And there she stopped. Her tone was as dry as ashes. This man had

surprised her by revealing a startling amount of moral force, which had

quickly and easily broken down her coolly conceived purpose to make him

believe that his sense of hearing had played him false that night in the

restaurant. She had, however, confessed only to what she knew he knew;

but the roused conscience of the preacher of righteousness detected this

and was not to be evaded. He proposed to confront this woman with her

sin.

"You confess only to the purpose?" John demanded accusingly.

The glance of the woman fell before his blazing eye. She had meant to

answer boldly, triumphantly; but the sudden fear that she might not be

believed made her a coward, and forced the realization that she must not

attempt to deceive this man in anything.

"Sometimes one says more than one is able to perform," she whispered

weakly. "Sometimes a woman names a price, and does not know what the

price means, and when the time of settlement comes, will not pay

it--cannot pay it--because there is something in her deeper, more

overruling than her own conscious will, something that refuses to be

betrayed!" The last words were torn out of her throat with desperate

emphasis.

John sat watching the woman critically, with an all but unfriendly eye,

while she struggled over this utterance, yet the very manner of it

compelled him to believe in her absolute sincerity at the moment. Her

revelation was truthful, no doubt, but just what was she revealing? The

substance was so contrary to his presumption that his comprehension was

slow.

"You mean," he began doubtfully--

Marien took instant courage in his doubt; he was almost convinced.

"I mean," she exclaimed, leaping up with an expansive gesture of her

arms, while the jewels, like her eyes, blazed with the intensity of her

emotion: "_I mean that I never paid the price!_" Her voice broke into a

wild crescendo of laughter that was half delirious in its mingled

triumph and joy. Hampstead himself arose involuntarily and stood with a

look first of amazement, and then almost of anger, as he suddenly seized

her wrists, holding them close in his powerful grasp, while he demanded

in tones hoarse with a pleading that was in contrast to his manner:

"Marien, are you telling me the truth?"

The woman faced his searching gaze doubtfully for an instant; then

seeing that the man was actually anxious to believe her, she swayed

toward him, weakened by relief and joy, as she cried impulsively:

"It is the truth! It is the truth! Oh, God knows it is the truth!"

The fierceness of the minister's grip upon her wrists instantly relaxed,

and he lowered her gently to the cushions, where she sat overcome by her

emotions while he stood gazing at her as on one brought back from the

dead, expressions of wonder and thanksgiving mingled upon his face.

But presently a reminiscent look came into Marien's eyes, and she began

to speak rapidly, as if eager to confirm her vindication by the summary

of her experiences.

"It was hard, very hard," she began. "It commenced in that first

careless, ignorant year I told you about. I was fighting it all the

time; fighting it when you were with me. That was really why I broke

out of Mowrey's Company. Men--such beasts of men!--proffered their help

continually, but not upon terms that I could accept. It seemed,

eventually, that I must surrender. I taught myself to think that some

day, perhaps when I stood at last upon the very threshold--" she paused

and looked over her shoulder at some unseen terror. "But the time never

came. I burst through the barriers ahead of my pursuing fears."

The actress ceased to speak and sat breathing quickly, as if from the

effects of an exhausting chase.

Hampstead turned and walked to the window, where, throwing up the sash,

he stood filling his lungs deeply with delicious, refreshing draughts of

the outside air. Coming back, he halted before her to say in tones of

earnest conviction:

"Marien"--he had called her Marien!--"I feel as if the burden of years

had been removed. Few things have ever lain upon my heart with a more

oppressive sense of the awful than this vision of you, so beautiful and

so possessed of genius, consecrating yourself with such noble devotion

to a lofty, artistic aim, and yet prepared to--to--" His words faded to

a horrified whisper, and finding himself unable to conclude the

sentence, he reached down and took her hand in both of his, shaking it

emotionally while he was able presently to say reverently and with

unction:

"God has preserved you, Marien. You owe Him everything."

"It was you who preserved me," she amended, with jealous emphasis and

that look again of hungry devotion which he had seen first in the

church. "It is you to whom I owe everything."

"I preserved you?" Hampstead asked, now completely mystified, as he

remembered with what scornful words and looks she had whipped him from

her presence. "I do not understand. We pass from mystery to mystery.

Is it that which you said you must tell me?"

"No. I have told you what I wanted to tell you."

