He found a seat in a corner where he would be out of the draft of incessantly opening doors. For in spite of his good night's sleep he felt weak and a little giddy. Resolving to dismiss the past from his mind and concern himself solely with the present was good logic, but difficult of accomplishment. First, and dominating all his thought, was Marcreta Morgan. The thought of her brought him a dull pain. So many letters he had written her since his return to New York, and not one of them had she ever answered. Once, in vague alarm, he had even written to Clinton, but there had been no reply. And then pride had held him silent. So he couldn't go to the house on Pine Street now. He wouldn't go, he decided fiercely, until he had a decent position and had reëstablished himself in civilian life.
Over at the news-stand a girl was fitting picture post-cards into a rack. Kenwick walked over to her and with a part of the change left from his meager breakfast bought a morning paper. While she picked it off the pile he stood twirling the circular rack absently with one hand. The Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, and prominent business blocks whirled past his eyes, but he was not conscious of them. He took his newspaper and turned away.
Halfway to the door he opened it and glanced at the sensational menu spread out for his delectation upon the front page. All at once something inside his brain seemed to crumple up. The Cliff House, Golden Gate Park, and tall office-buildings sped around him in a circle, like a merry-go-round gone mad. Somehow he found his way back to the corner seat and sank into it. And there he sat like a stone man, staring at, but no longer seeing, the front page of his newspaper.
Two hours after Roger Kenwick had taken his gruesome departure from the house of the iron gate, a mud-spattered car turned in at the side entrance to the grounds which he had quitted. The man behind the wheel drove recklessly, careening between the double row of eucalyptus-trees like some low-flying bird of prey seeking its carrion. At the shallow front steps he brought the car to an abrupt halt as though he had found the thing for which he sought. Tugging at his heavy gloves he sprang up the steps, two at a time. "Lord! What a handsome place this is!" he muttered. "What a place for dinners and dancing—and love!"
He pressed the electric button and heard its buzz pierce the stillness of the house. "It's a crime!" He was walking up and down before the closed door, flapping his gloves against his chest. "It's a crime for a man to live in a place like this alone." He pressed the button again, keeping his finger upon it this time until he felt certain that its persistent summons must tear at the nerves of whoever was within. But still there was no response. Then he tried the knob, turned it, and went inside.
The house was in complete darkness. He felt his way along the front hall until his fingers found the switch-button. At the hat-rack he divested himself of his heavy coat, hat, and gloves. The face which the diamond-shaped mirror reflected was dark with disapproval and gathering anger. "Door unlocked at one o'clock at night! Might as well leave a child in charge of things!"
Walking with noisy, impatient tread, he ascended the stairs, taking the left flight on the landing, and snapping on the light in the upper hall. The doors were all closed. He turned the knob of the first one and went in. The sitting-room was in perfect order. He crossed it and entered the alcove beyond. It, too, was in order with fresh linen upon the bed. Having made a tour of the suite he came back and stood beside the center-table in the sitting-room. A half-burned cigar caught his eye, and he drew it out of the ash-tray and turned it speculatively between his fingers. Then, still holding it, he visited the other rooms in the left wing. They were all orderly, silent, deserted. Somewhere in his progress from one to another he dropped the cigar stump and did not notice it. Moving like a man in a dream he found himself at last over in the right wing, standing outside a heavy mahogany door. His movements were no longer speculative. They were nervous and jerky as though propelled by a disabled engine.
He did not at first try to open this door but called in a low uncertain voice that seemed to dread a reply, "Marstan, are you here?" When there was no response he tried the door in a futile sort of way as though he were expecting resistance. When it yielded to his touch and he stood upon the threshold the desolation of the room seemed to leap out at him. He felt no desire to switch on the light here, but stood motionless in the open doorway, transfixed, not by a sight but by an odor.
"Heliotrope!" he muttered at last, and brought the panel shut with a jerk. "Some woman has been in that room!"
For long moments he stood there in the lighted upper hall. In his face bewilderment struggled with alarm. At last he made his way downstairs to the living-room and on to the den. Here he stared long at the half-drawn shades and the crumpled cushions of the window-seat. Something was gone out of that room; something that was a vivid, vital part of it. He couldn't quite determine what it was.
Over in the dining-room he examined the bowl of English walnuts with several empty shells mixed in among them and the nutcrackers lying askew upon the centerpiece. All at once he dropped these with a crash that made an ugly scar upon the polished table-top. His eyes had fallen upon the wide board nailed across the shattered window. He went over and investigated it carefully, his quick eyes taking in every detail of the crude carpentry. Under his touch the sagging lower board suddenly gave way and fell with a heavy thud to the gravel walk below.
The new-comer went back to the front hall, searched for an instant in the pocket of his overcoat, and then, clutching a black cylindrical object, he went out of the house and around on the dining-room side. His hands were trembling now, and the path of light blazing from the little electric torch made a zigzag trail across the dank flower-beds. He found the dislodged board lying with its twisted nails sprawling upward and dragged it off the path. As he dropped it his eyes fell upon an object lying beneath a giant oleander bush. At last he knew what it was that he had missed from the den. It was the Indian blanket. Mystified, he bent down and picked it up, finding it heavy with the added weight of dampness. The next moment he gave a startled cry, dropped the blanket and torch, and staggered back against the wall. And the blackness of night rushed over him like a tidal wave.
But his was the temperament which recuperates quickly from a shock. Resourcefulness, the key-note of his character, impelled him always to seek relief in action. Cursing the sudden weakness in his knees which retarded haste, he strode, with the aid of the recovered torch, toward a small frame cottage in the rear of the garage. Here he rapped sharply upon the closed door, then pushed it open. This room, too, was empty. Pointing the torch, like the unblinking eye of a cyclops, into every corner of the apartment, he made certain of this. Then he drew a solitary chair close to the door and sat down, the torch across his knees.
More slowly now his glance traveled around the room. The blankets upon the bed were in a disheveled heap. There were some soiled dishes upon the table, a cup half full of cold tea, and under the small stove a pot of sticky-looking rice. The fire had gone out. He crossed the room and lifted the lid of the stove. Under the white ashes a few coals glowed dully. There were no clothes in the closet. It was easily apparent to him that the former inmate of the room had left unexpectedly but did not intend to return.
For half an hour he sat there motionless. Then he rose, pushed back the chair, and went out, closing the door behind him. Very deliberately he followed the side path back to the dining-room window. This time he retained the light, pressing one end of it firmly with his thumb. The soggy Indian blanket he folded back, and, stooping close to the ground, examined intently the dead cold face which it had sheltered.
It was the face of a man, young but haggard. The cheeks were sunken, and through the skin of his clenched hands the knuckles showed white and knotted. His hair was in wild disorder, but it seemed more the disorder of long neglect than of violent death. The helpless shrunken figure presented a pitiful contrast to that of the man who knelt beside it.
