On a certain bright February morning Ben Hallock puffed up the Calle Rivera and across the plaza of Limasito as fast as his battered jitney could carry him and rushed into Baggott's hotel with an anticipatory gleam in his heavy eyes.
"Hey, Jim! I got your message and I come a-hummin'!" he announced. "What is it? Vigilance Committee?"
"Sort of!" Jim Baggott fairly pranced from behind the bar, his round face shining with excitement. "Here's a gentleman from New York, old friend of yours."
Ben Hallock turned to find himself facing an elderly personage with an impressively pointed gray beard and keen eyes behind gold-rimmed pince-nez.
"Jumping Jehosaphet! If it ain't Perry Larkin!" Ben pumped the stranger's hand energetically. "Mighty glad to see you, Sir! Your engineer, Kearn Thode, called on me last fall; fine young feller he is, too! You heard about what he did when El Negrito came?"
"Yes, Hallock, but I'm even more proud of him to-day!" The keen eyes sparkled. "I want you to meet a—er—a confrère of mine, Mr. Morrissey."
Honest Dan, late taxi'-driver and amateur detective, purpled with embarrassment as he rose and shook hands, but his eyes, too, were dancing.
Ben nodded to Henry Bailey, his ranch neighbor and the only other occupant of the bar, and then turned again to Jim Baggott.
"Now perhaps you'll tell me what in thunder the racket is about! I'd have come to meet Mr. Larkin without you hinting at a lynchin' party!"
"Just you say what you'll have and hold your horses!" Jim chuckled. "I'm acting under instructions, the same that brought Mr. Larkin and this-here young man down from New York, and Hen Bailey in from his hacienda; the orders of Gentleman Geoff's Billie, by God!"
"Billie! She ain't—you don't mean she's comin' back?" Ben cried joyfully. "I told you she wasn't the kind to forget her old friends in spite of the grand life she's walked into! I knew she'd come back to see us——"
"It is business which brings her now, Hallock, and grim business, too," Mr. Larkin interposed. "She wanted you and Henry here as her friends and witnesses, and there's apt to be a rather ugly scene."
"Do you mean she's coming right now, that she's here?" Ben Hallock touched his hip significantly. "I've come heeled for any kind of a little party that's liable to be sprung, but I little thought Billie'd be mixed up in it. What's the matter? Anybody been tryin' to stack the cards on her?"
"The dirtiest, crookedest game that was ever pulled!" Jim smote the bar a blow which made the glasses tinkle. "But she'll beat 'em to it yet, or she wouldn't be Gentleman Geoff's girl! She ain't here now, but we expect her any minute and when she comes the fun'll start."
As if in answer the hum and whirr of two high-powered motors chugging in unison stole upon the air and rapidly increased in volume. Ben craned his neck from the window and then turned disappointedly.
"It's only that Lost Souls crowd!" he grunted. "Jim, if anything in the line of a fracas starts here, you'll lose that passel of swell boarders of yours! Can you see them women when the shootin' commences?"
"They're in on it, too!" Jim grinned. "Not the women-folk, but the men, and more especially our fine young friend, Starr Wiley."
"Something to do with the Lost Souls——"
"Shut up, quick!" Jim advanced from behind the bar with an almost comic air of ceremony as the motor party trooped in at the door and headed for the stairs. Perry Larkin squared his pince-nez and recognized Mrs. Ripley Halstead and her daughter, Angelica, while behind them appeared seven men; Halstead himself, his son, Vernon, Starr Wiley, Harrington Chase, Mason North and his son, Winthrop, and a stranger whom a second glance revealed as Cranmore, the Mexican representative of the Chase-Wiley interests.
"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but we've been waiting for you!" Jim Baggott began in the voice of a showman. "I'll have to ask you gentlemen to step this way, all of you. It's a real-pressing little matter of business you're all concerned in, and the ladies can come, too, if they feel like it. There'll be more ladies present shortly."
Wondering, the whole party crowded into the room, and, recognizing Perry Larkin, greeted him with varying degrees of cordiality. Jim bustled about, setting chairs for them, and in the general confusion none noted that a little group of men in uniform had issued from a door behind the bar and taken up their stations at the windows and entrance. The last comers were in two divisions; the ornate ones, stocky and swarthy for the most part, the soberly attired, taller and stalwart with the paler hue of the North.
Starr Wiley was the first to observe their presence, and he uttered a stifled oath.
