Hélène, as Ruyler had anticipated, refused positively to accept Mrs.Thornton's invitation.
"Do you think I'd leave you—to come home to a dreary house every night? Even if I don't see much of you, at least you know I'm there; and that if you have an evening off you have only to say the word and I'll break any engagement—you have always known that!"
Ruyler had not, but she looked so eager and sweet—she was lunching with him at the Palace Hotel on the day following his interview with Spaulding—that he hastened to assure her affectionately that the certainty of his wife's desire for his constant companionship was both his torment and his consolation.
Hélène continued radiantly:
"Besides, darling, Polly Roberts is staying on. Rex can't get away yet."
"Polly Roberts is not nearly good enough for you. She hasn't an idea in her head and lives on excitement—"
Hélène laughed merrily. "You are quite right, but there's no harm in her. After all, unless one goes in for charities (and I can't, Price, yet; besides the charities here are wonderfully looked after), plays bridge, has babies, takes on suffrage—what is there to do but play? I suppose once life was serious for young women of our class; but we just get into the habit of doing nothing because there's nothing to do. Take to-morrow as an example: I suppose Polly and I will wander down to The Louvre in the morning and buy something or look at the new gowns M. Dupont has just brought from Paris.
"Then we'll lunch where there's lots of life and everybody is chatting gayly about nothing.
"Then we'll go to the Moving Pictures unless there is a matinée, and then we'll motor out to the Boulevard, and then back and have tea somewhere.
"Or, perhaps, we'll motor down to the Club at Burlingame for lunch and chatter away the day on the veranda, or dance. This afternoon we'll probably ring up a few that are still in town, and dance in Polly's parlor at the Fairmont."
Hélène's lip curled, her voice had risen. With, all her young enjoyment of wealth and position, she had been bred in a class where to idle is a crime. "Just putting in time—time that ought to be as precious as youth and high spirits and ease and popularity! But what is one to do? I have no talents, and I'd lose caste in my set if I had. I don't wonder the Socialists hate us and want to put us all to work. No doubt we should be much happier. But now—even if you retired from business, you'd spend most of your time on the links. We poor women wouldn't be much better off."
"It does seem an abnormal state of affairs; I've barely given it a thought, it has always been such a pleasure to find you, after a hard day's work, looking invariably dainty, and pretty, and eloquently suggestive of leisure and repose. But—to the student of history—I suppose it is a condition that cannot last. There must be some sort of upheaval due. Well, I hope it will give me more of your society."
They smiled at each other across the little table in perfect confidence. They were lunching in the court, and after she had blown him a kiss over her glass of red wine, her eyes happened to travel in the direction of the large dining-room. She gave a little exclamation of distaste.
"There is maman lunching with that hateful old Mr. Lawton. He was in her sitting-room when I ran in to call on her yesterday, and nearly snapped my head off when I asked him if he wouldn't buy my electric for Aileen. He said it was time she began to learn a few economies instead of more extravagances. Poor darling Aileen. She has to stay in town, too, for he won't open the house in Atherton until he is ready to go down himself every night."
"Is he an old friend of your mother's?"
"She and Papa met him when they were here, and Mrs. Lawton was very kind when I was born. It's too bad Mrs. Lawton's dead. She'd be a nice friend for maman."
"Perhaps your mother is asking Mr. Lawton's advice about the investment of money."
He had been observing his wife closely, but it was more and more apparent that if Mr. Lawton held the key to her mother's past she had not been informed of the fact. She answered indifferently:
"Possibly. One can get much higher interest out here than in France, and maman would never invest money without the best advice. She loves me, but money next. Oh, là! là!"
"Has she said anything more about going back to Rouen?"
"I didn't have a word with her alone yesterday, but I'll ask her to-day. Poor maman! I fancy the novelty has worn off here, and she would really be happier with her own people and customs. She hates traveling, like all the French; but don't you think that, after a bit we shall be able to go over to Europe at least once a year?"
"I am sure of it. And while I am attending to business in London you could visit your mother in Rouen. Tell her that one way or another I'll manage it."
And this seemed to him an ideal arrangement!
When they left the table and walked through the more luxurious part of the court, they saw Madame Delano alone and enthroned as usual in the largest but most upright of the armchairs. And as ever she watched under her fat drooping eyelids the passing throng of smartly dressed women, hurrying men, sauntering, staring tourists. Here and there under the palms sat small groups of men, leaning forward, talking in low earnest tones, their faces, whether of the keen, narrow, nervous, or of the fleshy, heavy, square-jawed, unimaginative, aggressive, ruthless type, equally expressing that intense concentration of mind which later would make their luncheon a living torment.
Hélène threw herself into a chair beside her mother and fondled her hand. Ruyler noted that after Madame Delano's surprised smile of welcome she darted a keen glance of apprehension from one to the other, and her tight little mouth relaxed uncontrollably in its supporting walls of flesh. But she lowered her lids immediately and looked approvingly at her daughter, who in her new gown of gray, with gray hat and gloves and shoes, was a dainty and refreshing picture of Spring. Then she looked at Ruyler with what he fancied was an expression of relief.
"I wonder you do not do this oftener," she said.
"I never know until the last moment when or where I shall be able to take lunch, and then I often have to meet three or four men. Such is life in the city of your adoption."
"There is no city in the world where women are so abominably idle and useless!" And at the moment, whatever Madame Delano may have been, her voice and mien were those of a virtuous and outraged bourgeoisie. "You are all very well, Ruyler, but if I had known what the life of a rich young woman was in this town, I'd have married Hélène to a serious young man of her own class in Rouen; a husband who would have given her companionship in a normal civilized life, who would have taken care of her as every young wife should be taken care of, and who would have insisted upon at least two children as a matter of course. With us The Family is a religion. Here it is an incident where it is not an accident."
Ruyler, who was still standing, looked down at his mother-in-law with profound interest. He had never heard her express herself at such length before. "Do you think I fail as a husband?" he asked humbly. "God knows I'd like to give my wife about two-thirds of my time, but at least I have perfect confidence in her. I should soon cease to care for a wife I was obliged to watch."