His was a large, well-proportioned frame that suggested, not corpulence but physical power. His hands were powerful but not thick. His whole bearing was self-assured, almost haughty. But it was the eyes, not the carriage, that gave the impression of arrogance. They were the clearest amber color with a mere dot of black pupil. Here and there tiny specks were visible showing like dark grains of sand in a sea of brown. A woman had once called them "tiger eyes," and he had been pleased. A child had once described them as "freckled" eyes, and he had been annoyed. As he knelt there now, searching the face of the dead man, his eyes, under their drooping lids, narrowed to the merest slits. When at last he rose and drew the blanket back over the still form, he moved with the brisk effectiveness of one animated by definite purpose.
First, he drove the mud-spattered roadster into the garage and left it there beside the beetle-black limousine. Then he let himself into the deserted house again, went up to the second bedroom in the left wing, and began sorting over some miscellaneous objects from one of the chiffonier drawers. "Ghastly!" he muttered once. "Ghastly! I'll have to take something to brace me up."
Back in the dining-room he took one of the long-stemmed glasses from the sideboard and poured himself a drink from a bottle in the cupboard underneath. But first he scrutinized its contents under the light. "Why didn't you take it all?" he inquired sardonically of some invisible being.
For a few hours he slept with a sort of determined tranquillity. But by eight o'clock he was up and dressed, and a few minutes later he answered a summons at the front door. Swinging it open he admitted a short sandy man with the ruddy complexion of the Norsemen. "I'm Annisen, the coroner," this visitor announced.
"Yes. I was expecting you. Come in." The other man swung the portal wider. "Doctor Annisen, is it?"
The visitor nodded and stepped into the hall that was still dim in the cold light of the winter morning. He unwound a black silk muffler from about his throat. "Devilish cold," he commented. "Devilish cold for a place that advertises summer all the year round."
His host smiled with sympathetic appreciation. "California publicity," he commented, "is far and away ahead of anything that we have in the unimaginative East. My furnace-man left me yesterday and I haven't got around to making the fires myself yet. But let me give you something to warm you up, doctor."
While he filled one of the small glasses on the buffet, his guest eyed him stolidly. "Still got some on hand, have you?" he said with a heavy attempt at the amenities. "Well, this wouldn't be a bad place for moonshining out here. Guess you could put almost anything over without fearing a visit from the authorities."
There was a moment of silence. "You've got a beautiful place though," he went on at last. "But Rest Hollow! What a name for it! Rest! Lord! Anything might happen out here, and I guess most everything has. I wasn't much surprised at the message I found waiting me when I got back to town this morning. I've always said that this place fairly yells for a suicide."
The other man's eyes were fixed upon his face with a curious intentness. It was as though he were deaf and were reading the words from his companion's lips. The coroner had raised his glass and was waiting. "No, I don't drink," his host explained. "Very seldom touch anything. I can't and do my kind of work."
Annisen set down his empty glass. "I shouldn't think you could do your kind of work and not drink," he remarked. "Well, let's get this over. I suppose you left everything just as you found it?"
There was the ghost of a smile in his host's eyes. "Glad he didn't put that question the other way around," he was thinking. "It would have been an embarrassment if he had asked if I found everything just as I left it." And then aloud, "Certainly. I haven't touched anything. The body is out here."
"Good. Gifford sent his wagon out last night, but fortunately his man knew enough not to disturb anything until I'd been out. Were you here when he came last night?"
"No. I didn't get here till later."
The two men crawled out through the broken window and in the gray light of the November morning knelt together beside the still form under the Indian blanket. Mechanically the coroner examined it and the empty revolver which they discovered a few feet away. But he offered no comment until he had finished. Then his verdict was curt. "Gunshot wound in the head, self-inflicted. When did this happen?" He took out a small book and noted down the answers to this and a variety of other questions. Then he stood for a moment staring down at the white, drawn face of the dead man.
"Young, too," he murmured. "But I suppose it's a merciful thing. There was no life ahead for him, poor devil."
They followed the path around to the front of the house where Annisen's car was waiting. "Be in to the inquest about two o'clock this afternoon," he instructed. "That hour suit you all right, Mr.——? Don't believe I know your name."
"Glover. Richard Glover. I'll be there at two, doctor."
Late that morning the hearse made its second trip out of the side entrance of Rest Hollow. A mud-splashed roadster followed it. The cortège had just passed the last gaunt eucalyptus-tree and turned out upon the public highway when it was halted. A man in heavy-rimmed goggles got out of his car and made his way across the road. His glance wavered uncertainly between the driver of the hearse and the man in the muddy roadster. He decided to address the latter.
"I heard the news last night. It got around the neighborhood. But I thought——I didn't know——Those rumors get started sometimes with no foundation of fact. But it's true then—that he is dead."
"That who is dead?"
The question seemed to be shot back at him. And he had the uncanny conviction that it emanated, not from the lips, but from the amber eyes of the man in the roadster. He stammered out his reply.
"Why—I think his name——He told me his name was Kenwick; Roger Kenwick, I think."
The roadster started again. "Yes, that's the name. Did you know him?"
"No. But wait a minute, please." The goggle-eyed man hurried back to his own car and returned with a handsome spray of white chrysanthemums. They were tied with a broad white ribbon bordered with heliotrope. "I'd like to have you take these if you will." He handed them up to the hearse-driver.
The man in the roadster fired another question. "Your name, please?"
"They are not from me. One of the ladies in the neighborhood sent them. She felt it was too sad—having him go away this way, all alone." He went back to his machine and was soon lost in the distance. And the funeral procession proceeded on its way to Mont-Mer.
The coroner's inquest was brief and perfunctory. Annisen was on the eve of retiring from office and seeking a more lucrative position in a Middle Western city where the inhabitants, as he contemptuously remarked, "were not afflicted like this place is with a chronic sleeping-sickness."
The jury returned the verdict that "the deceased came to his death by shooting himself in the head." After they had departed, Gifford held brief parley with the chief witness. "I suppose you'll attend to notifying the family?"
Richard Glover nodded. And at his direction the haggard body was removed from the cheap black coffin in which it had made the trip from Rest Hollow. Following Richard Glover's instructions, it was embalmed for the trip across the continent. But just as it was ready for the long journey, he announced to Gifford that he had received orders from the family to inter the body in the little cemetery of Mont-Mer. And so, on the following day, it was taken to the quiet resting-place overlooking the sea. In the presence of no one except the undertaker's assistants and Richard Glover there was lowered into the lonely grave a handsome gray casket with silver handles and a frosted silver plate on which was inscribed the name "Roger Kenwick."
The editor of the "San Francisco Clarion" tilted his chair far back and look quizzically at the young man sitting beside his desk. "Sure I remember you," he remarked. "Did some Sunday work for us some time ago, didn't you?"
"Yes, a little feature stuff when I was in college."
"And now you want to go it strong, eh? Well, we've been rather disorganized in here since the war. There's been a constant stream of reporters coming and going. But things are settling down a little now and we're not taking on anybody who doesn't want to stick. Planning to be in the city right along, are you?"
"Well, I'll be perfectly frank with you about that. I'm not. I've got to go East as soon as I get a little money. But I'm not planning to stay there. I'm coming back for good as soon as I've closed up my business."