The woman was again entirely at her ease, shrugging her beautiful

shoulders and yawning lazily,--a carefully-staged and cat-like yawn, in

which she appeared for an instant to show sharp teeth and claws, and

then as suddenly to bury them in velvet.

The minister stood gazing at her doubtfully.

*CHAPTER XXII*

*PURSUIT BEGINS*

Both recognized that the time had come to close the interview, and each

was extremely pleased with its result. Marien had demonstrated to her

complete satisfaction that this minister was still a man; that his flesh

was wax and would therefore melt. She believed that to-night she had

seen it soften.

As for John: He believed that this evening had witnessed a triumph for

his tact and his moral force. His sympathy was wholly with the woman.

Convinced afresh that there was something sublime in her character, he

determined to give her every opportunity to reveal herself to him, and

to spare no effort upon his own account to redeem her life from that

ingrowing selfishness which he felt sure was making her unhappy now and

might ultimately rob her of all joy in its most splendid achievements.

"I shall save three o'clock to-morrow for you," Miss Dounay proposed, as

if reading the minister's purpose in his eye.

But John Hampstead was a man of many duties, whose time was not easy to

command.

"At three," he objected, "I am to address a mother's meeting.

"At four then," Marien suggested, with an engaging smile.

"At four I have to go with a sad-hearted man to see his son in the

county jail," John explained apologetically, as he scanned his date

book.

"At five!" persisted Marien, the smile giving way before a shadow of

impatience.

John laughed.

"It must seem funny to you," he declared, "but I have an engagement at

five-thirty which makes it impossible to be here at five. The

engagement itself would seem funnier still; but to me it is not

funny--only one of the tragedies into which my life is continually

drawn. At that hour I am to visit a poor woman who lives on a house boat

on the canal. Monday is her husband's pay day, and he invariably

reaches home on that night inflamed with liquor, and abuses the woman

outrageously. I have promised to be with her when he comes in. I may

wait an hour, and I may wait half the night."

"Oh," gasped Marien, with a note of apprehension. "And suppose he turns

his violence on you?"

"Why, then I shall defend myself," John answered, good-humoredly, "but

without hurting Olaf."

"I am likely to spend the night on that canal boat," he added, "and in

the morning Olaf will be ashamed and perhaps penitent. He may thank me

and ask me to meet him at the factory gate next Monday night and walk

home with him to make sure that his pay envelope gets safely past the

door of intervening saloons."

"But why so much concern about unimportant people like that?" questioned

Marien, her eyes big with curiosity and wonder.

"Any person in need is important to me," confessed John modestly.

"But how can you spare the time from the regular work of the church?"

"That is my regular work."

Marien paused a moment as if baffled.

"But--but I thought a minister's work was to preach--so eloquently that

people will not get drunk; to pray, so earnestly that God will make men

strong enough to resist temptation."

"But suppose," smiled John, "that I am God's answer to prayer, his means

of helping Olaf to resist temptation. That is the mission of my church,

at least that is my ideal for it; not a group of heaven-bound

joy-riders, but a life-saving crew. There are twenty men in my church

who would meet Olaf at a word from me and walk home with him every night

till he felt able to get by the swinging doors upon his own will."

Marien's eyes were shining with a new light.

"That is practical religion," she declared.

"Cut out the modifier," amended John. "That _is_ religion! There are,"

he went on, "even some in my congregation who would take my watch upon

the canal boat; but I prefer to go myself because--"

"Because," Marien broke in suddenly, "because it is dangerous." Her

glance was full of a new admiration for the quiet-speaking man before

her, in whose eyes burned that light of almost fanatical ardor which she

and others had marked before.

"More because it is a delicate responsibility," the minister amended

once more. "Tact that comes with experience is essential, as well as

strength."

"And do you do many things like that?" Marien asked, deeply impressed.

"Each day is like a quilt of crazy patchwork," John laughed, and then

added earnestly: "You would hardly believe the insight I get into lives

of every sort and at every stage of human experience, divorces,

quarrels, feuds, hatreds, crimes, loves, collapses of health or

character or finance--crises of one sort or another, that make people

lean heavily upon a man who is disinterestedly and sympathetically

helpful."

"And your reward for all this busybodying?" the actress finally asked,

at the same time forcing a laugh, as if trying to make light of what had

compelled her to profound thought.