"Young things are young things." Madame Delano looked at Hélène, who had turned very white and had lowered her own lids to hide the consternation in her eyes. But as her mother ceased speaking she raised them in swift appeal to Ruyler.
"Maman says I coquette too much," she said plaintively, and Price wondered if a slight movement under the hem of Madame Delano's long skirts meant that the toe of a little gray shoe were boring into one of the massive plinths of his mother-in-law. "But tell him, maman, that you don't really mean it. I can't have Price jealous. That would be too humiliating. I'm afraid I do flirt as naturally as I breathe, but Price knows I haven't a thought for a man on earth but him." The color had crept back into her cheeks, but there was still anxiety in her soft black eyes, and Price was sure that the little pointed toe once more made its peremptory appeal.
Madame Delano looked squarely at her son-in-law.
"That's all right—so far," she said grimly. "Hélène is devoted to you. But so have many other young wives been to busy American husbands. Now, take my advice, and give her more of your companionship before it is too late.Watch over her. There always comes a time—a turning-point—European husbands understand, but American husbands are fools. Woman's loyalty, fed on hope only, turns to resentment; and then her separate life begins. Now, I've warned you. Go back to your office, where, no doubt, your clerks are hanging out of the windows, wondering if you are dead and the business wrecked. I want to talk to Hélène."
In spite of his wise old French mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past, and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it alarming, and—unwelcome, but inevitable thought—peculiarly dangerous to a young and beautiful creature with wild and lawless blood in her veins.
However, it was patent that so far her apprehensions were merely the result of a rare imaginative flight, the result, no doubt, of her own threatened exposure. Once more he admired her courage in returning to San Francisco, and as he recalled the covert air of cynical triumph, with which she had accepted his offer for her daughter's hand, he made no doubt that one object had been to play a sardonic joke on the city she must hate.
He renewed his determination to keep what guard he could over his young wife, and wondered if his brother Harold, who also had elected to enter the old firm, could not be induced to come out and take over a certain share of the responsibility. The young man had paid him a visit a year ago and been enraptured with life in California.
True, he was accustomed to make quick decisions without consulting any one, and he should find a partner irksome, but he was beginning to realize acutely that business, even to an American brain, packed with its traditions and energies, was not even the half of life, should be a means not an end; he set his teeth as he walked rapidly along Montgomery Street and vowed that he would keep his domestic happiness if he had to retire on what was available of his own fortune. He even wondered if it would not be wise to buy a fruit ranch, where he and Hélène could share equally in the management, and begin at once to raise a family. They both loved outdoor life, and this life of complete frivolity, in which she seemed to be hopelessly enmeshed, might before long corrode her nature and blast the mental aspirations that still survived in that untended soil. When this great merging deal was over he should be free to decide.
He arrived at home on the following afternoon at six and was immediately rung up by Spaulding, who demanded an interview. It was not worth while going down town again, as Hélène was out and would no doubt return only in time to dress for dinner. They were to dine at half-past seven and go to the play afterward. He told Spaulding to take a taxi and come to the house.
Nothing had occurred meanwhile to cause him anxiety. He had taken Hélène out to the Cliff House to dinner the night before, and afterward to see the road-houses, whose dancing is so painfully proper early in the evening. Polly Roberts had come into the most notorious of them at eleven, chaperoning a party, which included Aileen Lawton, a girl as restless and avid of excitement as herself. Rex Roberts and several other young men had been in attendance, and Polly had begged Ruyler to stay on and let his wife see something of "real life."
"This is one of the sights of the world, you know," she said, puffing her cigarette smoke into his face. "It'stoomiddle-class to be shocked, and not to see occasionally what you really cannot get anywhere else. Why, there'll even be a lot of tourists here later on, and these dancers don't do the real Apache until about one. At least leave Hélène with me, if you care more for bed than fun."
But Ruyler had merely laughed and taken his wife home. Hélène had made no protest; on the contrary had put her arm through his in the car and her head on his shoulder, vowing she was worn out, and glad to go home. It was only afterward that it occurred to him that she had clung to him that night.
Spaulding entered the library without taking off his hat, and chewing a toothpick vigorously. He began to talk at once, stretching himself out in a Morris chair, and accepting a cigar. This time Price smoked with him.
"Well," said the detective, "it's like the game of button, button, who's got the button? Sometimes I think I'm getting a little warmer and then I go stone cold. But I've found out a few things, anyhow. How tall should you say Madame Delano is? I've only seen her sitting on her throne there in the Palace Court lookin' like an old Sphinx that's havin' a laugh all to herself."
"About five feet ten."
"The Mother Superior said six feet, but no doubt when she had figger instead of flesh she looked taller. Well, I've discovered no less than five tall handsome brunettes that sparkled here in the late Eighties and early Nineties, but it's the deuce and all to get an exact description out of anybody, especially when quite a few years have elapsed. Most people don't see details, only effects. That's what we detectives come up against all the time. So, whether these ladies were five feet eight, five feet ten, or six feet, whether they had large features or small, big hands and feet or fine points, or whether they added on all the inches they yearned for by means of high heels or style, is beyond me. But here they are."
He took his neat little note-book from his pocket and was about to read it, when Ruyler interrupted him.
"But surely you know whether these women were French or not?"
"Aw, that's just what you can't always find out. Lots of 'em pretend to be, and others—if they come from good stock in the old country—want you to forget it. But the queens generally run to French names, as havin' a better commercial value than Mary Jane or Ann Maria. One of these was Marie Garnett, who wasn't much on her own but spun the wheel in Jim's joint down on Barbary Coast, which was raided just so often for form's sake. She always made a quick getaway, was never up in court, and died young. Gabrielle ran an establishment down on Geary Street and was one of the swellest lookers and swellest togged dames in her profession till the drink got her. I can't find that she ever hooked up to a James or any one else. Pauline-Marie was another razzle-dazzle who swooped out here from nowhere and burrowed into quite a few fortunes and put quite a few of our society leaders into mourning. She disappeared and I can't trace her, but she seems to have been the handsomest of the bunch, and was fond of showing herself at first nights, dressed straight from Paris, until some of our war-hardened 'leaders' called upon the managers in a body and threatened never to set foot inside their doors again unless she was kept out, and the managers succumbed. Then there was the friend of a rich Englishman, whose first name I haven't been able to get hold of. They lived first at Santa Barbara, then loafed up and down the coast for a year or two, spending quite a time in San Francisco. She was 'foreign looking' and a stunner, all right. All of these dames drifted out about the same time—"
"What was the Englishman's name?"