"Why not close up the Eastern business first?"
"Can't. It's not ripe yet." There was a note of grimness in the young man's voice. "I don't know just when it will be, either. But when I do go back, I don't think it will take me long to finish it. Don't give me a reporter's job if I don't look good to you. Put me on to some feature stuff for a while."
"All right. Sit in, and I'll give you a line on a few things I'd like to have hunted down."
When he left the office half an hour later, Kenwick sought the public library. There he spent the entire afternoon and a part of the evening. It was about nine o'clock when he entered the St. Germaine, a modest hotel in the uptown district. The night clerk cast an inquiring glance in search of his suit-case.
"My baggage hasn't come yet," the prospective guest explained tranquilly. "It may be in to-morrow. If you want to know anything about me, call Allen Boyer at the 'Clarion' office."
When he had been shown to his room on the fifth floor he lighted the lamp on the stand near his bed and became absorbed in the contents of one of the weekly magazines. He read until very late and then snapped out the light, cursing himself for having abused his eyes on the eve of taking a new position.
The next morning he was out early, eager to hunt down one of the stories that Boyer had suggested. As he swung out into the exhilaration of the crisp November morning on the scent of an assignment some of the old self-assurance and buoyancy came back to him.
Half an hour after he had left the hotel, the revolving doors swung round the circle to admit a man with prosperous leather suit-case and "freckled" eyes. The day clerk handed him a pen and registration-slip. He was beginning to sign, after a curt question about the rates, when the blond cashier, perched on a stool in the wire cage adjoining the desk, pushed a similar slip of paper toward the clerk. "Can't quite make out that name," she confessed. "Looks like Renwich. Do you get it?"
The desk official glanced at it with the casually professional air of one to whom all the mysteries of chirography are as an open book. "It's Kenwick. Plain as day—Roger Kenwick."
The pen slid from the fingers of the man on the other side of the desk. For a moment, self-possession deserted Richard Glover. He stood there staring hard at the ugly blot which he had made across his own signature. Then he crumpled the bit of paper, threw it into the waste-basket, and, suit-case in hand, went out into the street.
The day clerk darted a contemptuous glance after his disappearing figure. "Some nut," he remarked. "Told me the terms were all right and then got cold feet. I'll bet he's a crook."
"Sure he's a crook." The blond cashier spoke with cheerful authority. "I could have told you that when he first came in. I can size 'em up as far off as the front door. And I had him posted on the 'Losses by Default' page before he'd set down his bag."
The day clerk regarded her musingly. "Hehada bag, though, and that's more than this Kenwick fellow showed. But Brown thought he was all right and let him have 526. Did you notice him this morning? Tall, dark fellow, young but with hair a little gray around the temples."
"Ye-a. High-brow. Looks like he was here for his health. Probably broke down in some government job."
"No, he's a newspaper man."
"Let's see where he's from?" She reached for the slip.
"New York. Well, I slipped a cog. I would have said he was a Westerner."
"That's right. That last chap looked more like New York to me. But you never can tell. And something seemed to hit him all wrong about this place."
With this conclusion Richard Glover was in complete accord. As he walked down Geary Street clutching his heavy bag, he was conscious with every nerve of his being that something had struck him decidedly wrong about the St. Germaine. "It might be just a coincidence," he reassured himself. "It's undoubtedly just a coincidence but—but that isn't such a very common name. My God! I begin to feel like a spy caught in his own trap."
With scarcely more than a glance at the name above the entrance he turned into the lobby of another hotel and signed for a room. It was almost noon when he appeared again and wrote a letter at one of the lobby desks. It was not a long letter, hardly more than a note, but its composition consumed almost an hour and a half a dozen sheets of stationery, which were successively torn to bits and thrown into the waste-basket. And then at last the final sheet met the same fate and Richard Glover sat tapping the desk softly with the edge of the blotter.
"No, I won't write; I'll just go," he decided. "For asking if I may come almost invites a refusal. And then it takes longer. I'll go up there this afternoon. The secret of getting what you want out of people is to take them off guard."
Following this policy he set out in the late afternoon to pay a call. At the door of the uptown address he was met by a colored maid. She offered him neither hope nor despair but agreed to present his card.
And in front of the living-room fire Marcreta Morgan read the card and flicked it across to her brother. "I don't think I care to see anybody to-day," she said. "It's your first night at home, and there's so much to talk about."
"Don't know him," Clinton decided. "Somebody you met while I was away?"
"Oh, yes, you know him, Clint. You introduced me to him yourself. Don't you remember he came here one night before you went to Washington and asked you to analyze some specimens of mineral water."
"Oh,thatfellow! Has he been hanging around here ever since?"
"Well, no. I can't say that he has hung around exactly. But of late he has called rather often. He's really quite entertaining in some ways. You were very much interested in his specimens."
"In hisspecimens, yes."
It may have been that she resented his implied dislike. It may have been for some other reason. But Marcreta suddenly reversed her decision. "Show him in, please," she ordered. And the next moment the visitor stood in the doorway.
It was apparent as he crossed the long room that he had not expected to meet any one save his hostess. But he responded warmly to Clinton's handshake and drew up a chair for himself opposite Marcreta. "It's a pleasant surprise to find you here, Mr. Morgan," he said. "I thought you were still in the service at Washington. But it's time for every one to be getting home now, isn't it?"
Clinton Morgan surveyed him silently. It struck him that his guest was very much at home himself. For a time the conversation followed that level, triangular form of talk which so effectually conceals purpose and personality. Then Clinton excused himself on the plea that he had some unpacking to do, and Marcreta and Richard Glover were left alone.
"It's been a long time since I've seen you, Mr. Glover," she said. "You haven't been in the Bay region lately?"
"No, I've not been able to get away." His tone indicated that he had chafed under this pressure of adverse circumstance. "But it's good to get back now," he went on. "I'm always glad to get back—here."
She ignored the new ardent note in his voice. "But the southern part of the State is beautiful," she said. "Mont-Mer, particularly, is so beautiful that it makes the soul ache."
The words seemed to startle him. His eyes left the camouflaged log of wood in the fireplace and fixed themselves steadily upon her. "How do you know? How do you, San Francisco-bound, know?"
"I have just returned from there. My brother and I arrived home the same day. I spent a week near Mont-Mer visiting my friends, the Paddingtons. Do you know them?"
"No. But I think I know their home. They call it 'Utopia,' I believe?"
"Yes. And until I saw it I had always thought that Utopia was a myth."
"Mont-Mer," he mused, "does look rather like a fairy-story come true, doesn't it? There's something perilously seductive about it. It's a place where people go to forget."
"I have heard that said about it, but somehow it didn't make that kind of an appeal to me. I had the feeling that in such a place as that every sorrow of life is a bleeding wound. There's a terrible cruelty about that tropical sort of beauty. It drives memories in, not out."
For some unaccountable reason the tensity of her tone annoyed him. "You didn't like it then?"
