Willa paused in the vestibule of the shabby apartment-house and looked carefully up and down the street before venturing forth. The early dusk had fallen and the lamps were not yet alight, but the passers-by were still clearly discernible in the gloom. The girl studied their movements for a time, and noting that none loitered or retraced their steps, she descended and made her way around the corner to where her car was waiting.
Dan Morrissey touched his cap with alacrity.
"One guy in a taxicab down the avenue there, Miss, and another across the street. Where to, now?"
"The little house on the Parkway, where you took me the first time," she directed on a sudden impulse. "When you drop me there, go straight back to the garage and wait until you get a call from me."
"They're both stringing out behind us," he announced, when they had traversed a mile or more in silence.
"That is what I wanted them to do," Willa responded. "Don't look back again, Dan; just go along as if you didn't know anyone was trailing. I'm glad you lighted up while you were waiting for me."
The long, low car seemed to stretch out over the road like a lean horse in a speed that ate up the miles and more than one motor-cycle policeman gazed appraisingly after them, but they drove steadily ahead and drew up at length before the sagging gate.
Darkness had come and the little house looked bleak and deserted. As Willa sprang out of the car, Dan hesitated, and then volunteered:
"Looks as if there wasn't anybody there. Sure you don't want me to wait, Miss? The first taxi' is coming now."
"No. Don't worry about me, Dan." She smiled understandingly. "I don't think I'll need you any more to-night, but wait at the garage until ten. Now go quickly, please."
Without a backward glance, she mounted the path and inserted a key in the door. All was silence and gloom within, but she fumbled her way to a mantel in the small front room and found a box of matches. Lighting them one after the other as they burned out, she made her way from room to room on each of the two floors. They were bare of furniture, but the debris of a hasty exodus was visible everywhere, and half the windows were unfastened.
Willa wasted no time in looking about, but made her way quickly to the heat register let into the floor of each room, and opened them wide. Then she fled down the creaking stairs to the cellar, heedless of the mice which scurried in droves before her, and opened the door of the cold, empty furnace.
The chill dampness of the low, cramped vault no less than the animate darkness made her shiver, but she resolutely crawled into the furnace and pulled the door close behind her. She was scarcely settled in her place when footsteps sounded on the porch above and an indistinguishable murmur of male voices.
Presently the footsteps retreated, there came the rasp of an opening window and then the tramp of feet within the house. There were two distinct treads; one light and springy as a cat's, the other dragging heavily and in apparent reluctance from room to room in the wake of the first.
The voices reached her, now raised as the intruders called to each other, now lowered in an earnest monotone, but to Willa's disappointment the registers did not carry the sound to her as she had hoped and the tones alone reached her ear in a confused rumble.
It was evident that a complete search of the house was in progress, but at last the two men came to a halt beside the register in the room directly above that part of the cellar where the girl crouched and the words floated down to her, sharp and distinct in the silence.
"They've flown the coop, all right, whoever they were." It was Vernon's voice. "I don't see why Willa came up here now, though, if she knew they had gone. Where do you suppose she is?"
"She may not have known." Starr Wiley replied thoughtfully. "Finding the place deserted and hearing us on the porch in all probability, she may have slipped out the back door and taken the subway down-town. Remember that burnt match I found in the hall was still warm. I wonder if it's worth while to have a look in the cellar?"
"In the darkness, and filth, and rats, too, for all you know? No girl would take a chance." Vernon's tone was lofty with contempt, but it changed as he burst out: "Who are these people, anyway, and why are they hiding and what are you so keen after them for? I hate fooling around blindfold like this, and how do I know it's fair to Willa? What is her connection with them?"
"You don't have to know, my dear fellow!" Wiley spoke with the bland mockery the listening girl remembered. "It's up to you to do what you are told and ask no questions. Why this sudden chivalry?"
"Well, you know, Willa's one of the family now. Hang it, I like her, anyway, and I'm not going a step farther in this till I find out what the devil you are up to!"
"A perfectly square business deal, if you must know. Your conscience is waking up rather late in the day, don't you think?" The mockery changed to a swift menace. "As to how far you will go, that will be as I direct, or you, my dear Vernon, will find yourself in a position where the going is distinctly not good."
"Gad! I'd rather face it than stand any more of your domineering!" Vernon's faltering tones belied his words and the other laughed shortly.
"All right. The money is earning no interest for me. I'll put through the check to-morrow."
"Oh, I say—!"
"Then come along, you young puppy, and no more whining, or I'll——"
The steps moved away and the voices again sank to an indistinguishable murmur, but Willa had learned enough. Waiting only long enough to make sure of their departure, she crept from her hiding-place, and, heedless of the soot which clung to her boots and skirt, she acted upon Wiley's inadvertent suggestion.
From the subway station she took a taxicab and reached home just in time to dress for dinner. A not wholly disinterested plan was forming itself in her mind and gained added strength of purpose with each glance at Vernon's pale, troubled face across the table.
Angie, who had been cold and distant all day, departed for the theater; the elder Halsteads went to a bridge party, but Vernon wandered aimlessly into the library where Willa found him staring into the fire in profound dejection.
"What is the matter, Vernon?" she asked abruptly. "You haven't been at all like yourself these last few days. We're pals, you know; tell me."
He glanced up, hastily shifted his eyes, and then blurted out desperately.
"If you'd ever been an absolute rotter and then got on to the fact when it was too late, I guess you wouldn't be very much like yourself, either. I'm a confounded cad, Willa, and worse!" He dropped his head on his hands with a groan. "I ought to be shot!"
"Well, that's a healthy sign," Willa observed cheerfully. "Lots of people are rotters and never find it out. It's like a disease; when you know what is the matter, you can usually find a cure."
"Sometimes it's incurable." His voice was muffled. "I'm in a hole and there's no way out."
"Then climb up again." Willa paused and added deliberately: "Don't try to burrow a passage-way through slime, Vernon. You'll only get in deeper and deeper."