"J. Horace Medford. Front name may or may not have been James. I doubt if his name could be found on any deeds, even in the south, where there was no fire. He doesn't seem to have bought any property or transacted any business. Just lived on a good-sized income. Of course, all the hotel registers here were burnt, but I wired to Santa Barbara and Monterey and got what I have given you.
"He had a yacht, and he took the woman with him everywhere. There was always a flutter when they appeared at the theater. Of course she went by his name, but as he never presented a letter all the time he was here and it was quite obvious he could have brought all he wanted, and as men are always 'on' anyhow, there was but one conclusion."
"Where did he bank? They might have his full name."
"Bank of California, but his remittances were sent to order of J. HoraceMedford, and, of course, he signed his cheques the same way."
"That sounds the most likely of the lot—and the most hopeful."
"Well, haven't handed you the fifth yet, and to my mind she's the most likely of all. Ever hear of James Lawton's trouble with his wife?"
"Trouble? I thought she died."
"She—did—not. She went East suddenly about fifteen years ago, and soon after a notice of her death appeared in the San Francisco papers. But there was a tale of woe (for old Lawton) that I doubt if most of her own crowd had even a suspicion of."
"Good heavens!" Ruyler recalled the apparent intimacy of his mother-in-law and the senior member of the respectable firm of Lawton and Cross. If "Madame Delano" were the former Mrs. Lawton, how many things would be explained.
"This woman's name was Marie all right, and she was French, although she seems to have been adopted by some people named Dubois and brought up in California. She was quite the proper thing in high society, but the trouble was that she liked another sort better. She was a regular fly-by-night. It began when Norton Moore, a rotten limb of one of the grandest trees in San Francisco Society—so respectable they didn't know there was any side to life but their own—sneaked Mrs. Lawton and three girls out of his mother's house one night when she was givin' a ball, put 'em in a hack and took 'em down to Gabrielle's. There they spent an hour lookin' at Gabrielle's swell bunch dressed up and doin' the grand society act with some of the men-about-town. Then they danced some and opened a bottle or two.
"I never heard that this little jaunt hurt the girls any, but it woke up something in Mrs. Lawton. After that—well, there are stories without end. Won't take up your time tellin' them. The upshot was that one night Lawton, who took a fling himself once in a while, met her at Gabrielle's or some other joint, and she went East a day or two after. I suppose he didn't get a divorce, partly on account of the kid—Aileen—partly because he had no intention of trying his luck again."
"But is there any evidence that she had another child—that she hid away?"
"No, but it might easy have been. This life went on for about eight years, and it was at least five that she and Lawton merely lived under the same roof for the sake of Aileen. They never did get on. That much, at least, was well known. It might easy be—"
Ruyler made a rapid calculation. Aileen Lawton was just about three years older than Hélène. She was fair like her father. There was no resemblance between her and his wife, but the intimacy between them had been spontaneous and had never lapsed. She had grown up quite unrestrained and spoilt, and broken three engagements, and was always rushing about proclaiming in one breath, that California was the greatest place on earth and in the next that she should go mad if she didn't get out and have a change. Another grievance was that although her father let her have her own way, or rather did not pretend to control her, he gave her a rather niggardly allowance for her personal expenses and she was supposed to be heavily in debt. Ruyler thought he could guess where a good deal of his wife's spare cash had gone to. He disliked Aileen Lawton as much as he did Polly Roberts; more, if anything, because she might have been clever and she chose to be a fool. Both of these intimate friends of his wife were the reverse of the superb outdoor type he admired.
"Good Lord!" he said. "I don't think there's much choice."
But in a moment he shook his head. "Too many things don't connect. Where did she get the money to go to her relations in Rouen—"
"He pensioned her off, of course."
"And the child? How did he consent to let her return here with a daughter he probably never had heard of—"
"I figger out, either that she came into some money from a relation over in France, or else she has something on the old boy, and wanting to come back here and marry her daughter, she held him up. He's a pillar of the church, been one of the Presidents of the Pacific-Union Club, has argued cases before the Supreme Court that have been cabled all over the country. When a man of that sort gets to Lawton's time of life he don't want any scandals."
"All the same," said Ruyler positively, "I don't believe it. I think it far more likely that he was a friend of Madame Delano's husband—assuming that she had one—and that some money was left with him in trust for her or the child."
"Well, it may be, but I incline to Lawton—"
"There's one person would know—"
"'Gene Bisbee. But I never went to that bunch yet for any information, and I don't go this time except as a last resort. Of course he knows, and that is one reason I believe she is Mrs. Lawton. He was Gabrielle's maquereau for years—when he'd wrung enough out of her he set up for himself—Well, I ain't through yet, by a long sight. Beliefs ain't proof." He rose slowly from the deep chair, stretched himself, and settled his hat firmly on his head.
"What's this I hear about a wonderful ruby your wife wore up to Gwynne's the other night? Gosh! I'd like to see a sparkler like that."
"Why, by all means."
Ruyler swung the bookcase outward, opened the safe and handed him the ruby. Spaulding regarded it with bulging eyes, and touched it with his finger tips much as he would a newborn babe. "Some stone!" he said, as he handed it back, "but why in thunder don't you keep it in a safe deposit box? There are crooks that can crack any safe, and if they got wise to this—oh, howdy, ma'am—"
Hélène had come in and stood behind the two men.
Spaulding snatched off his hat and she acknowledged her husband's introduction graciously. She was dressed for the evening in white. Her eyes looked abnormally large, and she kept dropping her lids as if to keep them from setting in a stare. Her lovely mouth with its soft curves was faded and set. The whole face was almost as stiff as a mask, and even her graceful body was rigid. Ruyler saw Spaulding give her a sharp "sizing-up" look, as he murmured,
"Well, so long, Guv. See you to-morrow. Hope the man'll turn out all right after all."