"A sufficient reward," answered John happily, "is the grateful regard in

which hundreds, and I think I may even say thousands, of people

throughout the city hold me: this, and the ever-widening doors of

opportunity are my reward. These things could lift poorer clay than

mine and temper it like steel. The people lean upon me. I could never

fail them, and they could never fail me."

The exalted confidence of the man, as he uttered these last words, which

were yet without egotism, suggested the tapping of vast reservoirs of

spiritual force, and as before, this awed Marien a little; but it also

aroused a petty note in her nature, filling her with a jealousy like

that she had experienced in the church when she saw John surrounded by

all those people who seemed to take possession of him so absolutely and

with such disgusting self-assurance.

Manoeuvering her features into something like a pout, she asked

mockingly:

"And since you would not leave your mother's meeting and your jail-bird

and your wife-beater for me, is there any time at all when an all-seeing

Providence would send you again to the side of a lonely woman?"

The minister smiled at the irony, while scanning once more the pages of

his little date-book. "To look in after prayer meeting about

nine-thirty on Wednesday night would be my next opportunity, I should

say," he reported presently.

"Wednesday!" complained Marien. "It is three eternities away.

However," and her voice grew crisp with decision, "Wednesday night it

shall be. In the meantime, do you speak anywhere? I shall attend the

mother's meeting, if you will tell me where it is. I shall even come to

prayer meeting; and," she concluded vivaciously; "you will be borne away

by me triumphantly in my new French car, which was sent out here weeks

and weeks ago to be tuned up and ready for my coming."

On Wednesday night Miss Dounay made good her word. When the little

prayer-meeting audience emerged from the chapel room of All People's, it

gazed wonderingly at a huge black shape on wheels that rested at the

curb with two giant, fiery eyes staring into the night.

The old sexton, looking down from the open doorway, saw his pastor shut

into this luxurious equipage with two strange women, for Marien was

properly accompanied by Julie, and nodded his head with emphatic

approval.

"Some errand of mercy," he mumbled with fervency. "Brother Hampstead is

the most helpful man in the world."

Nor was this the last appearance of Marien Dounay's shining motor-car

before the door of All People's. It was seen also in front of the

palm-surrounded cottage on the bay front, where John Hampstead lived

with his sister, Rose, and the children, and enjoyed, at times, some

brief seclusion from his busy, pottering life of general helpfulness.

Once the car even stopped before the home of the Angel of the Chair,

perhaps because Hampstead had told Marien casually that of all women

Mrs. Burbeck had alone been consistently able to understand him, and the

actress wished to learn her secret. But the Angel of the Chair, while

quite unabashed by the glamour of the actress-presence, nevertheless

refused entirely to be drawn into talk about Brother Hampstead, who was

usually the most enthusiastic subject of her conversation. Instead she

spent most of the time searching the depths of Miss Dounay's baffling

eyes with a look from her own luminous orbs, half-apprehensive and

half-appealing, that made the caller exceedingly uncomfortable; so that

Marien would have accounted the visit fruitless and even unpleasant, if

she had not, while there, chanced to meet the young man known to fortune

and the social registers as Rollo Charles Burbeck.

Rollo was the darling son of the Angel and the pride of the Elder's

heart. Tall, blond, handsome, and twenty-eight, endowed with his

mother's charm of manner and a certain mixture of the coarse

practicality and instinct for leadership which his father possessed, the

young man had come to look upon himself as a sort of favorite of the

fickle goddess for whom nothing could be expected to fall out otherwise

than well. Without money and without prestige, in fact, without much

real ability, and more because as a figure of a youth he was good to

look upon and possessed of smooth amiability, Rollie, as his friends and

his doting mother called him, had risen through the lower rounds of the

Amalgamated National to be one of its assistant cashiers and a sort of

social handy-man to the president, very much in the sense that this

astute executive had political handy-men and business handy-men in the

capacity of directors, vice-presidents, and even minor official

positions in his bank.

But there were, nevertheless, some grains of sand in the bearings of

Rollo's spinning chariot wheels.