That brought his head up with a suspicious start.
"I say, what do you know about it?"
"Suppose you tell me?"
"You, Willa? You're the last person in the world—!" He broke off hastily.
"Why? If you are in a scrape perhaps I could help you out of it."
"It's worse than a scrape! It's something beyond the pale; it's the sort of thing they shoot a man for, down where you came from! Now you know!"
"Yes," responded Willa slowly, "I do know. Now tell me what that check is, which Starr Wiley is holding over your head."
Vernon rose with blanching face.
"You heard! Good Lord, where were you?"
"In the furnace!" Willa dimpled irrepressibly. "Right in it, with the ashes and all! And you stood talking straight down into the open register, like a speaking tube."
Vernon cringed away from her in bitter shame.
"Then if you heard the whole thing, you know what a wretched cad I've been, spying on you and trying to get information from you for that bounder."
"I knew about that before, Vernon. When I met you leaving the club yesterday and you tried to question me about Tia Juana, you made a dreadful mess of it. I saw right through you and I realized for whom you must be acting, but not why, of course." She drew a deep breath and added in a matter-of-fact tone: "What's the matter with that check Wiley has? Is it a forgery?"
He nodded dumbly.
"Whose name did you sign? I might as well know the rest, don't you think?"
"Mason North's." His voice was a mere strained whisper. "I must have been crazy to do such a thing!"
"What sum did you make it out for?"
"Four thousand dollars." He gazed at her as if hypnotized, replying mechanically under the sheer dominance of her will.
"Was it for speculation or in payment of some sort of debt?"
"A debt of honor!" He laughed in measureless self-contempt. "Poker."
"I see. But, Vernon, don't make me drag it out of you like this. Tell me the whole story."
"It was before Starr went to Mexico." Vernon hesitated and then the words came with a rush from his overburdened breast. "He was playing up strong to Angie, and he saw I didn't like it. Father is hipped about him and so is old North; they think he's the coming man in the oil game, and he may be for all I know, but I'd heard other things about him and I wasn't keen on having him for a brother-in-law. He began to jolly me along; made up parties and wanted me to pal around with him. He's older and he goes with the swiftest bunch in town, and, like a regular saphead, I was flattered. He put me up at his club, and I got into some pretty high play, away over my head, but I wouldn't have him or his friends think I was a piker, so I stuck.
"He won usually, and I almost got writer's cramp making out I. O. U.'s for him. Then his manner changed a bit and he began kidding me. He was good-natured with it at first, but after a while he grew nasty, and one night he taunted me before the whole crowd about my four-flushing.
"I'd been drinking and it made me wild. I don't know what put the idea in my head, but I brooded over it and I couldn't see any other way out. Father had said when he paid my debts before that it was the last time, and he meant it. I—I took a check from his desk—he and Mason North have accounts in the same bank—and I made it out, copying the signature from an old letter."
His voice was getting lower and lower, and finally it halted, but Willa prompted him firmly.
"What happened after you gave it to Starr Wiley?"
"Nothing. I realized what I had done when it was too late, of course, and I lived in just plain hell for the next four weeks, waiting for the blow to fall, but it didn't. At last I couldn't stand the strain any longer; I went to Starr and asked him if he'd put it through, and he said he hadn't. He knew when he accepted it from me that it was forged. I had given him a song-and-dance about it being some money coming to me from your grandfather's estate, but it hadn't fooled him for a minute.
"I groveled at his feet and told him I'd work my fingers to the bone to pay it back, but he said I could do that in his way, at his own time. He's held me under his thumb ever since, and when he got in town a few days ago he sent for me and forced me to try to get a line on this Tia Juana woman through you. I hated it, Willa, but, God! what could I do?"
"What you are going to do now." Willa rose with decision. "You're going to Mason North at once, and make a clean breast of the whole thing."
"I couldn't! I thought of that, but you don't know the old boy—"
"I know he's square, and I guess I can handle him, if you can't. I'm going with you and I'll reimburse him for the four thousand, to let the check go through. Then you can tell Wiley to go—to go ahead and show you up."
"Willa!" Something very like a sob welled up in his throat. "You would do that for me, after—after——"
"You didn't do anything very dreadful to me, Vernon."
"But I promised to spy on you."
"That's all right. Wiley is in this affair simply on a business deal as he told you to-day, although I doubt the squareness as far as he is concerned. But I'm out for higher stakes—" She paused, clinching her hands. "Never mind about that. I'm going to 'phone Mr. North, and see if we can catch him at home."
"Look here." There was a ring of strength in Vernon's tones. "I appreciate, no end, what you've offered to do, Willa, but it can't be! I'm pretty low, I'll admit, but I'm not such a rotter as to take that kind of help from a girl!"
"Why not?" Willa asked quickly. "You said yourself this afternoon that I was one of the family, and, besides, you can pay me back, you know."
"I wonder if you really believe that I would!" he remarked wistfully.
"I know youwill!" she retorted. "I'm putting up that money on a bet with myself, and it's a sure thing. You'll make good, Vernon."
Mason North was comfortably ensconced in his own library, with a Life of Disraeli and a malodorous pipe, when Willa burst in upon him.
"Mr. North, you told me to come to you if I was in any difficulty, and—and I'm here!"
"Certainly, my dear!" He was plainly startled. "I shall be delighted to be of any service that I can. What is it that you wish my advice on?"
"I don't want any advice! I want you to help me compound a felony."
"My dear Willa!" His rotund face paled. "Are you serious? You cannot realize what you have said!"
"Oh, yes, I can!" she affirmed. "A friend of mine signed a check with a name that wasn't given to him in baptism, and I want you to see that it goes through all right, and nothing happens. I'll give you my own check out of Dad's money to cover the amount, and that'll be a comfort to you; you'll know where some of it is, at any rate."