"I hope so. He's a good chap otherwise."
"Good night, ma'am. Tell your husband to put that ruby in a safe deposit box."
"Oh, nobody knows the safe is there except Mr. Ruyler and myself—"
"There have been safes hidden behind bookcases before," said Spaulding dryly. "And crooks, like all the other pests of the earth, just drift naturally to this coast. If I were you I'd have a detective on hand whenever you wear that bit o' glass—not at a friendly affair like the Gwynnes' dinner, of course, but—"
"Good idea!" exclaimed Ruyler. "My wife will wear the ruby to theThornton fête on the fourteenth. Will you be on hand to guard it?"
"Won't I? About half our force is engaged for that blow-out, but no one but yours truly shall be guardian angel for the ruby. Well, good night once more, and good luck."
* * * * *
As soon as the detective had gone Ruyler drew his wife to him anxiously,"What is it, Hélène? You look—well, you don't look yourself!"
"I have a headache," she said irritably. "Perhaps I'm developing nerves. I do wish you would take me to New York. Other women get away from this town once in a while."
"But you told me on Sunday that you adored California, that it was like fairy land—"
"Oh, all the women out here bluff themselves and everybody else just so long and then suddenly go to pieces. It's a wonderful state, but what a life! What a life! Surely I was made for something better. I don't wonder—"
"What?" he asked sharply.
"Oh, nothing. I feel ungrateful, of course. I really should be quite happy. Think if I had to go back to Rouen to live—after this taste of freedom, and beauty—for California has all the beauties of youth as well as its idiocies and vices—"
"There is not the remotest danger of your ever being obliged to live inRouen again—"
"Oh, I don't know. You might get tired of me. We might fight like cat and dog for want of common interests, of something to talk about. You would never take to drink like so many of the men, but I might—well, I'm glad dinner is ready at last."
But she played with her food. That she was repressing an intense and mounting excitement Ruyler did not doubt, and he also suspected that she wished to broach some particular subject from which she turned in panic. They were alone after coffee had been served, and he said abruptly:
"What is it, Hélène? Do you want money? I have an idea that Polly Roberts and Aileen Lawton borrow heavily from you, and that they may have cleaned you out completely on the first—"
"How dear of you to guess—or rather to get so close. It's worse than that. I—that is—well—poor Polly went quite mad over a pearl necklace at Shreve's and they told her to take it and wear it for a few days, thinking, I suppose, she would never give it up and would get the money somehow. She—oh, it's too dreadful—she lost it—and she dares not tell Rex—he's lost quite a lot of money lately—and she's mad with fright—and I told her—"
"Where did she lose it? It's not easy to lose a necklace, especially when the clasp is new."
"She thinks it was stolen from her neck at the theater—you heard what that man said."
"Ah! What was the price of the necklace?"
"Twenty thousand dollars. The pearls weren't so very large, of course, but Polly never had had a pearl necklace—"
"I'll let her have the money to pay for it on one condition—that it is a transaction, between Roberts and myself—"
"No! No! Not for anything!"
"I've lent him money before—"
"But he'd never forgive Polly. He—he's one of those men who make an awful fuss on the first of every month when his wife's bills come in."
"There must be a bass chorus on the first of every month in SanFrancisco—"
"Oh, please don't jest. She must have this money."
"She may have it—on those terms. I'll have no business dealings with women of the Polly Roberts sort. That would be the last I'd ever see of the twenty thousand—"
"I never thought you were stingy!"
Ruyler, in spite of his tearing anxiety, laughed outright. "Is that your idea of how the indulgent American husband becomes rich?"
"Oh—of course I wouldn't have you lose such a sum. I really have learned the value of money in the abstract, although I can't care for it as much as men do."
"I have no great love of money, but there is a certain difference between a miser and a levelheaded business man—"
"Price, I must have that money. Polly—oh, I am afraid she will kill herself!"
"Not she. A more selfish little beast never breathed. She'll squeeze the money out of some one, never fear! But I think I'll lock up your jewels in case you are tempted to raise money on them for her—Darling!"
Hélène, without a sound, had fainted.
They had intended to go to the theater but Ruyler put her to bed at once. He offered to read to her, but she turned her back on him with cold disdain, and he went to the little invisible cupboard where she kept her own jewels and took out the heavy gold box which had been the wedding present of one of his California business friends who owned a quartz mine.
"I shall put this in the safe," he said incisively, "for, while I admire your stanchness in friendship, even for such an unworthy object as Polly Roberts, I do not propose that my wife shall be selling or pawning her jewels for any reason whatever. Think over the proposal I made downstairs. If Polly is willing I'll lend Roberts the money to-morrow."
She had thrown an arm over her face and she made no reply. He went down stairs and put the box in the safe. It occurred to him that she had watched him open and close the safe several times but she certainly never had written the combination down, and it had taken him a long while to commit it to memory himself.
He had glanced over the contents of the box before he locked it in. The jewels were all there, the string of pearls that he had given her on their marriage day, a few wedding presents, and several rings and trinkets he had bought for her since. The value was perhaps twenty thousand dollars, for he had told her that she must wait several years before he could give her the jewels of a great lady. When she was thirty, and really needed them to make up for fading charms—it had been one of their pleasant little jokes.
As Ruyler set the combination he sighed and wondered whether their days of joking were over. Their life had suddenly shot out of focus and it would require all his ingenuity and patience, aided by friendly circumstance, to swing it into line again. He did not believe a word of the necklace story. Somebody was blackmailing the poor child. If he could only find out who! He made up his mind suddenly to put this problem also in the hands of Spaulding for solution. The question of his mother-in-law's antecedents was important enough, but that of his wife's happiness and his own was paramount.
He decided to go to the theater himself, for he was in no condition for sleep or the society of men at the club, nor could any book hold his attention. He prayed that the play would be reasonably diverting.
He walked down town and as he entered the lobby of the Columbia at the close of the first act he saw 'Gene Bisbee and D.V. Bimmer, who was now managing a hotel in San Francisco, standing together. He also saw Bisbee nudge Bimmer, and they both stared at him openly, the famous hotel man with some sympathy in his wise secretive eyes, the reformed peer of the underworld with a certain speculative contempt.