In his capacity as an Ambassador to the Courts of Society, he had the

privilege of leaving the bank quite early in the afternoon, when his

presence at some daylight function might give pleasure to a hostess

whose wealth or influence made her favor of advantage to the Amalgamated

National. He might sometimes place himself and a motor-car at the

disposal of a distinguished visitor from outside the city, might dine

this visitor and wine him, might roll him far up the Piedmont Heights,

and spread before his eye that wonderful picture of commercial and

industrial life below, clasped on all sides by the blue breast and the

silvery, horn-like arms of the Bay of San Francisco.

All these things, of course, involved expenditures of money as well as

time. The bills for such expenditures Rollo might take to the president

of the bank, who wrote upon them with his fat hand and a gold pencil,

"O.K.--J.M." after which they were paid and charged to a certain account

in the bank entitled: "Miscellaneous." This, not unnaturally, got

Rollie, in the course of a couple of years, into luxurious habits.

After eating a seven-dollar dinner with the financial man of a Chicago

firm of bond dealers, it was not the easiest thing in the world to

content himself the next day with the fifty-cent luncheon which his own

salary permitted. Furthermore, Rollo, because of his standing at the

bank and his social gifts, was drawn into clubs, played at golf, or

dawdled in launches, yachts, or automobiles with young men of idle mind

who were able to toss out money like confetti. It was inevitable that

circumstances should arise under which Rollo also had to toss, or look

to himself like the contemptible thing called "piker." Consequently, he

frequently tossed more than he could afford, and eventually more than he

had.

To meet this drain upon resources the debonair youth did not possess,

Rollie resorted to undue fattening of his expense accounts, but, when

the amounts became too large to be safely concealed by this means from

the scrutiny of J.M., he had dangerous recourse to misuse of checks upon

a certain trust fund of which he was the custodian. He did this

reluctantly, it must be understood, and was always appalled by the

increasing size of the deficit he was making. He knew too that some day

there must come a reckoning, but against that inevitable day several

hopes were cherished.

One was that old J.M., brooding genius of the Amalgamated National,

might become appreciative and double Rollie's salary. Yet the heart of

J.M. was traditionally so hard that this hope was comparatively feeble.

In fact, Rollie would have confessed himself that the lottery ticket

which he bought every week, and whereby he stood to win fifteen thousand

dollars, was a more solid one. Besides this, hope had other resources.

There were, for instance, the "ponies" which part of the year were

galloping at Emeryville, only a few miles away, and there were other

race tracks throughout the country, and pool rooms conveniently at hand.

While Rollie was too timid to lose any great sum at these, nevertheless

they proved a constant drain, and the only real asset of his almost

daily venturing was the doubtful one of the friendship of "Spider"

Welsh, the bookmaker.

Rollie's first test of this friendship was made necessary by the receipt

of a letter notifying him that the executors of the estate which

included the trust fund he had been looting would call the next day at

eleven for a formal examination of the account. Rollie at the moment

was more than fifteen hundred dollars short, and getting shorter. That

night he went furtively through an alley to the back room of the

bookmaker.

"Let me have seventeen hundred, Spider, for three days, and I'll give

you my note for two thousand," he whispered nervously.

"What security?" asked the Spider, craft and money-lust swimming in his

small, greenish-yellow eye.

"My signature's enough," said Rollie, bluffing weakly.

"Nothin' doin'," quoth the Spider decisively.

Cold sweat broke out on Rollie's brow faster than He could wipe it off.

"I'll make it twenty-five hundred," the young man said hoarsely.

Spider looked interested. He leaned across the table, his darting,

peculiar glance shifting searchingly from first one of Rollie's eyes to

the other, his form half crouching, his whole body alert, cruelty

depicted on his face and suggesting that his nickname was no accident

but a sure bit of underworld characterization.

"Make it three thousand, and I'll lay the money in your hand," said the

Spider coldly.

Rollie's case was desperate. He drew a blank note from his pocket,

filled it, and signed it; then passed it across the table. But with the

Spider's seventeen hundred deep in his trousers pockets, the feeling

that he had been grossly taken advantage of seemed to demand of Rollie

that his manhood should assert itself.

"Spider, you are a thief!" he proclaimed truculently.

"I guess you must be one yourself, or you wouldn't want seventeen

hundred in such a hell of a hurry," was Spider's cool rejoinder, as he

practically shoved Rollie out of his back door.