"These are just extra witnesses," Jim explained blandly. "They're here to represent the United States Federal Government and also Mexico. You see, this-here little matter has what you might call an international aspect.—Did you speak, Mr. Wiley?"
"I should like to, when you've finished shooting off fireworks!" that gentleman blustered. "What's the meaning of this, anyway? What sort of trumped-up game are you——?"
"Steady, Starr." Ripley Halstead interposed quietly, and turned to the proprietor. "Will you state the nature of this meeting to which you have called us, Mr. Baggott? We are waiting to learn."
"I'm waiting, too!" confessed Jim. "I've got my orders—gosh almighty! Here she comes!"
Unheard, a single touring-car had slipped across the plaza and halted before the entrance. A slim, girlish, heavily-veiled figure alighted, and at sight of the men who accompanied her, Starr Wiley emitted a second oath.
They paused in the doorway and with a sudden movement the girl tore off her veil. There was a moment of electrified silence, broken by a little cry from Angie.
"It's Willa!—That impostor, I mean——"
"No!" Kearn Thode, the second of the newcomers, advanced to Mason North. "You were appointed the guardian of Willa Murdaugh, were you not, Mr. North? I have brought her back to you, with proof of her absolute identity."
"Bless my soul!" The rotund little man advanced with shining eyes, and seized the girl's hands. "I am overwhelmed, my dear girl, delighted! And you have proof, you say? What an amazingly fortunate turn of affairs!"
No one echoed him for a moment. The Halsteads sat stunned, and Harrington Chase, his face a greenish gray, had slumped in his chair. Only Starr Wiley, his eyes glittering and a sinister sneer curling his thin lips, looked on imperturbably. Winthrop North gasped. Then he hurried forward.
"Good work, Kearn! Oh, Willa!" His voice broke as he took her hands from his father's and wrung them hard. "Our trails have crossed again, and it has been 'good luck' indeed!"
Ripley Halstead had risen, and his wife made a tentative movement to follow his example. Vernon, too, recovered himself and advanced eagerly, but Willa waved them back and took her place before the bar.
"This is quite a reunion, isn't it?" She smiled, but there was a grim menace behind it. "I'm glad you're all here, for I've got a story to tell you that I shouldn't care to tell twice. It goes back to before a lot of you ever knew me, but you'll find it interesting enough, for it concerns you all as well as me; you, and the Pool of the Lost Souls."
She leaned back with one elbow resting upon the bar and her other hand in the pocket of her traveling-coat and surveyed them one by one, her expression unchanging. No one stirred and after a moment she went on:
"I have asked my old friends, my real friends, to meet me here that they, too, may learn the truth. Most of you have heard the legend of the Lost Souls' Pool; Mr. Larkin heard it from Ben Hallock and sent Kearn Thode down here to find it, if he could. Mr. Chase also learned it, and his partner came on the same errand, but I had the story from the lineal descendant of the first Spanish owner, and the one person in the world who knew where it was located, Juana Reyes. In her youth she married a cousin of the same name, and her only relative living now is her crippled grandson, José. My foster father scoffed at the truth of the legend, but I had faith in Tia Juana's knowledge.
"When El Negrito, the butcher, came down from the hills on his murderous raid and killed Dad among the rest, I learned that his visit had been prearranged and paid for by a white man. He had been hired to burn and rape and slay in order to evoke United States intervention, by a man in this room!"
"By God——" Jim Baggott leaped to his feet, and Henry Bailey and Ben Hallock emitted a simultaneous roar of rage; but she silenced them.
"The government men are here as much to protect him as to see that he does not escape, and hard as it is we must let the law take its course." She spoke with frank regret, but her steady, significant smile never wavered. "In Dad's name I dedicated my life to getting that man. I had a witness to prove his conspiracy, but I wanted to play a lone hand. Nothing else mattered, nothing else has ever mattered!
"When the Blue Chip was sold and Jim Baggott handed over the money to me I knew it wouldn't be enough; if I was to beat the man at his own game I must be able to match finances as well as wits. I thought then of the Pool of the Lost Souls and the fabulous profits to be made from it.
"Three days before Mr. North came to Limasito I took Tia Juana away, and she guided me to the Pool. It had been passed over by the searchers for generations, but she possessed an old map of its true location. I bought the Pool with the money from the sale of the Blue Chip, recorded it in her name with the Notary at Victoria and gave her a half interest. All she cared about, anyway, was the home of her ancestors.