"Forgery!" he groaned. "It is outrageous, Willa! Scandalous! A young woman of your position consorting with a criminal! Oh, we have all been too easy with you; we permitted you to defy us, and now you will disgrace the name you bear! I knew that you had been associated with desperadoes of the lowest type, but I thought that now—"
"Just a minute, Mr. North!" Her tone was ominous. "We'll leave my old friends out of this, if you don't mind."
But Mr. North was far too agitated to take heed.
"This will kill your Cousin Irene—!"
"I expect it would," she interposed soberly. "But she will never know it, Mr. North. What I tell you now must never go beyond this room."
Forthwith, Willa related the whole story just as it had fallen from Vernon's unhappy lips, and the attorney listened in consternation. She eliminated, however, all mention of Wiley's knowledge that the check was a forgery and his attempt to drive a bargain on the strength of it.
"Mr. Wiley meant to put the check through, of course, but he mislaid it," she substituted. "When he returned a few days ago, he came upon it among his papers and told Vernon this afternoon that he was going to turn it in at his bank. Vernon couldn't tell him the truth, because—well, you wouldn't want a thing like that to be known outside the family, would you? You are different, you know."
"Why didn't that young whelp come to me?" North snorted. "It's a wonder his sly wits didn't grasp the fact that I wouldn't prosecute, because of his father, but I might have started something I couldn't stop short of a scandal if the check had been put through and I not known he was at the bottom of it."
"He was afraid," Willa explained simply. "He isn't really bad, he's only weak, and I guess you-all have hounded him so that he's just about ready to stick up a train! He's out in the drawing-room now, and just as soon as you let me write a check for you I'll bring him in."
"You'll write no check!" thundered North. "Just you send him in here to me."
"But I must!" Willa pleaded. "Don't you see, it's the turning-point for him. Let him realize he owes me that money and if he hasn't got a yellow streak a mile wide, it'll be the making of him. If you just blow him up and then forgive him, he'll be back where he was before it happened, and liable to repeat it. I've known some pretty rough characters, as you said a while ago; you learn a lot about human nature in a place like the Blue Chip, Mr. North, and I've seen men going the way Vernon's headed for, just because nobody believed there was anything in him to hold him back. I'm trusting Vernon to pay it back and that's the very reason why he will."
Mr. North cleared his throat.
"You're a—a damn'-fine young woman, Willa Murdaugh—and an uncommonly wise one! We'll give the boy a chance. I hope he will realize some day what he owes to you."
Willa hesitated and then her native honesty came uppermost.
"I haven't done this for him alone. I can't say that I wouldn't have, of course, but I'm just freezing him out this hand." She smiled at the other's bewilderment. "It's funny how everything reduces to poker terms, isn't it? I'll send Vernon in."
"Wait! Let me understand this." North put out a detaining hand. "If you're not doing this for that young scapegrace in there I'd like to know in whose interest it is. Is there something else back of it?"
"If I tried to explain, Mr. North, you'd be in a worse muddle than ever," Willa told him candidly. "Dad always said you could take care of the pat hands against you if you froze out the four-flushers.—Don't scold Vernon, please. Remember, he's just balancing; a push either way will determine his course for the future. I'll wait for him."
A long half-hour passed, but when she heard her name called in the attorney's strangely subdued tones, Willa reëntered the library to find the two standing with clasped hands. Both were flushed and seemed to find difficulty in speech, but at length Vernon burst out:
"Willa, he's a trump! I never realized what an utter beast I was until now and it's just because he hasn't said anything that he might well have! It isn't only the money, though I'll work like a dog to pay that back——"
"I know you will, my boy!" North found his voice, although it was suspiciously husky. "Willa's sure of you, too."
"That's it, that's what counts! A fellow couldn't help but be straight with two such friends believing in him!" Vernon choked, but he squared his shoulders. "Will you shake hands with me, too, Willa? I'm not going to talk, I'm not going to try to thank you, but I'm going to show you! I know what friendship means now, and I mean to be worthy of it!"
Their hands clasped, and, looking into his eyes, Willa said with conviction:
"I'll bank on you, Vernon. Go in and win. It'll be a stiff game, but you can't lose for you're on the square now."
"What do you think about this?" Harrington Chase growled as his partner entered the private office the next morning. "Somebody's getting after us good and plenty!"
"Let them come!" Starr Wiley shrugged. "We're on the right side of the fence now, nobody can touch us. Anything from Cranmore?"
"Yes. Whoever it is that is trying to get a line on us isn't overlooking any bets. Our men have been keeping me posted on the inquiries up here, and they've got the dope so straight that it's my opinion they have reached one of the inside staff." His tones lowered and he glanced significantly toward the ground-glass partition which separated them from the small army of clerks in the outer office. "It doesn't matter, of course, but it would be just as well for the future to know if we have an enemy in camp.—Now, Cranmore wires me in code from Limasito that someone down there is mightily interested in our titles and leases and particularly in what new fields we're opening up. I tell you, if you don't get in touch with that old woman soon, somebody will beat us to it as sure as you're alive."
"I have got a line on her." Wiley paused to light a cigar. "I told you I suspected she'd been brought up here, and I've verified it. I know where she and that hunchbacked kid were living two days ago. They've cleared out, but I've put a couple of men on the party that will lead us straight to her. I'd like to know, though, who is so devilishly interested in our affairs."
"It is Larkin's outfit, of course. That young engineer they've got down there has spudded in the Consuegra, that you passed up, and it's producing seven hundred and fifty barrels a day as a starter."
Wiley thrust out his jaw.
"That's all right. I know Larkin's man; Kearn Thode, his name is. I met him before out in Oklahoma, and I've no use for him. He's had little use for me, either, and between you and me, he's got less now than ever before, only he doesn't know it!" He laughed shortly. "You might be surprised to know that Larkin himself was after the Lost Souls."
"What?" Chase swirled about in his chair to face his partner.
"Fact. I don't know how he got wind of it, but as soon as Thode showed up and began nosing about I knew what his game was."