Ruyler, to his intense irritation, felt himself flushing, and wondered if the man's regard might be translated: "Just how much shall I be able to touch him for?" He wished he would show his hand and dissipate the damnable web of mystery which Fate seemed weaving hourly out of her bloated pouch, but he doubted if Bisbee, or whoever it was that tormented his wife, would approach him save as a last resource. They were clever enough to know that her keenest desire would be to keep the disgraceful past from the knowledge of her husband, rather than from a society seasoned these many years to erubescent pasts.
Moreover it is always easier to blackmail a woman than a man, and Price Ruyler could not have looked an easy mark to the most optimistic of social brigands.
He found it impossible to fix his mind on the play; the cues of the first act eluded him, and the characters and dialogue were too commonplace to make the story negligible.
At the end of the second act Ruyler made up his mind to go home and try to coax his wife back into her customary good temper, pet her and make her forget her little tragedy. He still hesitated to broach the subject to her directly, but it was possible that by some diplomatically analogous tale he could surprise her into telling him the truth.
During the long drive he turned over in his mind the data Spaulding had placed before him during the afternoon. He rejected the theory that Madame Delano was Mrs. Lawton as utterly fantastic, but admitted a connection. Hélène had spoken more than once of Mrs. Lawton's kindness to "maman" when her baby was born during her "enforced stay in San Francisco," and it was quite possible that the two had been friends, and that the young mother had adopted the name of Dubois when calling upon the nuns of the convent at St. Peter, either because it would naturally occur to her, or from some deeper design which, he could not fathom….
Yes, the connection with Mrs. Lawton was indisputable and it remained for him to "figger out" as Spaulding would say, which of these women, the gambler's wife, the notorious "Madam," Gabrielle, the briefly coruscating Pauline Marie, or the Englishman's mistress, a woman of Mrs. Lawton's position would be most likely to befriend.
The first three might be dismissed without argument. She had been no frequenter of "gambling joints" whatever her peccadilloes; Gabrielle, he happened to know, had died some eight or ten years ago, and Mademoiselle Pauline Marie, if she had had a child, which was extremely doubtful, was the sort that sends unwelcome offspring post haste to the foundling asylum.
There remained only the spurious Mrs. Medford, and she was the probability on all counts. What more likely than that she and Mrs. Lawton had met at one of the great winter hotels in Southern California, and foregathered? Certainly they would be congenial spirits.
When the baby came Mrs. Lawton would naturally see her through her trouble, and advise her later what to do with the child. No doubt, Medford found it in the way.
After that Ruyler could only fumble. Did Medford desert the woman, driving her on the stage?—or elsewhere? Did they start for Japan, and did he die on the voyage? Did he merely give the woman a pension and tell her to go back to Rouen, or to the devil? It was positive that when Hélène was five years old Madame Delano had gone back to her relatives with some trumped up story and been received by them.
Moreover, this theory coincided with, his belief that Hélène's father was a gentleman. No doubt he had been already married when he met the young French girl, superbly handsome, and intelligent—possibly at one of the French watering places, even in Rouen itself, swarming with tourists in Summer. They might have met in the spacious aisles of the Cathedral, she risen from her prayers, he wandering about, Baedeker in hand, and fallen in love at sight. One of Earth's million romances, regenerating the aged planet for a moment, only to sink back and disappear into her forgotten dust.
His own romance? What was to be the end of that!
But he returned to his argument. He wanted a coherent story to tell his wife, and he wanted also to believe that his wife's father had been a gentleman.
Medford, like so many of his eloping kind, had made instinctively for California with the beautiful woman he loved but could not marry. Santa Barbara, Ruyler had heard, had been the favorite haven for two generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating, shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and told a plausible story.
Breeding was a part of Ruyler's religion, as component in his code as honor, patriotism, loyalty, or the obligation of the strong to protect the weak. Far better the bend sinister in his own class than a legitimate parent of the type of 'Gene Bisbee or D.V. Bimmer. Ruyler was a "good mixer" when business required that particular form of diplomacy, and the familiarities of Jake Spaulding left his nerves unscathed, but in bone and brain cells he was of the intensely respectable aristocracy of Manhattan Island and he never forgot it. He had surrendered to a girl of no position without a struggle, and made her his wife, but it is doubtful if he would even have fallen in love with her if she had been underbred in appearance or manner. He had never regretted his marriage for a moment, not even since this avalanche of mystery and portending scandal had descended upon him; if possible he loved his troubled young wife more than ever—with a sudden instinct that worse was to come he vowed that nothing should ever make him love her less.
When he arrived at his house he found two notes on the hall table addressed to himself. The first was from Hélène and read:
"Polly telephoned that she would send her car for me to go down to theFairmont and dance. I cannot sleep so I am going.She cannot sleepeither! Forgive me if I was cross, but I am terribly worried for her.Don't wait up for me. Hélène."
He read this note with a frown but without surprise. It was to be expected that she would seek excitement until her present fears were allayed and her persecutors silenced.
He determined to order Spaulding to have her shadowed constantly for at least a fortnight and note made of every person in whose company she appeared to be at all uneasy, whether they were of her own set or not. It would also be worth while to have Madame Delano's rooms watched, for it was possible that she would summon Hélène there to meet Bisbee or others of his ilk.
Then he picked up the other note. It was from Spaulding, and as he read it all his finespun theories vanished and once more he was adrift on an uncharted sea without a landmark in sight.
"Dear Sir," began the detective, who was always formal on paper. "I've just got the information required from Holbrook Centre. We didn't half believe there was such a place, if you remember? Well there is, and according to the parish register Marie Jeanne Perrin was married to James Delano on July 25th, 1891. She was there, visiting some French relations—they went back soon after—and he had left there when he was about sixteen and had only come back that once to see his mother, who was dying. Nothing seems to have been known about him in his home town except a sort of rumor that he was a bad lot and lived somewheres in California. Can you beat it? But don't think I'm stumped. I'm working on a new line and I'm not going to say another word until I've got somewheres.
"Yours truly,
"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."