"Then Mr. North brought the news of my inheritance. I didn't want it at first, as he can tell you. The name and the money meant little to me until I realized that they would be useful to my plan. They mean less to me now that my purpose has been achieved, but since they are mine and have been wrested from me by fraud I claim them—if only to trample them under my feet, if I choose.
"I realized that the name would carry me into the very inner circle of the man I was after, the man who had murdered Dad, and the money would help when I could exercise unlimited control of it. That was the only reason I consented to go to New York, and my ultimate purpose never wavered.
"I had no detailed plan, but I meant to keep Tia Juana and the fact that I possessed the Lost Souls' Pool under cover until I had come into my full inheritance, when I would return and fight the man to the finish. Mr. North never knew that Tia Juana and José accompanied us to New York, although he did complain of my frequent disappearances en route, I remember."
Mason North sputtered.
"So do I! But why did you not tell me all, my dear? I might have helped you——"
"And taken the whole thing out of my hands?" Willa shook her head, still smiling. "The man was my meat, Mr. North! Vengeance may be the Lord's, but it was sweet to me, too, and I meant to taste it to the last morsel!
"The man was one of those who were still searching for the Lost Souls' Pool. After our departure he possessed himself by violence of the map which Tia Juana had only partly destroyed, located the Pool, learned of its new owner and started out to find her. He knew that I was her one friend, and suspected that I was back of the purchase. Before following me to New York, therefore, he made a journey West, of which I'll tell you more later, or rather Mr. Thode will.
"When he did finally appear in New York, he tried by every means in his power to force me to a confession of my knowledge of Tia Juana's whereabouts; he spied upon me and I removed her to new quarters just in time. He flattered and cajoled me, and, when that failed, resorted to vague threats.
"Then Tia Juana disappeared. She vanished from the home I had found for her, leaving no trace, and I feared that the man had abducted her, to coerce her into making the Pool over to him, until I met him outside the house from which she had gone. He accused me of having spirited her away to keep her out of his reach and demanded that I produce her in three days, or he would strip me of my position and name and inheritance, seeing me driven forth as an impostor! That man is Starr Wiley, and you know how he carried out his threat!"
Wiley made a sudden convulsive leap for the window, but paused transfixed at her significant gesture. The government officials had closed in about him, but he saw only the girl before the bar and the pointed bulge in her cloak, beneath her hidden hand.
"Better not try it, Starr Wiley, although I almost wish you would!" Her voice rang out in the suddenly stayed tumult. "I've had you covered from the first, and I'll drop you with a shot through my pocket if you make another move! The rest of you know only what he has done to me, but you shall hear how he has served you, too!
"I left the Halstead house, and then by a miracle Tia Juana was restored to me. After her disappearance little José remembered her interest in a conversation between her landlady and a friend concerning some Spanish gypsies who had settled in squatters' cabins north of the city, and conceiving the idea that she had joined them, he slipped away to find her. He succeeded, although how she ever reached her destination we cannot know, for she was bewildered and lost her mind, temporarily enfeebled. José, as a vender of tomales, established himself near the garage where I kept my car, hoping to attract the attention of my chauffeur, Dan Morrissey here, who had helped me all through that trying time and whom José knew he could trust.
"Once he was frightened away, but the second time he succeeded and Dan brought him to me. I took Tia Juana away to another city, but she was ill for a long time. When I could leave her, I placed her and José in the care of Dan's sister whom I summoned from New York, and went West myself to disprove Starr Wiley's story if I could.
"I found a witness who can swear to my identity as the daughter of Ralph and Violet Murdaugh and prove it by a scar I bear from the fire which cost my mother her life, but Mr. Thode, unknown to me, had gone West also in my interest and his efforts were even more successful than mine.—Will you show them, please, what you obtained in Arizona?"
She turned to Kearn Thode, who drew forth a folded paper which he handed to Mason North.
"It is a confession, signed and witnessed, from the forger Starr Wiley employed to manufacture that false article of adoption," he announced. "The child who died in the trapper's cabin was his own daughter and it was Willa Murdaugh who went on with Gentleman Geoff. I did not know until this morning the whole story of the Lost Souls' Pool transaction, but I suspected it. Starr Wiley had a strong motive for getting Miss Murdaugh out of the way if she did not prove amenable to his schemes, and he provided himself with a strong weapon, but he overlooked one salient point. I happened to know Gentleman Geoff's last name, I learned it from his own lips as he lay dying, and it was not Abercrombie."