"It's beautiful, as I have said, but—I shall never go there again."
"The place you ought to see," he told her, "is Cedargrove, about two hours' trip to the south."
"That's where the mineral springs are?"
"Yes. And what I really came to tell you to-day is that I've bought the controlling interest in the springs. It was after your brother had given me his final analysis of the water last year that I decided to do it. He said, you know, that in his opinion the medicinal ingredients equaled that of the waters of Carlsbad. I've made great plans. You see, there are twenty acres, and so far we've found eighteen springs. We've been bottling the stuff for several months now and it's selling like hot cakes. The next step is a hotel. It's not to be too colossal, but unique in every respect. That's what takes in California. Show people that you've got 'something different' and they'll jump to the conclusion that because it's different it must be desirable. That's America. I've had other chemists besides your brother tell me that the water is wonderful. The best doctors in the South declare that those springs are a bigger find than a gold mine."
He had warmed to his theme now and his amber eyes glowed. And she followed his words with that quick responsiveness that was all unconsciously one of her chief charms. "And what are your advertising plans?" she asked.
It was like a fresh supply of gasolene to an engine. He plunged into stupendous plans for a publicity campaign. "I'm doing most of the copy work myself so far. I love the advertising game. I love telling people what they want and making them want it. I'm calling it 'The Carlsbad of America.' That will get the health-seekers, and health-seekers will pay any price."
For half an hour he talked, going into every detail of his plan. And then all at once he stopped abruptly as though he had grown suddenly weary of Carlsbad. She sat gazing into the fire, waiting in sympathetic silence, for him to resume the subject. But he didn't resume it. When he spoke again, his tone had changed as well as his theme. For the first time the conversation became keenly personal. He talked about himself with a humility that was quite new and, to his listener, somewhat startling.
"I don't think it can be a complete surprise to you," he said, "to know how much I need you; how much I depend upon your sympathy and understanding. You must have guessed something of my feeling. You are too intuitive not to have guessed."
Her frank, blue-gray eyes were fixed upon him with an expression that baffled him, yet gave him hope. "No, it is not quite unexpected," she admitted. "But I didn't realize that it had gone quite so far. It seems to have all happened rather suddenly. We haven't known each other very long; not nearly long enough for anything like this."
"No. But I've been looking for you all my life. That ought to count for something."
"For something—yes. But not for so much as—that."
"Love isn't a matter of time," he told her.
"No. But it's a matter of exploration. It's a matter of finding each other. And in the half a dozen times that you have called here, Mr. Glover, we haven't talked about the finding kind of things. No, we don't know each other. We don't know each other half well enough to consider anything like this."
"But we can get to know each other better. Is there any reason why we should not do that?"
She pondered this for a moment. "Well, for one thing, there is distance."
"There is no longer distance," he pleaded eagerly. "For I have severed my connections with Mont-Mer."
"Oh!" He couldn't tell whether the exclamation emanated from pleasure or merely surprise. "You severed your connections there because of this new Carlsbad plan?"
"Partly because of that. But chiefly because a secretaryship to a rich man doesn't get one anywhere."
"I suppose not."
Still he couldn't decide whether her interest now was genuine or only courteous. But she would give him no further encouragement than to allow him to call occasionally. And with this permission he went away well content.
Ten minutes after he heard the front door close, Clinton, in a dressing-gown and slippers, appeared on the threshold of his sister's room. "Gone, at last?" he queried. "What's Glover doing up here anyway? I thought he was securely anchored with a millionaire hermit down South."
She spoke without turning from the dressing-table where she was shaking her long dark hair down over an amethyst-colored negligée. "You don't like him, do you?"
"No, I can't say that I do."
"Why not?"
Before the directness of the question he felt suddenly shamefaced, as a man always does who condemns one of his own sex before a woman on insufficient evidence. "Oh, he's all right, of course. I have no reason really for disliking the fellow, except——Well, he seems to like you too much. And he's not your style. What did he want to-night?"
"He wanted to tell me about a new scheme he has, a really wonderful enterprise, Clint, for turning that mineral water place into a health-resort. He's taken over most of the stock and he talked glowingly about it."
"He does talk well; I'll admit that. But who is going to capitalize this venture?"
His sister smiled. "Well, Clinton, I could hardly ask him that, you know."
"No, I suppose not. And if you had, I imagine that he would hardly have liked to answer it. Anyhow, he's cheered you up, and I ought to be grateful to him for that. It was a mistake for you to take that trip to Mont-Mer, Crete. It was too much for you."
She made no response to this, and her brother, noting the delicately flushed face and languid movements, told himself reproachfully that the mistake was in going away and leaving her to struggle alone with the hospital venture. He sat down on a cedar chest beside the window.
"Let's retint the whole lower floor, Crete," he suggested, seizing upon the first change of topic that offered itself. "Now that this place is to be a home again and not a sanitarium, let's retint and get the public institution smell out of it."
She laid down the ivory brush and turned to him. But her gaze was abstracted, and when she spoke in a musing voice, her words showed that she had not been listening. "Clinton, have you ever figured out just how much of the Coalinga oil stock belongs to me?"
He had been sitting with one knee hugged between his arms. Now he released it and brought himself upright upon the cedar chest.
"Why, no, I haven't. I don't think it makes much difference, while we're living together, sharing everything this way."
She got up from the dressing-table and walked over to the far window, drawing the deep lace collar of the amethyst negligée up about her ears as though to screen herself from his view. Out on the bay the lighted ferry-boats plied their silent passage, and on the Key Route pier an orange-colored train crawled cautiously, like a brilliant caterpillar, across a thread of track. Marcreta, gazing out into the clear soft dusk, sent a question backward over her shoulder.
"Would it be very much trouble to go over our properties some time and—make a division?"
"No, it wouldn't be much trouble, and I suppose it would be much more businesslike." He spoke briskly but she knew that her demand had astonished him. "You know," he admitted ruefully, "I don't pretend to be much of a business man. I think you may be right to insist upon an accounting."
"O Clint! I don't mean that. You know I don't mean that." Her voice held the stricken tone of the sensitive nature stabbed by the swift realization that it has hurt some one else. "You've been the best brother a girl ever had. You've been too good to me. I didn't meanthatat all."
"What do you mean then, Crete?"
Her answer seemed to grope its way through an underbrush of tangled emotions. "I just thought it would be well for us each to know what we have because—you see, we may not always be living together like this."
A month had passed since Kenwick became a member of the staff of the "San Francisco Clarion." The work had been going well, and the perpetual small excitement of a newspaper office brought back some of the old thrill that he had known in his college days. But every emotion came in subdued form now. There was a shadow across his sky, a soft pedal applied to every emotion. And until this was lifted he resolved to deny himself a sight of the house on Pine Street.