During the next few days Ruyler saw little of his wife. He was obliged to take two business trips out of town and as he could not return until ten o'clock at night he advised her to have company to dinner and take her guests to the play. But she preferred to dine with Polly Roberts and Aileen Lawton, and she spent her days for the most part at Burlingame, motoring down with one or more of her friends, or sent for by some enthusiastic girl admirer already established there for the summer.
Ruyler was quite willing to forego temporarily his plan of personal guardianship, as the more she roamed abroad unattended the better could Spaulding watch her associates. The detective had his agents in society, as well as in the Palace Hotel, and on the third day he sent a brief note to Ruyler announcing that he had "lit on to something" that would make his employer's "hair curl, but no more at present from yours truly."
"This time," he added, "I'm on the right track and know it. No more fancy theories. But I won't say a word till I can deliver the goods. Give your wife all the rope you can."
Price and Hélène met briefly and amiably and she did not again broach the subject of the loan for her friend, nor did she ask for her jewels. It was apparent that she was proudly determined to conceal whatever terrors or even worries that might haunt her, but the effort deprived her of all her native vivacity; she was almost formal in manner and her white face grew more like a classic mask daily.
On the evening before the Thornton fête, however, Price was able to dine at home. They met at table and he saw at once that she either had recovered her spirits or was making a deliberate attempt to create the impression of a carefree young woman happy in a tête-à-tête dinner with a busy husband.
Her talk for the most part was of the great entertainment at San Mateo. The weather promised to be simply magnificent. Wasn't that exactly like Flora Thornton's luck? The immense grounds were simply swarming with workmen; wagon-loads of all sorts of things went through the gates after every train—simply one procession after another; but no one else could so much as get her nose through those gates.
Hélène, with all her old childish glee, related how she and Aileen, Polly (who apparently had forgotten her impending doom), and two or three other girls, had called up Mrs. Thornton on the telephone every ten minutes for an hour—pretending it was long distance to make sure of a personal response—and begged to be allowed to go over and see the preparations, until finally, in a towering rage, her ladyship had replied that if they called her again she would withdraw her invitations.
"How we did long for an airship. It would have been such fun, for she does so disapprove of all of us; thinks us a little flock of silly geese. Well, we are, I guess, but wasn't she one herself once? She has a pretty hard time even now making life interesting for herself—out here, anyhow.
"Yesterday we motored down to Menlo and dropped in at the Maynards. There were a lot of the props of San Francisco society, all as rich as croesus, sitting on the veranda crocheting socks or sacks for a crop of new babies that are due. One or two were hemstitching lawn, or embroidering a monogram, or something else equally useless or virtuous. They were talking mild gossip, and didn't even have powder on. It was ghastly—"
"Hélène," said Ruyler abruptly, "what do you think is the secret of happiness—I mean, of course, the enduring sort—perhaps content would be the better word. Happiness is too dependent upon love, and love was never meant for daily food. You are not by nature frivolous, and you are capable of thought. Have you ever given any to the secret of content?"
"Yes, work," she answered promptly. "Everybody should have his daily job, prescribed either by the state or by necessity; but something he must do if both he and society would continue to exist."
Ruyler elevated his eyebrows and looked at her curiously. "Socialism. I didn't know you had ever heard of it."
"Aileen and I are not such fools as we look—as you were good enough to intimate just now. We went to a series of lectures early last winter over at the University, on Socialism—a lot of us formed a class, but all except Aileen and I dropped out.
"We continued to read for a time after the lectures were over, but of course that didn't last. One drops everything for want of stimulus, and when one begins to flutter again one is lost.
"But I heard and read and thought enough to deduce that the only vital interest in life after one's secret happiness—which one would not dare spread out too thin if one could in this American life—is necessary work well done. And that is quite different from those fussy interests and fads we create or take up for the sake of thinking we are busy and interested.
"Polly's mother once told me she never was so happy in her life as during those weeks after the earthquake and fire when all the servants had run away and she had to cook for the family out in the street on a stove they bought down in a little shop in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got the daily rations from the Government. She never thought once of—"
"Of what?"
"Oh, of doing anything rather than expire of boredom. She and Rex had been married a year and were living at home. Rex and Mr. Carter helped excavate down in the business district, as the working class wouldn't lift a finger as long as the Government was feeding them."
"There you are! Their ideal is complete leisure, and that of our delicate products of the highest civilization—compulsory jobs! What does progress mean but the leisure to enjoy the arts and all the finer fruits of progress? What else do we men really work for?"
"Progress has gone too far and defeated its own ends. Every healthy human being should be forced to work six hours a day.
"That would leave eight for sleep and ten for enjoyment of the arts and luxuries. Then we really should enjoy them, and if we couldn't have them unless we did our six hours' stint, ennui and the dissipations that it breeds would be unknown.
"I can tell you it is demoralizing, disintegrating, to wake up morning after morning—about ten o'clock!—and know that you have nothing worth while to do for another day—for all the days!—that you have no place in the world except as an ornament! Women of limited incomes and a family of growing children have enough, to do, of course—too much—they never can feel superfluous and demoralized—except by envy—but as for us! Why, I can tell you, it is a marvel we don't all go straight to the devil."
They were alone with the coffee, and she was pounding the table with her little fist. Her cheeks were deeply flushed and her black somber eyes were opening and closing rapidly, as if alternately magnetized by some ugly vision and sweeping it aside.
Price watched her with deep interest and deeper anxiety. "A good many women go to the devil," he said. "But you are not that sort."
"Oh, I don't know. I never could get up enough interest in another man to solve the problem in the usual way—but there are other resources—I—well—"
"What?" Price sat up very straight.
"Oh, dance ourselves into tuberculosis," she said lightly, and dropping her eyelashes. "And tuberculosis of the mind, certainly. On the whole, I think I prefer physical to spiritual death….
"However—I found out one thing to-day. The dancing is to be out of doors. There will be an immense arbor or something of the sort erected on the lawn above the sunken garden. My gown is a dream and I shall wear the ruby."
"Yes," he said smiling. "You shall wear the ruby. But you must expect me to keep very close to you—"
"The closer the better." She smiled charmingly. "Have you tried on your costume?"
"I haven't even looked at it. Who am I?"