Now this retort of Spider's was quite a shock to Rollie; but there are

shocks and shocks. Moreover, when the executors upon their scheduled

hour came to Rollo Charles Burbeck, trustee, and found his accounts and

cash balancing to a cent, which was exactly as they expected to find

them, why this in itself was some compensation for taking the back-talk

even of a bookmaker.

But the next day Spider Welsh's roll was the fatter by three thousand

dollars, and the trust account was short the same amount.

Thereafter, and despite good resolutions, the size of the defalcation

began immediately to grow again, although Rollo, if he suffered much

anxiety on that account, concealed it admirably. He knew that under the

system he was safe for the present, and outwardly he moulted no single

feather, but wore his well tailored clothes with the same sleek

distinction, and laughed, chatted, and danced his way farther and

farther into the good graces of clambering society, partly sustained by

the hope that even though lotteries and horse races failed him, and the

"Old Man's" heart proved adamant, some rich woman's tender fancy might

fasten itself upon him, and a wealthy marriage become the savior of his

imperiled fortunes.

It was while still in this state of being, but with that semi-annual

turning over of dead papers again only a few weeks distant, Rollo was

greatly amazed to blunder into the presence of Marien Dounay in his

mother's sun-room at four o'clock one afternoon, when chance had sent

him home to don a yachting costume. A little out of touch with things

at All People's, the young man's surprise at finding Miss Dounay

tete-a-tete with his own mother was the greater by the fact that he knew

a score of ambitious matrons who were at the very time pulling every

string within their reach to get the actress on exhibition as one of

their social possessions.

Because young Burbeck's interest in women was by the nature of his

association with them largely mercenary, and just now peculiarly so on

account of his own haunting embarrassment, he was rather impervious to

the physical charms of Miss Dounay herself. He only saw something

brilliant, dazzling, convertible, and exerted himself to impress her

favorably, postponing the departure upon his yachting trip dangerously

it would seem, had not the two got on so well together that the actress

offered to take him in her car to shorten his tardiness at the yacht

pier.

After this, acquaintance between the two young people ripened swiftly.

Because John Hampstead was so busy, Marien had an abundance of idle time

upon her hands. Agitated continually by a cat-like restlessness,

seeking a satiety she was unable to find, the actress had no objections

to spending a great deal of this idle time upon Rollo. He rode with her

in that swift-scudding, smooth-spinning foreign car. She sailed with

him upon the bay in a tiny cruising sloop that courtesy dubbed a yacht.

More than once she entertained Rollie with one of these delightful

Bohemian suppers served in her hotel suite, sometimes with other guests

and sometimes flatteringly alone.

Rollie enjoyed all of this, but without succumbing seriously. His

spread of canvas was too small, he carried too much of the lead of deep

anxiety upon his centerboard to keel far over under the breeze of her

stiffest blandishments; but all the while he held her acquaintance as a

treasured asset, introducing her to about-the-Bay society with such

calculating discrimination as to put under lasting obligations to

himself not only Mrs. von Studdeford, his friend and patron, but certain

other carefully chosen mistresses of money.

As for Marien, her triumphs were still too recent, her vanity was still

too childish, not to extract considerable enjoyment from being Exhibit

"A" at the most important social gatherings the community offered; but

her complacence was at all times modified by moods and caprices. She

would disappoint Rollie's society friends for the most unsubstantial

reasons and appeared to think her own whimsical change of purpose an

entirely sufficient explanation. Sometimes she did not even bother

about an explanation, and her manner was haughty in the extreme.

Her most vexatious trick of the kind was to disappear one night five

minutes before she was to have gone with Rollie to be guest of honor at

a dinner given by Mrs. Ellsworth Harrington. The hostess raged

inconsolably, taking her revenge on Rollie in words and looks which, in

her quarter, proclaimed thumbs down for long upon that unfortunate,

adventuring youth.

"Take me about nine hundred and ninety-nine years to square myself with

that double-chinned queen," muttered Rollie, standing at eleven o'clock

of the same night upon the corner opposite the Hotel St. Albans and

looking up inquisitively at the suite of Miss Dounay, which was on the

floor immediately beneath the roof.

The young man's hat was pushed back so that his forehead seemed almost

high and, in addition to its seeming, the brow wore a disconsolate

frown.