"After I left New York," Willa took up the story, "Starr Wiley came down here, registered a deed of sale, signed by Tia Juana, giving him possession of the Lost Souls' Pool and proceeded with his partner to develop it and float it on the market. I believe Mr. Thode tried to warn Mr. North through his son not to go into it, but unfortunately for him, Mr. North would not heed, and he and Mr. Halstead invested heavily. I say 'unfortunately,' for the money is lost! Gentlemen, Juana Reyes and I still own that property. Starr Wiley—and in this his partner, Harrington Chase, is equally guilty with him—had induced a poor ignorant old Mexican woman, Rosa Mendez, to sign the name of Juana Reyes to the bill of sale, copying it from the original signature in the registry. He thought the trick which had served him so well in Arizona could be safely repeated, but I have Rosa Mendez upstairs at this moment, together with the real Juana Reyes and José. Shall I call them?"
"No, no!" shrieked Starr Wiley. "I will not face that old hag! What's the use? You've got the goods on me! It's all true, all of it except that I instigated El Negrito's raid! That I never——"
"It was Tia Juana herself who witnessed your secret negotiations with Juan de Soria, El Negrito's agent!" Willa interposed swiftly. "It's been a fair fight, Starr Wiley, for I warned you once, but you have played directly into my hands. I've paid my debt to Dad, but you have yet to meet the penalty. For your crime against me, and those you have victimized in the Lost Souls venture you will not live to make restitution; you know what awaits you for summoning El Negrito down from the hills!"
For an instant Wiley cowered, shuddering. Then with a supreme effort he straightened and turned to his guards.
"Take me out of this!" he demanded hoarsely, through white lips. "I'm through! Take me away!"
With a scream Angie flung herself forward, but he put her aside as if in a dream and marched out with his guards on either side and his eyes fixed straight ahead over the abyss of the future. Muttering and cursing, Harrington Chase was led after him from the room, and for a space there was silence.
Ripley Halstead sat as though turned to stone, his wife had collapsed in her chair and Mason North's head was buried in his hands. Winthrop with his arm across his father's shoulders met Vernon's dazed eyes and with one accord they turned to Willa.
Her quiet, set, terrible smile was unchanged, but her face had blanched and with an effort she motioned to Jim Baggott.
"Jim, do you remember what happened in Manzanillo away over on the West Coast ten years ago when you were pay clerk for the Colima-Zamora Company and a man stuck you up in broad daylight?"
"I sure do!" Jim returned. "I shot him in the head!"
"Not in but across," observed Willa. "You left your mark on him from brow to ear, only you didn't recognize it while he was here under your own roof."
"What!" Jim's eyes were fairly starting from his head. "That feller was a swindling promoter down on his luck; he broke jail afterward, I heard. His name was Harry Carter."
"It used to be, but now it is Harrington Chase."
The smile faded at last, and Willa swayed suddenly, catching at the bar for support. Jim Baggott sprang for her, but Thode reached her side first, and for a moment she clung to him. Then she raised herself indomitably upright once more.
"It is not easy to hate, after all!" she murmured. "If it were not for the memory of Dad I could find it in my heart to forgive."
Spring was well advanced and the Casa de Limas was a veritable paradise of tender virginal green and delicate mystically perfumed blossoms, when Willa, a frail shadow of herself, ventured for the first time to the veranda, on Sallie Bailey's sturdy arm.
The protracted strain and final tragedy of her triumph had proved too much for even her robust vitality, and when the news came that Starr Wiley had killed himself in his garrison prison rather than face the firing squad, the inevitable collapse occurred.
For weeks she had lain helpless and inert with a low fever sapping her last ounce of strength and no incentive to take up her life again, until one day she had chanced to overhear a remark of Sallie Bailey's which brought a new light and glow to her world.
"I declare!" announced Sallie to her husband. "I don't know what to say to that young Thode every day when he comes ridin' in with his heart in his eyes to ask if she's better. I never see such devotion in my born days! He's worn to a shadder with the worry over her, and it hurts, I can tell you, to send him away lookin' like I'd hit him a blow when I tell him there's no change. Love's a pretty-fierce thing sometimes, ain't it?"
Love! Willa buried her face in the pillow and a little creeping warmth stole through her veins. It was good to be alive, after all.