"No wonder they're butting in on our affairs! We'll have to do some quick work——"
Wiley laughed again.
"No fear of trouble from Thode. I beat him to it and spiked his guns at the same time. He's given it up as a bad job; that's why he tackled the Consuegra. Wait till we pull off the big noise and he'll be welcome to all the jitney gushers below the border."
"When we do," Harrington Chase observed with emphasis. "We'll have to get hold of the old dame first."
"We'll land her." Wiley smote his desk. "There isn't a woman living, young or old, who can cut the ground out from under my feet!"
But a distinct shock awaited him when he entered the club that evening, in the attitude of his erstwhile ally, Vernon Halstead. He had difficulty in locating the young man at first; a survey of his usual haunts, the bar and card-rooms, failed to disclose him, but Wiley ran him to earth finally in the library, deep in a bulky and serious-looking volume.
"Improving your mind?" he sneered.
Vernon raised his eyes serenely.
"Never too late to learn, is it?" he observed. "I've found out a lot in the last day or two."
"You mean—?" Wiley dropped into a chair beside him. "Any new developments? Did she go out alone to-day?"
"My cousin?" Vernon closed his book, and rose. "I haven't the least idea, I assure you. I ran out to Mineola myself, with an aviator chap I know."
He had paused, looking down at his interrogator, and at the expression in his eyes the latter half rose also, then sank back.
"And just what am I to infer?" Wiley spoke through set teeth.
"Anything you like, my dear fellow. Help yourself."
"Ah! You're going to renege, are you? You're prepared to take the consequences?"
"You've guessed it." Vernon nodded. "I'm off the dirty work, Starr. You'll have to do your own sleuthing in future."
"You realize what it means? I've never bluffed in my life, Vernon, and I'll push this thing to the limit!"
"Go as far as you like." Vernon waved his hand airily. Then his expression hardened. "But whatever happens, leave my cousin out of your future plans. Do you understand? Play your game with men if you like, but leave the women of my family alone."
"Indeed?" This time Wiley rose, and the two looked levelly into each other's eyes. "When you go up for forgery you won't be in a position to interfere with any game I choose to play. I've told you this was a straight business proposition, Vernon, there is no use getting melodramatic about it. I've taken a lot of insolence from you, and I'm prepared to teach you a lesson."
"And I am always willing to learn, my dear Starr. It's up to you." He bowed formally, and, turning on his heel, left the room.
For a time Wiley communed with himself. The worm had turned, with a vengeance, and the maneuver was beyond his comprehension. In spite of his declaration anent a bluff, he was not prepared to push the matter of the check to the end he had threatened. A scandal was farthest from his desire and other considerations were involved; his matrimonial ambitions not the least of them, if he antagonized the Halstead family. Then, too, what could have been back of Vernon's sudden independence? Was it an idle bluff, or had the young scamp managed in some way to protect himself?
The conclusion of his cogitations led him to the telephone and a half hour later found him confronting Mason North in the latter's home, much as Willa had done on the previous night.
"Sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. North, but this is a strictly confidential matter, and rather urgent. I have your assurance that it will go no farther?"
"Certainly!" Mason North was suspiciously affable. "Take a seat and try one of these cigars. They're made especially for me in Porto Rico and I know you to be a connoisseur. You were saying——?"
"I have a check in my possession signed presumably by you." Wiley chose his words with evident care. "It was made payable to bearer and of course I do not know whether it changed hands or not before reaching me. I wish to insinuate nothing, but I should like your assurance that the signature is genuine before depositing it."
"You have it with you?" the attorney asked crisply.
Wiley nodded, and, taking an oblong slip of paper from his bill-case, he presented it for the older man's inspection.
"Um! Four thousand dollars, eh? The signature looks all right to me, but I don't quite recall making it out. I have my old stubs here in the desk, and if you will wait I'll look it up."
Secure in the outcome, Wiley was more than willing to wait. He sat with a half smile on his face, puffing at his fragrant cigar and formulating his next move, when the storm should break.
But the other's voice cut short his pleasant reflections and the words themselves brought him up standing.
"Yes. Here we are! I gave that check to young Halstead. It is quite correct; 'four thousand'. Little matter of an inheritance. I—I trust he hasn't been speculating, but I suppose I must not ask, eh? Sad young dog, Vernon!"
"It was a business transaction of rather a private nature, but I can assure you that Vernon was not a loser by it." Wiley's tone was quiet, but he had gone white to the lips "I would not have doubted the signature, except for the fact that I thought it an unusually large sum to be payable to bearer, and, as I said, I did not know to whom it had been issued originally. I am sorry to have troubled you."
He took his leave amid the other's cordial protestations, with outward composure, but his expression changed savagely as he descended the steps of the house and started up the Avenue.
The attorney's attitude had not deceived him for a moment. Someone had checkmated him, that was plain; had disclosed the truth and persuaded North to shield Vernon. Could that young man have confessed voluntarily and thrown himself on the attorney's mercy rather than play the game? But such a step would have involved courage of a sort, and he was sure Vernon did not possess enough of that commodity to carry him so far. Someone must have interceded for him—but who?
Then an inspiration came and under its goad Wiley almost cursed aloud. That girl, again! He recalled Vernon's swift, unaccountable championship of his cousin at the club an hour before. That was the answer, of course! The young cub had double-crossed him and placed himself in Willa's hands—and incidentally landed his erstwhile tyrant in the same position.
So be it. He would carry the game into the enemy's camp and then, if necessary, arbitrate. Wiley had fought many duels with the fair sex, but never a financial one before, and the prospect was not without an element of sport. She had outwitted him at the start and borne off the spoils, but he would wrest them from her, and tame her into the bargain.
The morning dawned clear and crisply cold, and Willa started upon her early gallop in the Park with every nerve a-tingle and the blood racing in her veins. Her perplexities were forgotten, her slow, waiting game put aside and she gave herself up joyously to the influences of the hour. After all, it was good to be alive!