But during the beginning of his fifth week in the city desire overcame pride and caution, and late one night he walked up the familiar hill and looked into one of the lighted windows. There was no one in the room and the furniture and floors were covered with heavy canvas sheeting spattered with calcimine. An ugly step-ladder stood directly in front of the window, partly obstructing his view. He was about to turn away in bleak despair when the glitter of some small object in a far corner of the room caught his eye. Peering more intently under the half-drawn shade he saw that the gleaming thing was a small tinsel ball suspended from the lowest branch of a tiny Christmas-tree. It was almost New Year's day now, and the little fir with its brave showing of gilt and silver had been relegated to a distant corner to make way for the aggressive progress of the painters. The man at the window, staring in from the darkness at the drooping glory of the little tree, felt for it a sudden sense of kinship. And the Christmas-tree stared back at him with an inarticulate sort of questioning. There was to Kenwick a terrible sort of patience in its attitude. Torn away from its normal environment, transplanted suddenly and without warning into surroundings giddily artificial, and bereft of the roots with which to explore them, the little fir-tree stood there, holding in its out-stretched arms the baubles of an unfamiliar and irrelevant existence. He turned away, maddened by a fury that he did not comprehend. "Anything but that!" he cried savagely. "Anything but the patience of hopelessness!"
His thoughts were in a whirl, and he was unconscious of the fact that he was almost running down the slanting pavement. When he became aware of it he slackened his pace abruptly. He was a fool, he told himself. "Anybody watching me would size me up for an escaped convict—prowling around doorsteps at night; sneaking up to windows, like a professional burglar looking over his territory."
He let himself into his room at the St. Germaine and snapped on the light. The first thing his eyes fell upon in the bare, prim chamber was a letter propped against his mirror. It was a yellow envelope and it bore the dull black insignia of the dead-letter office. There was something ominous-looking about it. There is always something ominous about that pale yellow, unstamped envelope that issues, unheralded and unwanted, from the cemetery of letters. Inside of it was a communication written upon the St. Germaine stationery and addressed in his own handwriting to his brother, Everett Kenwick. It had been opened and sealed again, and across one end something was written. The single word seemed to leap out at Kenwick with the brutal unexpectedness of a bomb. He dropped the envelope as though it had stung him and stood gazing down at it. It stared malignantly back at him, burning a fiery path to his brain. Up and down the room he strode muttering over and over to himself that one horrible word: "Deceased! Deceased!"
The walls of the room seemed to be coming closer and closer. He felt as if he were being smothered. Taking his hat he went out into the hall, and walked down the five flights of stairs rather than encounter the elevator-boy. On the way down he decided to send a telegram of inquiry to the family lawyer in New York. The indelible pencil handed to him by the girl in the little hotel booth seemed to write the message quite of its own accord. And there was a calming sort of comfort in the impersonal manner of the telegraph-operator herself as she counted off mechanically the frantic words of his query.
As he turned away he was conscious of only one impulse; to be with somebody. He must have companionship of some sort, any sort, or he would lose his reason. From the dining-room there drifted out to him the pleasant din of human voices. He made his way inside and followed the head-waiter to his accustomed seat beside one of the mirror walls.
The hotel dining-room was full that evening. There was an Elks' convention in the city and the lobby swarmed with delegates. At his table Kenwick found three other men, and was pathetically grateful for their comradeship. Two of them were from Sacramento. The third introduced himself as Granville Jarvis, late of New Orleans. Kenwick remembered having seen him several times about the hotel. He had that quiet, magnetic sort of personality that never comes quite halfway to meet the casual acquaintance, but that possesses a subtle, indefinable power that lures others across the intervening territory. "I have something for you," Granville Jarvis seemed to say. "I have something that I'll be glad to give you—if you care to come and get it."
The other men talked volubly, including the quartet in their random conversation. Jarvis was an appreciative listener, an unmistakable cosmopolite, whose occasional contributions to the table-talk were keen-edged and subtly humorous. In his speech lingered only a faint trace of the Southern drawl. Of the three men, his was the personality which attracted Kenwick. The two Elks finished their dessert hurriedly and left before the coffee was served. Then Granville Jarvis, glancing at the haggard face of the young man across the table, ventured the first personal remark of the hour. "You've scarcely eaten a thing, and you look all in. I don't want to intrude into your affairs, but is there anything I can do?"
It was that unexpected kindliness that always proves too much for overstrung nerves. "I've just had bad news," Kenwick admitted. "It's rather shaken me up. But you can't do anything, thanks."
"Better take a walk out in the fresh air," Jarvis suggested. "I know how you feel. It's beastly—when a man is all alone."
"I am alone; that's the damnable part of it. And I've got to somehow get through the night."
The other man nodded with silent comprehension. "I'll take a stroll with you if you like, and you don't have to talk."
Kenwick accepted the offer eagerly, and for an hour he and his companion walked almost in silence. Then Kenwick, still haunted by the specter of solitude, invited the New Orleans man up to his room. There stretched out comfortably in two deep chairs, with an ash-tray between them, they discussed politics, books, and New York. "It's my home town," Kenwick explained, "but I'm a Westerner by adoption. They say, 'Once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker,' but it hasn't worked that way with me."
Jarvis smiled. "They say that about Emporia, Kansas, too, and about all the other towns ranging in between. It's a world-wide colloquialism. Don't you go back to visit, though?"
"I've been thinking of it," his host replied. And then, despite the fact that his guest was a complete stranger, perhaps because of that fact, he felt an overwhelming desire to tell him of his trouble. For there is a certain security in confiding a sorrow to a casual stranger. Every care-ridden person in the world has felt the impulse, has been impelled to it by the realization that there is safety in remoteness. You will never see the stranger again, or if you do, he will have forgotten you and your trouble. A transitory interest has its advantages. It demands nothing in the way of a sequel. It keeps no watch upon your struggle; it demands no final reckoning. You and your agony are to the chance acquaintance a short-story, not a serial.
Jarvis was leaning back in his deep chair, one leg dangling carelessly over the broad arm. His eye-glasses, rimmed with the thinnest thread of tortoise-shell, gave him a certain intellectuality. Although he was still in the early thirties there were deep lines about his mouth. He had lived, Kenwick decided. And having lived, he must know something about life. Jarvis glanced up suddenly and met his gaze.
"Funny thing, my being here, isn't it?" he said. "Up here in your room, smoking your cigars, sprawling over your furniture as though I'd known you always instead of being the merest chance acquaintance."
Mashing the gray end of his cigar into the ash-tray Kenwick made slow-toned response. "I don't think it's curious. I don't think it's curious at all because as I look back on my life all the vital things in it have had casual beginnings. I have a steadily increasing respect for the small emergencies of life. Whenever I carefully set my stage for some dramatic event it's sure to turn out a thin affair. The best scenes are those which are impromptu and carry their own properties."
"That's flattering to a chance acquaintance, but a hard knock at your friends."
"I'm all for chance acquaintances," Kenwick responded. "Friends have an uncomfortable habit of failing to show up at the moment of crisis. Just when you're terribly in need of them, they fall sick or get absorbed in building a new house, or go to Argentina. And then, before you have time to grow cynical, along comes somebody that you just bow to on the street, and he sees you are in trouble and offers a lift. The people who really owe you something, never pay. They pass the buck to the chance acquaintance, and nine times out of ten he makes good. Makes things more interesting that way. After all, life isn't merely a system of bookkeeping."
