted the ruby. I found that out when he told me he must have the money inside of a week; he'd taken it out of his business, and it really belonged to his partners, and they'd find him out and send him to prison—

"I offered him my jewels. They would have brought half their value at least. I could have told you they were stolen—only one more lie. It was then he said he must have the ruby. He had known about it ever since you came out here, but after he saw it on me that night at the Gwynnes' he was more than ever determined to have it.

"I laughed at him at first. It seemed preposterous that he could demand a ruby worth two or three hundred thousand dollars in payment for a debt of twenty thousand. I thought of selling my jewels and furs and laces, or pawning them and raising the amount—he only had my I.O.U. for that sum. But I didn't know where to go. So I told Aileen. She wouldn't hear of my disposing of my things, said it would, be all over town in twenty-four hours. She advised me to get the twenty thousand out of you on one pretext or another.

"I tried. You will remember. Then Nick began to haunt me. He whispered in my ear wherever we met. I was nearly frantic. He said he could hold me up to shame without compromising himself. I had written him some frantic letters, and he said they read just like—like—the other thing.

"I felt perfectly helpless. I knew that even if I did manage to pawn the jewels, you would miss them from the safe and trace them. I ceased to feel cool. I nearly went off my head. But I stopped gambling. I felt sure by this time that he could make me lose, but I couldn't prove it. Aileen told me I must give him the ruby. He promised me before Aileen that he would give me back my I.O.U.'s as well as my notes if I would hand over the ruby. He knew I was to wear it to-night.

"Finally I gave in. Yesterday Nick called me up on the telephone and told me to come down to the California Market to lunch, and to bring Aileen. He told me there that unless I promised to give him the ruby to-night, and kept my word, he'd either give my I.O.U.'s and my notes to you or to the Merry Tattler. He didn't care which. I could have my choice.

"I said I would do it. But it was terribly conspicuous. Everybody would notice when it was gone. He said I must conceal it anyhow until we unmasked after supper, and then I could pretend I had lost it. He discussed several plans for having me slip it to him, but it was Aileen who insisted we should come here. Mrs. Thornton never opens her boudoir at a party. Everywhere else would be a blaze of light. In this dark corner we should be safe, especially if he came from the outside and I from inside. How did your detective find out?"

"I think Aileen did a decent thing for once in her life."

She went on in her monotonous voice. "I felt reckless after that and I really was gay and almost happy at dinner last night. The die was cast. I didn't much care for anything. I thought perhaps it was my last night with you—that when I told you I had lost the ruby you would suspect and turn me out of your house, tell maman to take me back to Rouen.

"Then came that awful moment when you said you had to go away and I could not wear it. For a few moments I thought I should scream and tell you everything. But I was both too proud and too much of a coward. Then I knew I should have to rob the safe, and somehow I hated that part more than anything else. I did it just ten minutes before Rex and Polly called for me to motor down here. It had seemed the most horrible thing in the world to be a gambler, but it was worse to be a thief.

"I remembered the combination perfectly. I have that sort of memory: it registers photographically. I had seen you move the combination several times. Perhaps I deliberately registered it. I can't say. I have lived in such a maze of intrigue lately. I can't say. That is all—except that I didn't get the letters and the other things."

"He had an envelope in one hand. Spaulding has it beyond a doubt."



CHAPTER XIV

There was silence for a moment and then Price said awkwardly: "It is a pity you haven't the chain or you could wear the ruby for the rest of the evening."

She turned her eyes from the window and stared at him. "I have the chain—" She raised her hand to the tip of her bodice—"but—but—you can't mean—it isn't possible that you can forgive me."

"I think I have taken very bad care of you. What are you, after all, but a brilliant child? I am thirty-three—"

He suddenly tore off his domino with, a feeling of rage, and thrust his hands into his friendly pockets. He had never made many verbal protestations to her, although the most exacting wife could have found no fault with his love-making. But to-night he felt dumb; he was mortally afraid of appearing high and noble and magnanimous.

"You see, things always happen during the first years of married life. Perhaps more happens—I mean in a pettier way—when the man has leisure and can see too much of his wife. In my case—our case—it was the other way—and something almost tragic happened. So I vote we treat it casually, as something that must have been expected sooner or later to disturb our—our—even tenor—and forget it."

"Forget it?"

"Well, yes. I can if you can."

"And can you forget who I am?"

"You are exactly what you were before those scoundrels recognized your mother, and—and—set me going. Of course I had to find out the truth. I thought you knew and tried to make you tell me. But you wouldn't—couldn't—and I had to employ Spaulding."

"Do you mean you would have married me if you had known the truth at the time?"

"Rather."

"And—but—I told you—I became a regular gambler."

He could not help smiling. "I have no fear of your gambling again. And I don't fancy you were a bit worse than the others who had no gambling blood in them—all the world has that. Gambling is about the earliest of the vices. I—if—you wouldn't mind promising—I know you will keep it."

"Nothing under heaven would induce me to play again. But—but—I opened your safe like a thief and stole—"

"Oh, not quite. After all it was yours as much as mine. If I had died without a will you would have got it.

"Of course—I know what you mean—but men have always driven women into a corner, and they have had to get out by methods of their own. I wish now I had given you the twenty thousand. I prefer you should accept my decision that it was all my fault. Give me the chain."

She drew it from her bosom and handed it to him. He fastened the ruby in its place and threw the chain over her neck. The great jewel lit up the front of her somber gown like a sudden torch in a cavern.

The stern despair of Helene's tragic mask relaxed. She dropped her face into her hands and began to sob. Then Ruyler was himself again. He picked her up in his arms and settled comfortably into the deepest of the chairs.

THE END