Her mount was fresh, but she rode him hard until she had taken the edge off his spirits and he was willing enough to drop into the easy, loping canter for which she had originally chosen him from her cousins' stable.
Her clear, pale cheeks bore an unwonted flush and her eyes were dancing when she came face to face with Starr Wiley around a bend in the bridle path. Willa would have passed him with a gay little nod, but he reined in his horse and, wheeling, fell into pace beside her.
"May I take the trail for a little way with you?" he asked. "Glorious morning, isn't it?"
"Yes." She smiled, but the brightness had fled from her face and her eyes narrowed as she gave him a side-long glance. "I didn't know you were given to an appreciation of them, though. What brings you out so early?"
"Do you want a confession? It was with the hope of meeting you that I came. One can see you alone so seldom in these crowded days, and I want to grasp every opportunity. Can you blame me?"
"Your judgment, perhaps. My cousin is a far more attractive spectacle than I, Mr. Wiley."
"Still unkind!" he exclaimed ruefully. "I have told you, I have explained and you will not believe me? Willa, you cannot have forgotten the other evening, you know what I feel toward you. You permitted me to tell you and you said that at least I might hope. Don't taunt me, dear! It's scarcely fair, is it?"
"I gave you no assurance, Mr. Wiley." Her eyes opened very wide upon him. "You were well supplied with that. I was careful not to commit myself in any way, if you remember. You were in my cousin's house and I listened to learn just how far your effrontery would carry you. It was scarcely an open game, I admit, but it was your deal and you weren't playing exactly fair yourself, were you?"
"I was sincere." His voice shook, but not with tenderness. "You led me on; you played with me from the first!"
"On the contrary, I refused to play with you at all, but you would not be convinced. Let us understand each other, Mr. Wiley. Your protestations are distasteful to me, and there is no longer need of pretense between us. I will be civil when occasion requires, but friendship between us would be an impossibility, and I beg that you will not force me to be more rude to you than you have made necessary now."
"So," he remarked quietly. "We have done with pretense, have we? I will meet your frankness, then. I have offered you all that a man can offer a woman in devotion, but you have thrust it from you. Now I have another kind of a proposition to discuss with you, and I am prepared to offer terms. I want to know where you have secreted Tia Juana; I want an interview with her. If she, of her own volition, refers me to you as I anticipate and gives you power of attorney to act for her, we can perhaps come to an agreement which will be to our mutual advantage."
"That sounds interesting," Willa remarked. "What makes you think I know where Tia Juana is?"
"I thought we had done with pretense?" he reminded her. "I know of the little house on the Parkway, and the beautiful rich young lady who hired it and installed the fierce old Spanish woman and the hunchback there. I know, too, of their hasty departure, and all that happened before in Mexico. You played a very shrewd game, my dear Miss Murdaugh, but your disinterested charity toward Tia Juana is open to question; a legal question, perhaps, if it comes to that, involving undue influence and a dummy title."
"Assuming that I know what you are talking about, don't you think you are taking a great deal for granted?" asked Willa. "I do not admit that I know where Tia Juana is, but in the event that you discover her, what assurance have you that she will receive you? There is a strain of Indian in her blood as well as Spanish. She does not forget, and do you think your treatment of José would inspire her with any confidence in your good faith or with any desire to deal with you except in retribution?"
"Nevertheless, she is the principal I intend to interview. You give me no credentials as her authorized agent, and whether she cares to deal with me or not is a matter I mean to put to the test. It lies between her and me, and I fancy I shall have no difficulty in opening her eyes to much that will be to her advantage, to which she has been kept heretofore in the dark."
"Would you, if you could? I doubt it. However, by all means make your proposition to her when you have found her, Mr. Wiley. That's the first thing, isn't it? You can't hazard your bet until you have picked your number, can you?" Whimsically, she imitated the croupier's sing-song whine "Make your play, gentlemen! The wheel is about to spin!"
"You vixen!" he muttered wrathfully. Then he controlled himself with an almost visible effort and half turned in his saddle. "Will you permit me to give you a bit of purely disinterested advice? Don't go in for the financial game on your own; you are bound to lose. In your proper sphere you are invincible, but it is a social one. When you pit yourself against men in a contest for financial supremacy your chief weapon, that of sex, is turned against you. Make no mistake! I shall find Tia Juana, I shall obtain her order to treat with you, and you will come to an agreement with me on my own terms. You cannot afford to reject them if you would. You have not the slightest inkling of their nature now, that is a card I am holding in reserve, but when you learn what an indemnity you will be called upon to pay in the event of a refusal, you will jump at the bargain, my dear Billie."
He uttered the old name deliberately, and she flushed.
"I am Willa Murdaugh, if you don't mind."
"Are you?" he asked significantly. "The clock struck twelve for another Cinderella, you may remember, and all the jewels and gorgeous apparel disappeared, as well as the pumpkin coach. I doubt if there would be a fallen slipper or a fairy prince to put it on again if the old story came to be rewritten to-day."
"What do you mean?" Willa turned to him, startled in spite of herself.
He shrugged.
"I will tell you when the time comes to drive our bargain, and I have an idea that it will not be deferred long. You cannot conceal Tia Juana indefinitely, and I shall have more able tools to aid me in my search than the one you so cleverly removed a day or two ago."
"I?" Willa's tone was mechanical, her thoughts centered on his implied threat and what it might portend. "What tool?"
"Vernon," he responded tersely. "He is to be congratulated on his fortunate choice of a confidante. When he told you of our visit to the empty house, close on your heels——"
"You weren't; you were just over my head!" she retorted. "Vernon told me nothing. It was unnecessary, because I heard it all. I scarcely listened, though, for it reminded me so forcibly of another secret interview of yours that my mind wandered. It was a much more significant occasion, Mr. Wiley, with results so far-reaching that they have not yet culminated."