Kenwick prided himself upon the fact that he had kept the bitterness out of his voice, but when Jarvis spoke, this illusion was shattered. "Tough luck, Mr. Kenwick. As I said before, I don't want to horn in, but I'd be glad to score another point for the C. A. if it would be of any help to you, and there's nobody else about."
Kenwick put down his cigar. "To tell the truth, there's nobody about at all. It happens that during the past year every friend I had has gone, figuratively speaking, to Argentina. Some of them used to be particularly good at helping me out with my yarns. I'm a fiction-writer, you know, and I'm under contract to finish a mystery-story for one of the magazines. I'm stuck, and it's bothering me a lot. Can't move the thing a peg. I know that the man who talks about his own stories is as much of a pest as the man who tells his dreams but if——"
Jarvis had settled down into his chair with a sigh of luxurious content. "Shoot," he commanded. "It's great stuff being talked to when I'm not expected to make any replies. What's the name of it?"
"It hasn't any name just yet, but I'll let you be godfather at the christening. This is just a scenario of the situation, with all the color and atmosphere left out." He reached over and snapped off the chandelier light, leaving only the soft glow from the little brass lamp upon the table.
"The story," he began when he had resumed his seat, "hinges upon the fortunes of two brothers—or rather the fortunes of one and the misfortunes of the other. The parents die when the elder of the two is thirty and the younger almost nineteen. The older brother has married, and at the death of his mother comes back with his wife, to live at the old home. But the sister-in-law and younger brother are not congenial, and the boy, who has ambitions for a professional training decides to go away from home to a distant university. There is very little opposition to the plan. For the sister-in-law is in favor of it, and the elder brother (who is guardian, of course, and a splendid fellow) consents on the condition that the boy spend his summer vacations at home. He hopes in this way to keep in touch with him and does.
"In the spring of his senior year, America enters the war, and the boy, now a man of twenty-three, enlists and in the autumn gets across. He sees more than six months of action at the front without getting a scratch. But at the end of that time his nerves go to pieces and he is sent first to a convalescent hospital in England and then home. There he finds the old place completely changed under his sister-in-law's régime and he is so obviously unhappy about it that his brother suggests that he accept the invitation of an old family friend and spend the winter with him in his California home. He complies with this plan, the more eagerly because it gives him an excuse to get back to the environment which he has grown to love and the associates that he knew in his college days.
"Without adventure he arrives at the little southern California town, and is met at the depot by his friend's chauffeur. But on the way out to the house they meet with an automobile accident that shakes him up pretty badly and, so far as he can determine from circumstantial evidence, kills the driver. Stranded alone and injured in an unfamiliar village, he applies at the first house he comes to for aid. It chances to be one of those palatial country homes, so plentiful in that region, which seems to have been built for the exclusive use of caretakers. For although it is completely and elegantly furnished and bears every evidence of being tenanted he stays there ill for more than twenty-four hours, absolutely alone except for the presence of a mysterious woman who is apparently locked into one of the bedrooms upstairs, and whom he never sees.
"On the second night he makes a surreptitious escape from this uncanny prison, without ever having encountered its owner, and by a happy stroke of chance, makes his way up the coast to San Francisco. Here he plans to establish himself permanently, look up some of his old associates, and get in touch with life again. But this scheme is thwarted in a most unexpected manner. For on the morning of his arrival something happens that makes chaos of his plans and starts him upon a quest, not into the future, but into the past. In the station depot he stops long enough to purchase a newspaper, and——"
Kenwick paused for an instant and glanced at his auditor.
"Go on," Jarvis commanded with that impatient curtness that is the best assurance of interest.
"He buys a newspaper," the narrator went on. "And from the date on it he learns that instead of having lost connection with the world for two days, he has been out of it for almost a year. There are ten months of his life that he can't account for at all.
"At the library he reads up and discovers that the war is over. From the newspapers and magazines he picks up the thread of world events and orients himself with regard to national and local affairs. But to connect his own past and present proves, as you may suspect, an almost hopeless task. He sends several telegrams to his own home, all of which are ignored. A letter to his brother brings, after long delay, the startling information that he is dead. The message bowls him over completely. And the more the thing preys upon his mind the more certain he is that there has been foul play. He begins to be haunted by the conviction that he is being watched. The only safe course open to him seems to be to lead as normal and inconspicuous an existence as possible until he can hear from the family lawyer."
Kenwick broke off suddenly and reached for the ash-tray. "Well," he said, "what do you think of it?"
Jarvis stirred in his chair. When he spoke he appeared to be returning rather breathlessly from a long distance. "Great stuff," he commented. "It seems to have all the ingredients for a best-seller, except one."
"What's that?"
"Well, I don't pose as a critic of literature. But judging from the novels I've read I should say that the thing it lacks is romance. The poor devil ought to be in love with somebody, or somebody ought to be in love with him."
Kenwick's face stiffened. It was apparent that he had not expected this criticism. And he found himself envying those people who can discuss their love affairs. But not to his best friend could he have mentioned Marcreta Morgan's name. "I told you I was just giving you a scenario of this thing," he reminded his critic. "I'll work up that part of it later. As a matter of fact there is a woman in it. He proposed to her before he went into the service and she rejected him."
"And he didn't look her up afterward?"
"Well, he could hardly do that, not until he had accounted for himself. And especially as she had shown no interest in him whatever while he was away."
"You never can tell about a woman, though. The fact that he had come back a pariah and was in trouble might arouse her love."
"No, not her love; her pity perhaps."
"Well, I won't argue with an author. They are supposed to be authorities on such questions. Go on with the thing. Wherehadthe chap been during those ten months?"
"I haven't the least idea."
Jarvis brought himself upright. "Why, you outrageous devil!" he cried. "Getting me all worked up over a story that you can't see the end of yourself! And how about the family estate? What became of that?"
"I haven't finished plotting the thing yet. That's why I told it to you. If I had solved all its problems it wouldn't have been necessary to inflict it upon you."
His guest rose and stretched himself. "Well, I'm afraid I wasn't much help," he said ruefully. "Fact is, I haven't any creative imagination at all. I'm the kind of reader that writers of detective yarns love. I'll swallow anything that's got a little salt on it, and I never guess right about the ending."
He fumbled in an inside pocket of his coat and drew out a card. "I'd like to have you return this call some time, Mr. Kenwick. I'm not far away from you, just two blocks around the corner in the Hartshire Building. If you care anything for photography, drop around some time and I'll show you some interesting pictures. They are a harmless hobby of mine. I fuss around in a laboratory over there most of the time, and when I'm not there I'm in the dark room."