"Caesar Borgia. You are not much like him yourself, darling, but I thought he was not so very unlike modern American business, as a whole."
Ruyler laughed. "Why not Machiavelli? But as no doubt it is black velvet, much puffed and slashed, I may hope it will be becoming to my nondescript fairness. You must promise not to wander off for long walks with any of your admirers. Not that I fear the admirers, but the thieves that are bound to get into that crowd one way or another. They have a way of unclasping necklaces even of the most circumspect wives in the company of not too absorbing men."
Her eyes opened and flashed, but he had no time to analyze that fleeting expression before she was promising volubly not to wander from the illuminated spaces.
* * * * *
He interrupted her suddenly. They were in the library now, and sat down on a little sofa in front of the window. The moon was high and brilliant and the great expanse of water with the high clusters of lights on the islands, the sharp hard silhouette of the encircling mountains, the green and silver stars so high above, the moving golden dots of an incoming liner from Japan, the long rows of arc lights along the shore, made a landscape of the night that Mrs. Thornton with all her millions hardly could rival.
"Are you not grateful for this?" he asked whimsically and a little wistfully.
"Oh, Price, dear, I am more grateful than you will ever know. I have not a fault on earth to find with you. You would be the prince of the fairy tale if you were not so busy.
"But that is the tragedy. You are busy—I am not."
"Well, let us have the personal solution—one that fits ourselves. You have time to think it out. I, alas! have not." He took her hand and fondled it, hoping for her confidence.
"I don't know." She had a deep rich voice and she could make it very intense. "I only know there must—must—be a change—if—if—I am to—Can't you take me abroad for a year? That might not be work, but at least I should be learning some thing—I have traveled almost not at all—and, at least, I should have you."
"But later? Most of your friends have spent a good deal of time inEurope. I doubt if any state in the Union goes to Europe as often asCalifornia! They are all the more discontented when they come back hereto vegetate—as Mrs. Thornton would express it.
"It would be a blessed interval, but no more."
"We should have time to think out a new and different life….
"You know—in the class I come from—in France—the women are the partners of their husbands. Even in the higher bourgeoisie, that is, where they still are in business, not living on great inherited fortunes—
"My uncle had a small silk house in Rouen, and my aunt kept the books and attended to all the correspondence. He always said she was the cleverer business man of the two; but French women have a real genius for business. Some of our great ladies help their husbands manage their estates.
"It is only the few that live for pleasure and glitter in the most glittering city in the world that have furnished the novelists the material to give the world a false impression of France.
"The majority live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest genius could make people read about them.
"Of course, young girls dream of something far more brilliant, and wait eagerly for the husband who shall deliver them from their narrow restricted little spheres… perhaps take them to the great world of Paris; but they settle down, even in Paris, and devote themselves to their husbands' interests, which are their own, and to their children….
"That is it! They are indispensable—not as women, but as partners. I barely know what your business is about—only that you are in some tremendous wholesale commission thing with tentacles that reach half round the world.
"Only the wives of politicians are any real help to their husbands in this country. Isabel Gwynne! What a help she will be—has been—to Mr. Gwynne. But then she was always busy. When her uncle died he left her that little ranch and scarcely anything else, she took to raising chickens—not to fuss about and fill in her time, but to keep a roof over her head and have enough to eat and wear. I doubt if she ever was bored in her life."
"I can't take you into the business, sweetheart," said Ruyler slowly."For that would violate the traditions of a very old conservative house.But I can quite see that something must be done….
"I married you to make you happy and to be happy myself. I do not intend that our marriage shall be a failure. It is possible that Harold would consent to come out here and take my place. The business no longer requires any great amount of initiative, but the most unremitting vigilance. I have thought—it has merely passed through my mind—but you might hate it—how would you like it if I bought a large fruit ranch, several thousand acres, and put up a canning factory besides? I would make you a full partner and you would have to give to your share of the work considerably more than six hours of the day—
"We could build a large, plain, comfortable house, take all our books and pictures, subscribe to all the newspapers, magazines and reviews, keep up with everything that is going on in the world, have house parties once in a while, come to town for a few weeks in summer for the plays.
"We should live practically an out-of-door life—if you preferred we could buy a cattle ranch in the south. That would mean the greater part of the day in the saddle—
"How does it appeal to you?"
He had turned off the electricity, but as he fumbled with his embryonic idea he saw her eyes sparkle and a light of passionate hope dawn on her face.
"Oh, I should love it! But love it! Especially the fruit ranch. That would be like France—our orchards are as wonderful as yours, even if nothing could be as big as a California ranch—
"That is, if it would not be a makeshift. Another form of playing at life."
"I can assure you that we will have to make it pay or go to the wall. My father would probably disinherit me, for it would be breaking another tradition, and he compliments me by believing that I am the best business man in the firm at present.
"My only capital would be such of my fortune as is not tied up in the House—about a hundred thousand dollars in Government bonds. Of course, in time, if all goes well, and California does not have another setback—if business improves all over the world—I shall be able to take the rest of my money out, that I put into this end of the business after the fire; but that may be ten years hence. I shouldn't even ask for interest on it—that would be the only compensation I could offer for deserting the firm.
"Perhaps I had better buy a cattle ranch. Then, if we fail, I shall at least have had the training of a cowboy and can hire out."
Hélène laughed and clapped her hands.
"Fail? You? But I should help you to make it a success—I should be really necessary?"
"Indispensable. Either you or another partner."
"No! No! I shall be the partner—"
"And you mean that you would be willing to bury your youth, your beauty, on a ranch? I have heard bitter confidences out here from women forced to waste their youth on a ranch. You are one of the fine flowers of civilization—"
"That soon wither in the hothouse atmosphere. I wish to become a hardy annual. And when the ranch was running like a clock we could take a month or two in Europe every year or so—"
"Rather! And I could show you off—Bother! I'll not answer."
The telephone bell on the little table in the corner (his own private wire) rang so insistently that Ruyler finally was magnetized reluctantly across the room. He put the receiver to his ear and asked, "Well?" in his most inhospitable tones.
The answer came in Spaulding's voice, and in a moment he sat down.