"Indeed?" He frowned. "I must confess I don't recall——"
"It was an interview at night, out in the open, beneath the stars!" Her voice trembled with sudden passion. "It took place near a garage, and you did not know a listener crouched in the shrubbery. The man you met and bargained with there was Juan de Soria, agent of El Negrito, and the next night El Negrito himself came down from the hills! What price did you pay for that raid, Mr. Wiley; that raid which was to force United States intervention and protection of the leases of its citizens, yours in particular?"
"You are mad!" he cried hoarsely, but she would not be silenced.
"What did you pay in pesos for that slaughter? What will you yet be called upon to pay in vengeance by those who were spared? Don't be too confident of success in your bargaining, Mr. Wiley, until the final reckoning!"
For a moment there was silence, then with an obvious effort he laughed harshly.
"You are disposed to be highly melodramatic, my dear Billie, but unfortunately your attitude is without justification. No such interview as you describe took place. I suppose it is useless for me to assure you of this, but it must have existed solely in the imagination of your informant—if you had such an informant! I will leave you now, but I beg that you will reflect upon the bargain I have offered you. Wild accusations will not serve to turn the point at issue, and for your own sake I advise you to think well. Au revoir!"
He bent to the saddle in a mocking obeisance and his horse leaped forward beneath the touch of the spurs.
Willa watched until he had disappeared between the leafless trees, then slowly moved off down a side-path.
She had warned him now. Her cards were on the table and he knew the strength of the hand she held against him. But what of his own? To what length would he, could he go in the contest which from that moment would be to the death between them? What did his vague threat mean?
"We'll be late," Angie observed as she and Willa waited in the drawing-room for the rest of the family. It was the first remark she had voluntarily addressed to her cousin since she had come upon the tête-à-tête in the library. "Not that I care, of course, these dinners are always stupid, but the Erskines are so horribly particular. I've heard that the Bishop was late once and they went in without him."
Willa smiled.
"I wonder who will be there?"
"The same old crowd, I suppose," Angie shrugged. "For heaven's sake, Willa, if they send you in again with Harrington Chase, don't monopolize him as you did at the Wadleighs'. It's horribly bad form; I wonder that mother didn't tell you."
"Did I monopolize him? I wasn't conscious of it," Willa said reflectively. "He interests me."
"Evidently!" Angie sneered. "So do a few others, I imagine, but you shouldn't show it so plainly. I admit that you've gotten on very well so far, but your methods are horribly crude, still."
"My methods?" Willa was honestly puzzled. "I wasn't aware that I had any. When people bore me I let them alone; but those I find interesting for one reason or another I listen to. Is it crude to discriminate?"
Angie bit her lip.
"You can be very simple and naïve when you want to!" she burst out. "But do reserve it for outsiders, and spare us! I know you for what you are: sly and sneaking and mean! Your cheap, common little airs and graces don't deceive me, they only disgust me more and more! I wish Mr. North had left you where he found you, with your gamblers and horse-thieves and roustabouts!"
"So do I," Willa retorted frankly. "They were men, anyway. You are unjust because you are hurt, and I am sorry for you. I wish you could understand, but I am afraid you will not believe me. Mr. Wiley——"
"Will you kindly leave his name out of this discussion?" demanded Angie. "I am not in the least jealous, I assure you! He is nothing to me, I merely object to the underhand way you maneuvered to receive him alone. That sort of thing may be all right where you came from, but it is a little bit too raw to put in practice here."
The appearance of the others brought the quarrel to a close and they went out to the waiting limousine in a constrained silence. Mrs. Halstead glanced from her daughter's flushed face to Willa's pale one, and her lips tightened. Had Angie been foolish enough to betray herself to this interloper?
Willa was sincerely distressed. There had never been any real congeniality between the two girls, but her heart ached for the other's evident suffering. Her own conscience was not quite clear for she had permitted Wiley to show his hand without stopping to think of Angie, so determined had she been to learn the depths to which this man would descend in his ruthless self-seeking. She had weighed her cousin shrewdly and she did not believe her capable of deep and lasting affection, yet she shuddered at the thought of any girl's heart in Starr Wiley's keeping.
They were late, as Angie had prophesied. The Erskine drawing-room was crowded, and Willa stared about blankly, her mind still burdened with her cousin's resentment. Then all at once she became conscious of a tall figure which disengaged itself from a nearby group and came eagerly forward.
Mechanically she held out her hand, and a voice sounded in her ears which drove all else from her thoughts and sent the hot-blood flooding her cheeks and neck in a crimson tide.
"We meet again, Miss Murdaugh. I told you that it would be soon!"
She found herself looking up into Kearn Thode's eyes, and the wonder of it held her dumb. As unconscious as a child of the instinctive movement, she extended both hands, and he caught and pressed them tightly for a moment before releasing them.
"Mr. Thode! I had almost given up hope." The words sprang to her lips. "I thought you would come before and I used to look about for you everywhere we went at first. It was silly, of course, for I knew that you had your work to do down there, but it would have been nice to see a really familiar face."
The young engineer, too, flushed.
"I meant to come before, but I was delayed——" He broke off. "Was it so awful then, the first plunge? May I remind you that you have fulfilled my prophecy? Just to look at you now makes me half believe those Limasito days were a dream!"
"They're still real to me," Willa said gravely. "They are the only real things and real people I have known. All this up here—oh! it's very pleasant, of course, and new and amusing, but it doesn't reach deep down. It doesn't seem to mean anything."
"So soon?" He raised his eyebrows in whimsical dismay. "My sister wrote me of your success and I was very glad. I knew it would not change you, but I did not think the glamour would wear off so quickly."
"Your sister?" Willa cried. "I'm so sorry that I only met her once. She dined with us, but since then I have not seen her. I should like to have known her better."
"She called twice, but you were not at home. After that she went South and she has only just returned. May I bring her to call to-morrow?"