But he was still ignorant of the truth about that letter! At the thought Willa's heart contracted and the quick, scalding tears of weakness came to her eyes. He still believed that she had wantonly led him on and trampled him beneath her feet in sheer joy of conquest. Oh, she must become strong enough to tell him how sorry she was, to make amends!
Now as she lay back in her chair, awaiting his coming in the cool of the soft spring evening, the events of the past few months seemed very far away and unreal, almost as though they might have been a dream born of her fever. She could scarcely believe that she had ever left Limasito; the climacteric weeks in New York, the trip to Topaz Gulch and the later scene in Jim Baggott's hotel had alike faded into a vague, nebulous shadow without substance or coherence, and she herself seemed drifting.…
Again it was Sallie who brought her back to earth with a matter-of-fact remark.
"I don't s'pose you know, or care either, that the Lost Souls is producin' thousands of barrels a day since they struck that gusher. You'll never miss the stock now that you gave to Mr. North and them Halsteads to make up for what they lost on their own hook in the fake company, though I did think you were a little fool at the time, Billie. Served 'em good and right after the way they treated you."
Willa shook her head wearily.
"They were pretty decent, Sallie, and both Ripley Halstead and Mr. North were always kind. I couldn't have let them suffer for a mistake.—How is Tia Juana? You must let me see her the next time she comes."
Sallie chuckled.
"She's buildin' a chapel to the lost souls who was drowned in that pool, and she's bought a big, bright-yeller automobile! José's learning from Dan how to drive it for her, when Dan gets time enough off from his work with Mr. Thode. Since you gave him that stock in the new Murdaugh-Reyes Company you can't hardly pry Dan Morrissey loose from the oil business to eat.—Say, honey!" Her tone dropped persuasively. "There's something that's not quite clear in my mind yet. I've been bursting to ask you, but you were too sick. Where does young Mr. Thode come in on this and how did you find out that old Rosa Mendez was the one who signed Tia Juana's name to that false deed?"
"I didn't. It was Mr. Thode who found that out for me," Willa explained. "You see, when I met him out in Topaz Gulch I told him I was coming down here and he said he'd be here, too; his presence would have been necessary, anyway, to prove that I was really Willa Murdaugh. Dan's sister was taking care of Tia Juana and José for me in Philadelphia, where those who were fighting me wouldn't think of searching.
"When I settled up my affairs out West, I wired Dan, and he brought Tia Juana and José down to Victoria to meet me. There I found Mr. Thode again. He had suspected trickery and fraud in connection with the making over of the lease, and when the Notary Public described the woman who had appeared before him as Tia Juana with—with Starr Wiley——" Her voice sank at mention of the name which had cast such a shadow over her for many days. "Mr. Thode knew it was an impostor. He realized that Wiley would not have selected a woman from either Victoria or Limasito to play the part for she might have been recognized, so he scouted around in the neighborhood of the Lost Souls' Pool itself, and found that a poor, old, half-witted creature, who had lived all her days in a wretched hovel near the Trevino hacienda, had suddenly come into money from a mysterious source, and moved away. That was Rosa Mendez.
"When he talked to her closest associates in the poor quarter where she lived, Mr. Thode found that Rosa had had a fair education, but all the money she could earn or scrape together went for hootch."
"I remember her from the time we lived out that way," Sallie remarked. "I hired her to help in the cook-house when we had extra hands on for the pickin', and she stole all the pots she could carry off."
"Mr. Thode found out, too, that for the last few days before she went away she shut herself up in her hut and wouldn't let anybody in, but one of the neighbor women peeped in through a window, and saw her writing something over and over on scraps of paper and burning them carefully in the stove." Willa went on. "That must have been Tia Juana's signature. Then when he heard that she was seen talking to a man who answered to Wiley's description, he was sure. He traced her to Palmillas and when he confronted her she broke down and confessed without a show of fight. He brought her back to Victoria and was waiting for me when I came."
"He's a smart one!" Sallie vociferated admiringly. "You'd go far, Billie, to find a regular he-man in all that crowd you've been traveling with that could beat him! But you might have let me in on that party over to Baggott's! He sent hot-foot for Hen, but little I thought you was in it or I'd have come, invite or no! How'd you fix that up?"