Kenwick promised to come, and a moment later Granville Jarvis was gone. Bereft of his sympathetic presence the room seemed overpowering in its gaunt emptiness. The last two hours of genial companionship were swept aside as ruthlessly as though they had never been, and Kenwick found himself back again at that ghastly moment when he had torn open the yellow envelope. For he was to learn, in the crucial school of experience, that the sorrow of bereavement is not a permanently engulfing flood, but that it comes in waves, ebbing away under the pressure of objective living only to gather volume for a renewed attack. And in the moment that its victim recovers a staggering strength, it is upon him again, sweeping aside in one crashing moment the pitiful defenses of philosophy and faith which the soul has constructed to save itself from shipwreck.
Until after midnight Kenwick sat at the window waiting for a summons from the telephone. Then he went to bed and fell into a listening sort of sleep. But not during that night nor in the days that followed was there any response to his telegram.
It was on the morning after his conversation with Jarvis that Boyer, of the "Clarion," summoned Kenwick into his office. "Got a story here that I'd like to have you hunt down," he said, and pushed a clipping across the table. Kenwick read it with an interest that was painfully forced. It was cut from one of the local evening papers and was a rather colorless account of the spectacular achievements of one of the city's trance mediums. He noted down the address and rose with a hint of weariness.
"The thing that makes her different from the others and worth a trip out there," his employer explained, "is that Professor Drew of the psychology department over at the university has set himself the task of showing her up. She has done some rather dramatic things that have got on his nerves and the other day he gave a lecture on her methods before his abnormal psychology class and had the place packed. She has just written a book too; bizarre sort of thing called the 'Rent Veil' or the 'Torn Scarf' or something like that. It ran in the 'Record' about two months ago and they made a big hit with it."
He leaned back in his chair and surveyed Kenwick speculatively. "What do you make of it?" he asked. "This stupendous revival of interest in the supernatural? Some of our greatest writers devoting themselves to spirit-writing; some of our best citizens declaring that they get comfort and inspiration out of the ouija-board and planchette?"
"I think," Kenwick answered slowly, "that it is one of the inevitable results of the war. It has caused a big upheaval in the spiritual as well as the economic world. And one of the things that it has brought to the surface is death. Of course death has always been with us but unless it came right into our own lives we have persistently ignored it, as we have ignored the industrial problems and immigration and a lot of other things. But during the last few years death has been rampant. Everybody has had to look at it from a greater or less distance. For awhile we'll have to go on looking at it. And human nature is so constituted that it has only two alternatives. It must either ignore things or try to account for them. I don't think this renaissance of the supernatural is anything unusual. Every great war must have been followed by a frenzied season of accounting for death."
The other man glanced at him with eyes in which there was no longer impersonal speculation. "You've been touched by it too, Kenwick?" he ventured.
"Yes. My brother."
"I'm sorry." He stretched out a hand. "Well, to get back to this Madame Rosalie; get an interview with her and also with Drew. We'll give 'em each a column on Sunday. We might be able to start a controversy that would be worth while."
And so, half an hour later, Kenwick was ringing the door-bell at a shabby old house on Fillmore Street. As he stood there waiting he was convinced that his only motive for the errand was a journalistic interest. But if there is any season of life when the sane well-balanced man or woman may be tempted into the region of the occult it is during that interval between the shock of bereavement and readjustment to an altered order of existence when the soul quivers upon the brink of two worlds. The lapse of time between shock and readjustment varies with every temperament, but in that period of helpless groping we all stand close to the psychic, the unexplainable, the supernatural.
If Kenwick had expected to find Madame Rosalie's domain extraordinary in any particular, he was distinctly disappointed. It was one of those ugly old frame houses with protruding bay-windows which still weather competition with the concrete and stucco residences in every part of the city. In the front basement window was the hideous sign of a dry-cleaning establishment, and in the neighboring flat the windows were placarded with the promise to supply "Costumes for All Occasions."
In response to his summons a petite dark woman in a loose-flowing garnet robe opened the door and voiced the professional query, "You have an appointment?"
When the visitor had admitted that his call was impromptu, she considered for a moment. "I have a client just now," she explained, "and you may not want to wait until his sitting is over."
"I'll wait," Kenwick assured her. "How long does it take?" It was instantly apparent from Madame Rosalie's expression that this query was a violation of professional etiquette. As well inquire of a doctor how long it will take to perform a major operation.
Ignoring his query the medium opened the door wider and ushered her caller into the front room. It was a dim commonplace apartment furnished with flowered cretonne-covered chairs, a defiant-looking piano, and gilt-framed pictures. "You will find some magazines here," she promised. "Just make yourself at home, please."
It would be a difficult achievement, the reporter decided, as he settled himself in one of the rigid-looking chairs. And Madame Rosalie's tone, though courteous, had not been eager or placating. It was apparent that she had plenty of business. Her manner of greeting had been more like that of an experienced and self-possessed hostess taken unawares by a guest, than of an exponent of the supernatural. She was obviously an educated woman. Her voice alone betrayed that fact, and she moved with a grace that seemed somehow incongruous in those sordid surroundings. As he sat beside the bow-windows, gazing out into the fog, Kenwick smiled grimly. "I don't know Drew yet," he murmured, "but whoever he is, I'll bet she can give him a run for his money."
Within twenty minutes he heard low voices at the far end of the hall, and then the sound of approaching footsteps. He rose and went to the door. Madame Rosalie and her client were emerging from a shadowy chamber whose door was draped with maroon-colored portières. The caller had reached the hat-rack and was jerking himself into his overcoat when all at once he stopped with words of astonished greeting. "Why, hello, Kenwick!" He strode forward with extended hand. And Kenwick gripped it with an equal astonishment. It was one of the men whom he had known well at college. "Going it strong now that you are back in civilization again?" On his face was genuine pleasure and the shamefaced expression that it would have worn if the newspaper reporter had suddenly encountered him tobogganing down one of San Francisco's hills on a child's coaster.
When he was gone the reporter followed his hostess into the room with the maroon-colored curtains. It was as shabby as the waiting-room but more comfortable and somehow expressive of a strong personality. Over a felt-covered table, strewn with cards and stubs of pencils and other aids to occult communication, was an electric bulb held in place by a loop of white cotton string. Madame Rosalie motioned him to a seat beside this table and sank into a deep chair on the opposite side.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Madame Rosalie's eyes rested upon her client with a scrutiny that was not inquisitive but almost uncomfortably searching. They were dark eyes and brilliant with the unnatural shining that is often caused by chronic insomnia. At first glance he had thought that her hair was confined under a net; now at close range he saw that it was cut short and waved alluringly over the lobes of her ears. She had been a beautiful woman once, he reflected, but life had given her brutal treatment.
He picked up a crystal sphere that was lying upon the table. "Tell me what you see for me in that?" he commanded.
She turned it slowly under the light. Kenwick watching her, felt a little cheated by the unspectacular quality of her technic. For all the thrill which she seemed likely to give him, he might as well be opening an interview with the census-taker.
"You came," the medium said at last, still gazing into the depths of the crystal, "to consult me, not about the future but the past."
He made no response.
"You are in trouble," she went on in the same unhurried voice. "You are in great trouble—but you are not taking the right way out."
"What is the right way out?"
"You must have help."