"I shall be delighted," Willa paused, regarding him with a little, puzzled frown. "Do you know you have changed, somehow, Mr. Thode? You are ever so much thinner, and pale beneath your tan, and you look—oh, almost as if you had been suffering! Am I imagining things, or have you been ill?"
"I had an accident just after you left Limasito. It was nothing serious, just a slight concussion, but it laid me up for some weeks," Thode replied easily. "That is what delayed my work and prevented my return before."
He looked beyond her as he spoke, and his face darkened swiftly. Willa, noting the transition, glanced over her shoulder to see Starr Wiley, smiling and urbane, standing just within the doorway.
"Another reminder of Limasito," she remarked. "A most unwelcome one. But tell me about your accident. I am so sorry——"
His hostess claimed Thode at that juncture and bore him away to fresh introductions, and Willa started across the room to Mrs. Halstead when Starr Wiley intercepted her coolly.
"How do you do?" he asked. Then, without waiting for her reply, he went on: "But that is a superfluous question, isn't it? You are looking as distractingly charming as ever. So our knight errant has put in an appearance once more! He looks a little the worse for wear."
"Mr. Thode has been ill," Willa remarked through stiffened lips. "There was an accident——"
"A hootch bottle in the hands of a jealous Señorita becomes an effective weapon, but I would call it more like fate than accident." Wiley laughed unpleasantly. "There were some interesting rumors afloat about our friend's conquests after your departure from Limasito. He'd be an expert porch-climber if his practice in gaining access to certain balconies on certain back streets counted for anything. I could have told you before, but I did not want to shatter your illusions concerning the local Paul Revere."
"You are trying to now, however." Willa looked straight into his eyes and then quickly away in immeasurable disdain. "I have no ears for idle, malicious slander, Mr. Wiley. Please, let me pass."
"It does rather jar on one, doesn't it? A reminder of the low, primitive life down there is out of place in this highly esthetic atmosphere." He made no move to step aside, and a shade of deeper meaning crept into his tones. "It would be a pity if one were compelled to return to it. The charms of Limasito would pall, I fancy, after all this; yet such things sometimes happen."
"I trust not, for your sake," Willa responded. "You would scarcely find the climate of Limasito a healthy one, if your activities were fully comprehended there."
"I was not thinking of myself——" he smiled once more—"but of an old fairy tale which I mentioned to you in the Park. You look a very confident Cinderella, but midnight is not far off, and only you can stop the hands of the clock, remember."
"I am not fond of riddles." Willa shrugged and turned away to greet her host, who came forward with one of the inevitable callow youths in tow.
Dinner was announced almost immediately and Willa sat through it with the food untouched before her. Wiley's insinuations against Kearn Thode she had dismissed utterly from her thoughts, but his renewed taunt of the morning filled her in spite of herself with dread foreboding. Could fate have indeed been playing with her after all, and was it possible that Wiley held within his hands the strings of her future destiny?
She was Willa Murdaugh, of course. Mason North and the Halsteads had satisfied themselves of that beyond a shadow of a doubt. But what if Wiley had really stumbled upon some facts unknown to them all which might throw a shadow across her title? Was it an idle threat to coerce her or a very tangible menace?
She raised troubled eyes to meet Kearn Thode's smiling ones across the table and her native courage came back in a swift rush. Surely she had nothing to fear; she would meet Wiley and beat him at his own game, and then … she smiled again into Thode's eyes. What did anything else matter, now that he had returned?
An informal dance was the order of the evening and Willa and the young engineer gravitated to a seat on the stairs after a romping fox-trot. Both were flushed and sparkling, but when they found themselves alone together a diffident silence fell upon them.
"It must seem good to you to get back," Willa ventured at last when the pause had become oppressive.
"It is." His glance rested upon her with a world of contentment. "I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it seems!"
"And your work down there?" she pursued hurriedly. "You have finished it? You will not have to return again?"
The contentment faded and in its place there came a look of bitterness and dogged determination.
"It has scarcely begun. I wonder if you ever heard an old legend around Limasito concerning the lost location of a marvelous oil well?"
Willa laughed nervously, a little taken aback by the abruptness of the question.
"One hears so many legends in every country of lost or buried or hidden treasure," she parried. "Scarcely anyone pays attention to them except the tenderfoots. You know up in the mining country one is forever hearing such tales of vast deposits of ore, but nobody can ever find the lead."
"This particular one concerns a well in a mysterious pool of water where a massacre is supposed to have taken place. It dates back to the time of the Spaniards' coming."
He paused, but Willa said nothing. She was striving to mask her thoughts in continued composure lest his quick mind grasp the significance of her interest.
"The place is spoken of as the Pool of the Lost Souls," Thode went on. "Surely you have heard of it? The people to whom you were so kind, old Tia Juana and her grandson, knew more than anyone else about it. Did they not mention it to you?"
"Tia Juana?" Willa glanced up quickly, but she could not meet his eyes. "She is very secretive, you know, and jealous of the old legends which to her form the sacred history of her beloved country. Suppose you tell me the legend yourself."
Briefly he recounted it to her and, she listened until the end in a dismayed chaos of mind which culminated in a staggering blow.
"I have found it." There was no jubilation in his tone, but paradoxically a note of defeat.
"You!" she stammered breathlessly.
"Yes. You seem surprised?" he added with a quick glance at her. "I know these old legends are mostly regarded as bunk, but now and then one proves to be a straight tip. Generations have searched vainly for the Pool, as I thought you must have heard, but they did not know where to look."
"Then how did you, a newcomer, discover it?" Willa scarcely recognized her own voice.
"By the simple expedient of following someone else who had stolen a march on me in a despicable fashion." His jaw set in the old characteristic way she remembered. "I don't mind admitting that I would have taken almost any means to locate it; that was my main objective in Mexico and I was acting under instructions from my chief. But I would scarcely have stooped to the method employed by the man of whom I speak."
