|DOLORES had been gone an hour before Webster roused from his bitter
introspection sufficiently to glance at his watch. “Hum-m-m!” he grunted
disapprovingly.
“Oh, I've been here fully half an hour,” Dolores's voice assured him.
He turned guiltily and found her leaning against the jamb in a doorway
behind him and farther down the veranda. She was gazing at him with that
calm, impersonal yet vitally interested glance that had so captivated
him the first time he saw her.
“Well, then”--bluntly--“why didn't you say so?”
“The surest way to get oneself disliked is to intrude on the moods of
one's friends. Moreover, I wanted to study you in repose. Are you quite
finished talking to yourself and fighting imaginary enemies? If so,
you might talk to me for a change; I'll even disagree with you on any
subject, if opposition will make you any happier.”
He rose and indicated the chair. “Please sit down, Miss Ruey. You are
altogether disconcerting--too confoundedly smart. I fear I'm going to be
afraid of you until I know you better.”
She shrugged adorably and took the proffered chair. “That's the Latin in
her--that shrug,” Webster thought. “I wonder what other mixtures go to
make up that perfect whole.”
Aloud he said: “So you wanted to study me in repose? Why waste your
time? I am never in repose.”
“Feminine curiosity, Mr. Webster. Billy has talked so much of you that I
wanted to see if you measured up to the specifications.”
“I don't mind your looking at me, Miss Ruey, but I get fidgety when
you look through me.” He was glad he said that, because it made her
laugh--more immoderately, Webster thought, than the circumstances
demanded. Nevertheless he had an insane desire to make her laugh like
that again, to watch her mobile features run the gamut from sweet,
nunlike repose to mirthful riot.
“I can't help it--really,” she protested. “You're so transparent.”
Mr. Webster reflected that doubtless she was right. Men in his fix
generally were pitifully obvious. Nevertheless he was nettled. “Oh, I'm
not so sure of that. I was just accusing myself of being a bonehead, and
bone is opaque.”
“Perhaps I have an X-ray eye,” she replied demurely. “However, just to
show you how easy you are to read, I'll not look at your silly head.
Just let me have your hand, and I'll tell you all about yourself.”
“Is there any charge?”
“Yes, a nominal one. However, I guarantee a truthful reading; if, when
I am through, you are not wholly satisfied, you do not have to pay the
price. Is that a satisfactory arrangement?”
“Right as a fox,” he declared, and held out his great calloused hand.
He thrilled as she took it in both of hers, so soft and beautiful,
and flattened it out, palm upward, on her knee. “A fine, large, useful
hand,” she commented musingly. “The callouses indicate recent hard
manual toil with a pick land shovel; despite your recent efforts with
soap and brush and pumice-stone, there still remain evidences of some
foreign matter ingrained in those callous spots. While, of course, I
cannot be certain of my diagnosis without a magnifying glass, I venture
the conjecture that it is a mineral substance, and your hands are so
tanned one can readily see you have been working in the sun--in a very
hot sun, as a matter of fact. Inasmuch as the hottest sun I ever felt
was in Death Valley, as I crossed it on the train last month, your hand
tells me you have been there.
“The general structure of the hand indicates that you are of a
peace-loving disposition, but are far from being a peace-at-any-price
advocate.” She flipped his hand over suddenly. “Ah, the knuckles confirm
that last statement. They tell me you will fight on provocation; while
your fingers are still stiff and thick from your recent severe labours,
nevertheless they indicate an artistic nature, from which I deduce that
upon the occasion when you were in conflict last your opponent received
a most artistic thrashing.”
Webster twitched nervously. “Skip the coarse side of my nature,” he
pleaded, “and tell me something nice about myself.”
“I am coming to that. This line indicates that you are very brave,
gentle, and courteous. You are quick and firm in your decisions, but not
always right, because your actions are governed by your heart instead
of your head. Once you have made a decision, you are reckless of the
consequences. Your lifeline tells me you are close to fifty-three years
of age----”
“Seeress, you're shooting high and to the right,” he interrupted, for he
did not relish that jab about his age. “I'll have you know I was forty
years old last month, and that I can still do a hundred yards in twelve
seconds flat--in my working clothes.”
“Well, don't feel peeved about it, Mr. Webster. I am not infallible; the
best you can hope for from me is a high percentage of hits, even if
I did shoot high and to the right that time. In point of worldly
experience you're a hundred and six years old but I lopped off fifty
per cent, to be on the safe side. To continue: You are of an extremely
chivalrous nature--particularly toward young ladies travelling without
chaperons; you are kind, affectionate, generous to a fault, something
of a spendthrift. You will always be a millionaire or a pauper, never
anything between--at least for any great length of time.”
“You've been talking to that callow Bill Geary.” Mr. Webster's face was
so red he was sensible of a distinct feeling of relief that she kept her
face bent over his hand.
“I haven't. He's been talking to me. One may safely depend upon you to
do the unexpected. Your matrimonial line is unbroken, proving you have
never married, although right here the line is somewhat dim and frayed.”