At the end of ten minutes he hung the receiver on the hook and returned to find Hélène standing by the window, all the light gone from her eyes, staring out at the hard brilliant scene with an expression of hopelessness that had relaxed the very muscles of her face.
Ruyler was shocked, and more apprehensive than he had yet been. "Hélène!" he exclaimed. "What is the matter? Surely you may confide in me if you are in trouble."
"Oh, but I am not," she replied coldly. "Did I look odd? I was just wondering how many really happy people there were behind those lights—over on Belvedere, at Sausalito—the lights look so golden and steady and sure—and glimpses of interiors at night are always so fascinating—but I suppose most of the people are commonplace and just dully discontented—"
"Well, I am afraid I have something to tell you that hardly will restore your delightful gayety of a few moments ago. I am sorry—but—well, the fact is I must leave for the north to-morrow morning and hardly shall be able to return before the next night. I am really distressed. I wanted so much to take you to-morrow night—"
"And I can't wear the ruby?" Her voice was shrill. Ruyler wondered if his stimulated imagination fancied a note of terror in it.
"I—I—am afraid not—darling—"
"But that Spaulding man will be there to watch—"
"Unfortunately—I forgot to tell you—he cannot go—he is on an important case. Besides—when I make a promise I usually keep it."
"But—but—" She stammered as if her brain were confused, then turned and pressed her face to the window. "I suppose nothing matters," she said dully. "Perhaps you will let me wear my own little ruby. After all, that was maman's, and she gave it to me before I was married. I should like to wear one jewel."
"You shall have all your jewels, if you will promise not to give them toPolly 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.
It was half-past eleven when Ruyler and Spaulding, masked and wearing colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates of the Thornton estate in San Mateo, the detective merely displaying something in his palm to the stern guardians that kept the county rabble at bay.
The mob stood off rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get closer to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse through the great oaks of the lower part of the estate, and to the music so seductive in the distance.
They were not a rabble to excite pity, by any means. A few ragged tramps had joined the crowd, possibly a few pickpockets from the city, watching their opportunity to slip in behind one of the automobiles that brought the guests from the station or from the estates up and down the valley. They were, for the most part, trades-people from the little towns—San Mateo, Redwood City—or the wives of the proletariat—or the servants of the neighboring estates. But, although, they grumbled and envied, they made no attempt to force their way in; it was only the light-fingered gentry the police at the great iron gates were on the lookout for.
Ruyler, if his mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends. He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler knew them all, but they finally sped past him without even a glance of contempt for mere foot passengers, even though they looked like a couple of dodging conspirators.
He had met Spaulding at the station in San Francisco, and private conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they had walked a few yards along the wide avenue, as brilliant as day with its thousands of colored lights concealed in the astonished pines, Ruyler sat deliberately down upon a bench and motioned the detective to take the seat beside him.
"It is time you gave me some sort of a hint," he said. "After all, it is my affair—"
"I know, but as I said, you might not approve my methods, and if you balk, all is up. We've got the chance of our lives. It's now or never."
"I do not at all like the idea that you may be forcing me into a position where I may find myself doing something I shall be ashamed of for the rest of my life."
Ruyler's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led round by the nose, and his nerves were jumping.
"Now! Now!" said Spaulding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. "When you hire a detective you hire him to do things you wouldn't do yourself; and if you won't give him the little help he's got to have from you or quit, what's the use of hiring him at all?
"I know perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes would convince you of what it's up to me to prove—to say nothing of the fact that I count on your entrance at the last minute to put an end to the whole bad business. For it is a bad business—believe me. But not a word of that now. You couldn't pry open my lips with a five dollar Havana."
"Well—you say you had a talk with Madame Delano to-day. Surely you can tell me some of the things you have discovered."
"A whole lot. I've been waiting for the chance. Not that I got anything out of her. She's one grand bluffer and no mistake. I take off my hat to her. When I told her that I could lay hands on the proof that she was Marie Garnett—although Jim had married her in his home town under his own name—and that she'd gone home to France with the kid when it was five, taking the cue from her friend, Mrs. Lawton, and sending word back she was dead—"
"You were equally sure a few days ago that she was Mrs. Lawton—"
"That was just my constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely theory, and I sort of hung on to it. But I had no real data to go on. Now I've got the evidence that Jim Garnett died two months before the fire burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that his body was shipped back to Holbrook Centre to be buried in the family plot. You see, he was sick for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death was registered where the fire didn't go—"
"But what put you on?" asked Ruyler impatiently. "I should almost rather it had been any one else. He seems to have been about as bad a lot as even this town ever turned out."
"He was, all right, and his father before him, although they came from mighty fine folks back east. His father came out in '49 with the gold rush crowd, panned out a good pile, and then, liking the life—San Francisco was a gay little burg those days—opened one of the crack gambling houses down on the Old Plaza. Plate glass windows you could look through from outside if you thought it best to stay out, and see hundreds of men playing at tables where the gold pieces—often slugs—were piled as high as their noses, and hundreds more walking up and down the aisles either waiting for a chance to sit, or hoping to appease their hunger with the sight of so much gold. They didn't try any funny business, for every gambler had a six-shooter in his hip pocket, and sometimes on the table beside him.
"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up. Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife—she had followed him out here—persuaded him to go back home and live in the old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped off. Her name was Mary Garnett.
"That's what put me on—the G. in the middle of the name of the man Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood. He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.
"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself, either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome, distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as long as he lived.
"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.
"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time. But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old Lawton—who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days, and who was one of her best friends.
"Well, she also got Garnett to make a curious sort of a will, leaving his money to James Lawton, to 'dispose of as agreed upon.' She had a thrifty business head, had that French dame, and she had made him buy property when he was flush, and put it in her name, although she gave a written agreement never to sell out as long as he lived.
"He agreed to let her go because he was dippy about another skirt at the time, and, besides, she played on his family pride—lineal descendant of the Delanos, Garnetts, and so forth. He'd never seen the kid after it was taken to the convent, but I guess he liked the idea, all right, of its being brought up wearing the old name, and gettin' rid of Marie at the same time.
"She was too canny to leave him a loophole for divorce, even inCalifornia; 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.