"I sent Tia Juana and José and Rosa Mendez on ahead to confront the others if necessary——"
"Yes, and they tried to kill each other all the way down——old Rosa and Tia Juana, I mean," interrupted the other. "Them Federal officers told Hen they'd rather have had charge o' two wild cats! Them and the other government fellers got there while that bunch o' robbers was out on a trip inspecting the oil well."
Willa nodded.
"I knew they'd return that morning, and I arranged the affair with Jim Baggott and the officials. It was a terrible business, Sallie, and I wanted to get it all over with at once."
"Well, you did it!" Sallie chuckled. "You took the wind out o' the sails o' them relatives o' your'n, too. They've been milling around these parts like nothin' was good enough for 'em, and it give 'em a pain to hear your name mentioned, but it was different after you showed up with your powder-blast, I can fell you! When they found you was goin' to let byegones be byegones, and give 'em a chance to get back the money they'd lost, it would have done you good to see the way they came around here, trying to do something for their dear young relation!"
Willa smiled faintly.
"I wish I might have seen my cousins before they went North."
Sallie endeavored to maintain a discreet silence, but the effort proved too much for her.
"Well, if you ask me, you're just as well off! The menfolks may be all right, but that Mrs. Halstead wouldn't have let you call your soul your own; wanted me to put ice-bags on you and all manner of outlandish things, and told me to my face that my house wasn't sanitary! I soon sent her about her business.—There! I declare if that good-for-nothin' Chevalita isn't callin' me again!"
She retired precipitately into the house, and her ruse was apparent; her quick ears had caught, not the voice of her criada, but the sound of a pinto's hoofs on the road, and she recognized its portent as did the girl in the shadows.
A pale young moon had risen, and in its light the drive lay like a curving white ribbon, the approaching figures of pony and man melting together, yet sharply distinct. Willa waited until the rider had dismounted, then bolstered herself upright and held out a thin little hand.
"Willa! It is really you, at last!"
He sank down on the steps beside her and somehow forgot to relinquish her hand.
"Yes, it is really I!" she smiled. "Mrs. Bailey told me of your never-failing calls and inquiries. You have been very kind——"
"Kind? Did you think that I could help myself, that I could have stayed away?" He broke off, his voice hoarse with pent-up feeling. "Forgive me! I did not mean to annoy you again, but the sight of you after so many days, lying here so white and frail and crushed——"
"I'm not!" She laughed nervously. "But you don't annoy me! I love to hear you say that you have wanted to see me, that you could not stay away!"
"Oh, don't, please!" He turned away with a gesture of pain. "Don't play with me again, Willa, girl! I can't quite bear it!"
"Kearn!" her voice thrilled, low and surpassingly sweet in his ears. "I never played with you, never! I told you in Topaz Gulch that I had much to explain and you much to forgive. I was deliberately misled, my mind poisoned against you, but the fault was mine, in being so easily influenced against the real truth. I knew it in my heart, but I was in such a maze of difficulties and cross-purposes that I did not know which way to turn, and I shut my ears to the dictates of my own belief. Do you remember that night in the conservatory?"
"I am not likely to forget it." His tones were shaking and he had turned his head away.
"Someone was listening, someone who hated us both, and acting under the impulse of a blind infatuation, had become a tool in stronger, more ruthless hands. When I reached home that night, a letter in your handwriting was put before me; a letter which seemed to prove that you—you had known before ever Mr. North came to Limasito who I was and that you had planned to marry me.—Oh, can't you understand?"
"A letter in my handwriting?" he repeated slowly. "It could not be——"
"But it was!" Willa laughed, but there was a little running sob through her words. "You told me the truth about it yourself, out in Topaz Gulch."
"I?" Thode turned to her, amazed.
"Yes. Don't you remember the letter you wrote to Mr. Larkin, telling him you had found Tia Juana, but nobody knew who she really was—her last name, I mean—and it wouldn't matter if they did? A page of that very letter with the top torn off was put in my hands and as you didn't mention Tia Juana by name I thought it referred to me. That was the inference I was supposed to gather from it, and like a credulous little fool I believed! The bottom of the page ended with: 'She is the undoubted owner of almost boundless wealth and when I have gone after her, and won her consent——'"
"Good heavens, of course!" Thode jumped to his feet. "I remember it all now. That was one of the letters that was stolen from Larkin's desk by a clerk we found to be in the secret employ of Chase and Wiley! They'd corrupted him in an effort to keep tabs on the progress we were making down here. We didn't prosecute him because of the notoriety, but we made him leave the East when we discovered his operations. It never occurred to me that any of the stolen letters could be put to such a use!"