An expression of annoyance crossed his face. She would follow up that statement, of course, with the suggestion that he enlist for a prolonged course of "readings." He was preparing a curt dismissal of this plan when suddenly she set the crystal down upon the table and looked at him with compassionate eyes. "You must have help," she repeated. "But it must be the help of some one who is dear to you—orwasdear to you."
"Can you evoke such a spirit?"
"I don't know. I never can promise, but I'll try."
She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. The man, looking at her from across the table, was startled at the change in her face. For hers was that type of face which is dominated by the eyes. Without their too brilliant light it suffered a complete loss of personality. Words came at last through her slightly parted lips. "There is some one who wishes to speak to you. I think it is a woman."
"A woman!" Kenwick was not conscious that his tone held a note of disappointment. "Who is she?"
"I can't quite get the name. It's a difficult control. But she wants very much to talk to you. She says——It will be hard to forgive at first, but you must come back."
"Back where?"
The voice went on, unheeding. "She says——that she was influenced by some one else—some one stronger. You must look for that man. You must never stop looking for him——in crowds and everywhere you go you must look. And when you see his face you will know at once that he is the one, the only one who can help you. He is your missing link."
There was a long pause. "Anything else?" Kenwick inquired at last. His voice was guarded but he was strangely moved.
"There is some one calling to you. He seems to be in a prison and he is looking out through iron bars. They might be the bars of a gate. I can't see the face, but some one is calling your name."
"Shall I answer the call?"
"No. There would be no use. It is too late now."
Her eyes opened suddenly and met Kenwick's fixed upon them intent but inscrutable. He stretched his hand across the table.
"Read my palm."
She held it only a moment but her eyes seemed to take in its every line at a glance. "There is a perpetual conflict raging in your soul," she said.
He smiled. "That's true of most people, isn't it?"
Madame Rosalie had a superb disregard for irrelevancies. "Part of you is eager to plunge gallantly into the tasks of the present, but the other part is holding you back. You have the drooping head-line with the introspective fingers. It's a bad sign on the hand of the creative temperament. And you are some kind of a creative artist; painter, musician, or writer. But your head-line didn't always droop. It's a recent tendency, so you have a good chance to overcome it."
"How can I overcome it?"
"In the first place, give up all idea of trying to reconcile yourself with the past. You can't possibly do it and the effort may—wreck you."
He got to his feet and stood looking down at her. "There doesn't seem to be much ahead for me, does there?" he said.
"There is everything ahead; all the tragedy is behind you." She was still looking at him compassionately. "You are too young," she said at last.
"Too young for what?"
"To have lost so much out of your life." Her voice was like red coals leaping into sudden flame. It startled Kenwick. "And you are choosing just the wrong way to wrestle with such a loss. You had originally a splendid initiative, an impatient desire for action. But the artistic side of your nature has assumed control of you. And the artistic temperament is long on endurance and short on combativeness. If you spent one-third of the time fighting this specter in your past that you spend trying to reconcile yourself to it, you would win gloriously."
For a few moments they stood beside the table talking of commonplaces. Once Kenwick mentioned Professor Drew, and Madame Rosalie smiled.
"I'm not afraid of him," she said. "And neither do I care to enter into a public debate with him."
She followed her client to the door. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to help you more. But you are not ready for my help yet."
Kenwick walked back to the "Clarion" office with these words ringing in his ears. The messages from the other world may have been guess-work, but at least she was a shrewd reader of character. And contrary to all his expectations she had not made any effort to win him for a permanent client.
His Sunday story, featuring her and Professor Drew, was all that Boyer had hoped for it. The astrologist was sketched with a few vivid strokes, the room with the maroon-colored curtains more in detail, and an interview reported which thrilled the souls of the credulous and held even the attention of the skeptical. There was neither ridicule nor championship in the story, and the caustic comments of Professor Drew were bare of journalistic comment. Altogether, the thing worked up well and made a hit. After reading it during his late breakfast at the St. Germaine, Kenwick suddenly decided to go around to the Hartshire Building and keep his promise to Jarvis. He found the photographer enveloped in a long black apron and rubber gloves. "Good boy!" he cried slapping his visitor on the back. "I've been thinking about you and that cursed story you told me: can't get the blame thing out of my head. That was good stuff about the clairvoyant in the 'Clarion' this morning. Where on earth do you dig up those oddities? I recognized your pen-name."
He hung Kenwick's coat in a shallow closet as he talked. "You are in the nick of time to help me with an experiment if you will," he went on. "I want to do some research work on the human eye and I've got to have a subject. I've got a lot of cards here—featuring optical illusions and that sort of thing. Do you mind helping me for, say, half an hour? You see, the human eye and brain are the ideal apparatus for perfecting the camera and I'm working on an invention."
Kenwick complied with alacrity, glad of the opportunity to get his mind off of himself. For almost an hour Jarvis worked under the black hood of the tripod while Kenwick reported on the images printed upon the cards. When the tests were finished and he rose to go, the photographer pushed aside his paraphernalia and wiped his forehead. "Hot as Hades under that thing!" he cried. "Say, I was wondering the other day if you play golf."
"I used to go out and play with my brother at his club," Kenwick replied. "But it's been some time ago; I'd be a duffer at it now."
"Well, I've got a card that will let us into the club over in Claremont," Jarvis explained. "If you haven't got anything better to do, what do you say that we meet at the ferry building about two o'clock this afternoon and play a few holes over on the course? It's a great day to be outside. Can you make it?"
"Yes, I think so." For a moment Kenwick stood looking at his host with an expression that puzzled Jarvis. Then abruptly he turned and went away. Up the steep California street hills he strode, scarcely conscious of the effort it cost. For a horrible dread was tearing at his heart. It was not a new sensation to him, and its very familiarity made it the more hideous; that persistent dread known only to those who are struggling back over the hard road of mental prostration. The seed of it had sprouted on the morning when he had bought that fatal newspaper at the Third and Townsend Depot. And during the weeks that followed its tendrils had wrapped a strangle-hold about his life. Sometimes it almost stopped his breathing. And as yet he had never seen the thing that he dreaded. It was not yet upon any one's face. But he assured himself desperately that some day he would see it. Some day, when perhaps he wasn't thinking about it at all, it would suddenly leap out at him. In the eyes of some man or woman, or perhaps even some little child, he would see suspicion or fear or morbid curiosity. Without being told, they would know suddenly that here was a man who had once lost his mental grip. They would be afraid that he might suddenly lose it again, and that shuddering fear would send him reeling backward into the land of shadows and specters.
He stumbled on blindly, and through the blackness of his anguish there came to him again the curious sensation that he had experienced on his second night at Mont-Mer; the sensation of having lost some material prop that could restore his courage.
The genial suggestion of Jarvis that they play golf together over in Claremont was like a cool hand laid upon his forehead. To Jarvis he must seem sane and normal, capable at least of acquitting himself creditably in the sport of sane and normal men. He ate a hasty and solitary lunch and at two o'clock met the photographer in front of the flower-booth in the ferry building for an afternoon at the country club.