She looked up at him suddenly. “You haven't been in love, have you?” she
queried with childlike insouciance. “In love--and disappointed?”
He nodded, for he could not trust himself to speak.
“How sad!” she cooed sympathetically. “Did she marry another, or did she
die?”
“She--she--yes, she died.”
“Cauliflower-tongue, in all probability, carried her off, poor thing!
However, to your fortune: You are naturally truthful and would not make
a deliberate misstatement of fact unless you had a very potent reason
for it. You are sensitive to ridicule; it irks you to be teased,
particularly by a woman, although you would boil in oil rather than
admit it. You never ask impertinent questions, and you dislike those who
do; you are not inquisitive; you never question other people's motives
unless they appear to have a distinct bearing on your happiness or
prosperity; you resent it when anybody questions your motives, and
anybody who knows your nature will not question them. However, you have
a strong sense of sportsmanship, and when fairly defeated, whether in a
battle of fists or a battle of wits, you never hold a grudge, which is
one of the very nicest characteristics a man can have----”
“Or a woman,” he suggested feebly.
“Quite right. Few woman have a sense of sportsmanship.”
“You have.”
“How do you know?”
“The witness declines to answer, on the ground that he might incriminate
himself; also I object to the question because it is irrelevant,
immaterial, and not cross-examination.”
“Accepted. You stand a very good chance of becoming a millionaire
in Sobrante, but you must beware of a dark man who has crossed your
path----”
“Which one?” Webster queried mirthfully. “All coons look alike to
me--Greasers also.”
“Mere patter of our profession, Mr. Webster,” she admitted, “tossed in
to build up the mystery element and simulate wisdom. Fortune awaited
you in the United States, but you put it behind you, at the call of
friendship, for a fortune in Sobrante. Now you have reconsidered that
foolish action and at this moment you are contemplating sending a
cablegram to a fat old man who waddles when he walks, recalling your
decision not to accept a certain proposition of a business nature.
However, you are too late. The fat old man with the waddle has made
other arrangements, and if you want to make money, you'll remain in
Sobrante. I think that is all, Mr. Webster.” He was gazing at her with
an expression composed of equal parts of awe, amazement, consternation,
adoration, and blank stupidity.
“Well,” she queried innocently, “to quote Billy's colloquial style: did
I put it over?”
“You did very well for an amateur, but I'm a doubting Thomas. I have to
poke my finger into the wound, so to speak, before I'll believe. About
this fat old man who waddles when he walks: a really topnotch palmist
could tell me his name.”
“Well, I'm only an amateur, but still I think I might, to quote Billy
again, make a stab at it. A little while ago you said I had a strong
sense of sportsmanship. Do you care to bet me about ten dollars I cannot
give you the fat party's initials--all three of them?”
He gazed at her owlishly. She was the most perfectly amazing girl he
had ever met; he was certain she would win the ten dollars from him, but
then it was worth ten dollars to know for a certainty whether she was
perfect or possessed of a slight flaw; so he silently drew forth a
wallet that would have choked a cow and skinned off a ten-dollar gold
certificate of the United States of America.
“I'm game,” he mumbled. “To quote Billy again: 'Put up or shut up.'”
“The fat gentleman's initials are E. P. J.”
“By the twelve apostles, Peter, Simon----”
“Don't blaspheme, Mr. Webster.”
He stood up and shook himself. “When you order the tea,” he said very
distinctly, “please have mine cold. I need a bracer after that. Take the
ten. You've won it.”
“Thanks ever so much,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone and tucked
the bill inside of her shirtwaist. “I am a very poor woman and--'Every
little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more,'” she
carolled, swaying her lithe, beautiful body and snapping her fingers
like a cabaret dancer.
He could have groaned with the futility of his overwhelming desire for
her; it even occurred to him what a shame it was to waste a marvel like
her on a callow young pup like Billy, who had fought so many deadly
skirmishes with Dan Cupid that a post-impressionistic painting of the
Geary heart must resemble a pincushion. Then he remembered that this was
an ungenerous, a traitorous thought, and that he had not paid the lady
her fee.
“Well, what's the tariff?” he asked.
“You really feel that I have earned a professional's fee?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
She stood a moment gazing thoughtfully down at the tip of her little
toe, struggling to be quite cool and collected in the knowledge that she
was about to do a daring, almost a brazen thing--wondering with a queer,
panicky little fluttering of her heart if _he_ would think any the less
of her for it.
“Well--I--that is----”
“The cauliflower ear is not unknown among pugilists in our own dear
native land, but the cauliflower tongue appears to blossom exclusively
in Sobrante,” he suggested wickedly.
She bit her lips to repress a smile. “Since you have taken Billy away
from me this evening, I shall make you take Billy's place this evening.
After dinner you shall hire an open victoria with two little white
horses and drive me around the Malecon. There is a band concert
to-night.”
“If it's the last act of my wicked life!” he promised fervently. Strange
to relate, in that ecstatic moment no thought of Billy Geary marred the
perfect serenity of what promised to be the most perfectly serene night
in history.