"Or that I could be so ready to believe the worst of you?" she asked sadly.
"You! My poor little Willa!" He dropped on his knees beside her chair and gathered her hands again in his. "I thought you were heartless, intoxicated with admiration and trying your power wilfully on everyone who came within your reach. Half the men in your set were at your feet, and it drove me a little mad, I think! And all the time you were beset by enemies, making your brave fight alone, and even our friendship turned to something low and base! Oh, my dear, I have nothing to forgive, but there is much that I must teach you to forget."
"Unworthy things are soon forgotten!" She gazed with shining eyes into his. "Only the real, true, beautiful things remain, Kearn, and they—why, they are all before us!"
He looked away, straight ahead of him into the moon-lit darkness.
"When I come back," he said. "Much has happened while you lay ill, dear. We've gone into the big fight at last, we're going to help set the world free from barbarism, and I must do my share. I ran up to New York long enough to get a commission again in my old regiment, and I'm listed to sail for France with the first army the government sends. I couldn't stay behind, Willa; I'm sure you wouldn't have me wait when the call has come."
"No," Willa responded quietly; "I wouldn't. Not for all the world must you miss your chance to help. It's a sacred privilege, Kearn. I shouldn't wonder if all of us, men and women, will have to put our shoulder to the wheel, but if we can only help to get the world out of this hideous rut of wholesale oppression and savagery it will be gloriously worth it all. No, I wouldn't keep you back if I could, but I'm glad, somehow, to feel that I couldn't, anyway."
"And you will be with my sister," he reminded her. "She's coming to-morrow, you know, to take you back with her as soon as you are able to travel. She liked you from the start, dear, and when I tell her what is going to be, some day, she will take you quite to her heart."
"I shall be so glad to see her again!" Willa sighed happily. "It is dear of her to offer to take me into her home. The Ripley Halsteads suggested, of course, that I should go back to them, but I couldn't think of it! It would recall too much that I must try to forget, and poor Angie's face would give me no peace. I know that in her heart she must blame me still for the tragic end of her romance."
"Angie is no longer there," Kearn remarked. "She is taking a nursing-course in some hospital, preparatory for work in France, and Vernon writes me that she seems earnest and sincere for the first time in her life. Verne himself is off for Plattsburg, and Winthrop North is already across the water, driving an ambulance on the western front. My sister will put you to rolling bandages as soon as you can lift your hands. Life is getting pretty serious for all of us."
"And wonderful, too," Willa amended. "It is as if we were all just finding ourselves, isn't it? As if this supreme struggle were to bring out all our hidden strength, the deepest, most-enduring, best part of us!—And isn't it strange, too, that I should be going to make my home with your sister, after all? That was what you first suggested to me—do you remember?—when you thought me just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, before ever Mr. North came."
"Yes, dear." He pressed his lips to her hand. "Everything works out all right in time. And when I come back——"
"There is every indication that I'll be over myself before then, nursing or something. I'm not the kind to sit at home when there's work to be done. But, Kearn——?"
"What, Billie?"
"I don't mean to complain, for everyone has been wonderfully good to me since I was a wee bit of a thing, but do you suppose anyone was ever more buffeted about by Fate than I? Orphaned and thrown out upon the world at four, orphaned again last year, made an heiress, then an outcast, and finally reinstated again! I—I'm getting awfully tired of not really belonging to anyone!" She drew a deep breath. "Kearn, dear, do you suppose you could manage to marry me before you go to war?"
"You darling!" He hugged her close, pillows and all. "I didn't dare ask you that now, but, oh, I wanted to! If I could feel that you really did belong to me, dear, I'd go with a far-lighter heart and surer courage to meet whatever comes, and with ten times the strength, too, for I should go to fight for my own!—And then, you are such a changeling, you know! I love Willa Murdaugh, but I have always loved Gentleman Geoff's Billie since the day I met her coming from the Blue Chip, and I think that I love her best, after all! Gentleman Geoff's Billie,myBillie, will you be my wife, soon,soon?"
There was a pause, while a little breeze stirred the starry, perfume-laden branches about them, shimmering mistily in the moon's haze. Then, far away, a night bird called eagerly, tenderly to its mate, and Willa lifted tired, happy arms and placed them about the head bent above her, drawing it down.
"I thought you were never, in all the world, going to ask me!" she sighed.