"Starr Wiley?" The question was wrung from Willa's lips.
He stared at her.
"You know, then?"
"I—I guessed," she countered hurriedly. "I knew that you two were enemies, of course, and it came to me that if anyone had played a false trick upon you it must have been he. You say you found the Pool by following him. How did he know where to search?"
Thode hesitated.
"I found a map of its location, but I had scarcely got my hands upon it when I was struck down from behind and the paper stolen."
Willa uttered a startled exclamation, but he continued, unheeding.
"Someone found me, hours later, lying unconscious and carried me into Limasito, where your good friend, Jim Baggott, took care of me. It was weeks before I was able to be about again, but I had time to think it all out, Of course, I had not seen my assailant, but I had had an uncanny intuition all day that I was being shadowed—it was the very day of your departure, by the way—and I knew of only one other beside myself who had taken that legend seriously. Wiley was doing his best to locate the Pool; he was aware that I was there for the same purpose and he would have stopped at nothing to win out, for, as you know, there was bad blood between us. If he did not actually strike the blow that felled me I solemnly believe that he was instrumental in it in some way. Please, don't think me ungenerous toward an enemy that I tell you this, or even harbor such a thought, but events really seemed to bear out my suspicions."
"No." Willa was gazing moodily straight before her. "I do not think you are ungenerous, and I am very glad that you are telling me. I believe, too, that you are right; I feel sure that he must have been responsible for your injury. But I am amazed about the map."
"I found it in the ashes of Tia Juana's fire; the little fire in the grove of zapote trees where she cooked her tortillas, and brewed her strange concoctions. You had told me of it, do you remember? But perhaps you have not heard: Tia Juana and the boy, José, have disappeared. They must have gone on the very day you started for New York, and no one has been able to discover a trace of them, except one. That is a very significant trace indeed, though.—Have you no curiosity about the Pool?"
He turned to her suddenly, but Willa could not raise her eyes to meet his now.
"Of course," she stammered.
"It is located on a grapefruit ranch known as the Trevino hacienda, about two hundred miles due north of Limasito. Wiley made the best of his time while I was laid by the heels, but his treachery didn't do him any good, in the end. He found the Pool, but another had been before him; old Tia Juana, herself!"
Willa's lips moved, but no sound came from them. She was praying that he would not look at her again.
"A few days before Tia Juana and the boy disappeared, the Trevino hacienda changed hands. It was sold for twenty-five thousand dollars, to one Juana Reyes.—Reyes, if you recall, was the name of the old Spaniard who owned the Pool originally and whose daughter, Dolores, was killed by the Indians on her wedding night. Reyes is also the almost forgotten surname of Tia Juana, so it looks as if the old lady had come into her own, at last. It is a mystery, of course, where she got the money to purchase the hacienda, but it may have been hoarded in her family for generations. It is possible, too, that she only then succeeded in deciphering the map, and tracing the location of the Pool from it."
"So you and Starr Wiley both failed." Willa spoke as if to herself.
"Not I!" Thode's eyes flashed with determination. "I told you I had only just begun. I am going to find Tia Juana if she is above ground and buy out her claim. To her it only means the ancestral estate. That is much, to be sure, if she has gone through her long life in poverty and want in order to hoard her riches for its purchase, but it is only a sentimental consideration. When she learns that she has a fortune in petroleum, worthless without the money to develop it, I think she will agree to share her interest. The casa and the land about it can still be hers, we only want to drain and develop the Pool, and my chief will be strictly fair with her. The old lady will be rich beyond her wildest dreams and we will have the greatest producer known since the Dos Bocas gusher went up in flames!"
Willa rose.
"If you find Tia Juana, Mr. Thode, don't build your hopes too high. Should she prove to be indeed the owner of the Pool of the Lost Souls, I am confident that you can never gain possession of it."
"I can try." He took the hand she held out to him. "You seem very sure, Miss Murdaugh."
"I cannot imagine Tia Juana relinquishing anything which she could claim, especially if, as you surmise, the property may once have belonged to her ancestors. Cousin Irene is signaling me. I must go!" she added. "You will come to-morrow?"
Thode promised, but he watched her slender figure disappear with a frown of troubled thought. How much did she know? Could it be that she, too, was interested in the Pool of the Lost Souls? Instead of a mere contest between himself and Wiley had it become a three-corner affair, with Willa the apex of the triangle?
Had he but known it, he was destined not to keep his promise of the morrow, and once more it was Starr Wiley who intervened.
It happened that Thode stopped in at the club after taking leave of the Erskines, and arrived at a most opportune moment. He was emerging from the coat-room when a familiar voice came to his ears through the half-open door of one of the smaller card-rooms, and the words arrested him like a command.
"The little Murdaugh? Very naïve, very charming, but I knew her in the Never-Never Land, you know, and I can assure you she's not as unsophisticated as she seems."
"Oh, come, Starr! You're tight!" a strange voice intervened. "Ladies' names, you know——it's not done here."
"'Lady'?" Wiley hiccoughed derisively. "Who mentioned a lady? I'm speakin' of Willa Murdaugh. Gentleman Geoff's Billie they used to call her; pet of an old card-sharp, and mascot of a gambling-hell——"
He got no farther. Someone had seized him by the shoulders and spun him around like a top and he found himself confronting Kearn Thode's blazing eyes. His half-fuddled companions shrank back in consternation.
"Take that back, you miserable cur!" Thode's voice was scarcely recognizable. "Take back your damnable lies or I'll ram them down your throat!"
But an alcoholic courage possessed Wiley and he leered: "The knight-errant, by Jove! You know whether it's true or not! You ought to know better than anyone else——"
A crashing blow straight on his maudlin mouth sent him reeling back against the table. His wildly groping hand found a tall glass and with an oath he hurled it full in the face of the man advancing upon him. A moment later, he was lifted clear of the table by an impact that flung him against the wall a sodden, inert heap with the last ray of dazed consciousness gone.