"Looks as if I'd kind of lost my rabbit's foot," he murmured, relaxing

into a vernacular that neither Mrs. Harrington, Mrs. von Studdeford, nor

other ladies of their class would have deemed it possible to flow from

the irreproachable lips of Rollo Charles Burbeck. Yet his friends

should have been very indulgent with Rollie to-night! The world had

grown suddenly hard for him. The executors were due again to-morrow; and

his deficit had passed four thousand dollars.

So desperate was his plight that for an hour that afternoon Rollie had

actually thought of throwing himself upon the mercy of Mrs. Ellsworth

Harrington, who had hundreds of thousands in her own right, and who

might have saved him with a scratch of the pen. Her heart had been

really soft toward Rollie, too, but Marien's caprice to-night had

spoiled all chance of that. Nothing remained but the Spider. Rollie

had an appointment with him in fifteen minutes.

But in the meantime he indulged a somber, irritated curiosity concerning

Miss Dounay. Since staring upward at her windows brought no

satisfaction he had recourse to the telephone booth in the hotel lobby,

and got the information that Miss Dounay was out but had left word that

if Mr. Burbeck called he was to be told he was expected at ten-thirty

and there would be other guests.

That meant supper, and a lively little time. No doubt the actress would

try to make amends. Well, Rollie would most surely let her. He had no

intention of quarreling with an asset, even though occasionally it

turned itself into a liability. But it was now past ten-thirty, ten

forty-seven, to be exact, and his engagement with the Spider was at

eleven. However, since his hostess was still out, and therefore would

be late at her own party, his prospective tardiness gave the young man

no concern.

But, on leaving the telephone booth and advancing through the wide lobby

of the hotel, young Burbeck was surprised to see Miss Dounay's car

driven up to the curb. There she was, the beautiful devil! Where could

she have been? Yet, since Rollie's curiosity and his wish for an

explanation of her conduct were nothing like so great as his desire to

avoid meeting her until this business with the Spider was off his mind,

he executed an oblique movement in the direction of the side exit; but

not until a shoulder-wise glance had revealed to him the stalwart form

of the Reverend John Hampstead emerging first from the Dounay limousine.

"The preacher!" he muttered in disgusted tones, "I thought so. She's

nuts on him; or he is on her, or something. Say!" and the young man

came to an abrupt stop, while his eyes opened widely, and his nostrils

sniffed the air as if he scented scandal. "I wonder if she tried the

same line of stuff on the parson, and he's falling for it? It certainly

would be tough on mother if anything went wrong with her sky pilot."

However, Rollie's own exigencies were too great for him to forget them

long, even in contemplating the prospective downfall of a popular idol,

and he made his way to his engagement.

Rollie was a long time with Spider. Part of this delay was due to the

fact that the Spider was broke. He did not have forty-two hundred

dollars, nor any appreciable portion thereof. Another part of the delay

was due to the fact that Spider took some time in elaborating a plan to

put both Rollie and himself in possession of abundant funds. The plan

was grasped upon quickly, but, being a detestable coward, Rollie halted

long before undertaking an enterprise that required the display of nerve

and daring under circumstances where failure meant instant ruin.

However, there was at least a gambler's chance, while with the executors

to-morrow there was no chance. Inevitably, therefore, the young man,

white of face, with a lump in his throat and a flutter in his breast,

gripped with his cold, nerveless hand the avaricious palm of Spider, and

the bargain was made. Even then, however, there was a stage wait while

an emissary of the Spider's went on a dive-scouring tour that in twenty

minutes turned up a short-haired, scar-nosed shadow of a man who

answered to the name of the "Red Lizard", a designation which the fiery

hue of his skin and the slimy manner of the creature amply justified.

Once out of Spider's place, Rollie lingered in the alley long enough to

screw his scant courage to the place where it would stick for a few

hours at least; and at precisely half-past eleven, looking his handsome,

debonair self, his open overcoat revealing him still in evening dress,

and with his silk hat self-confidently a-tilt, he sauntered nonchalantly

through the lobby of the Hotel St. Albans to an elevator which bore him

skyward.

The pride of the Elder and the son of the Angel, the social ambassador

of the Amalgamated National, was prepared once more to do his duty by

his fortune.

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*CAPRICIOUS WOMAN*

With more than a month of odd hours invested upon Marien Dounay, the

Reverend John Hampstead had reluctantly made up his mind that failure

must be written over his efforts in her behalf.

She had never told him the secret want which was making her unhappy.

Her manner and her mood varied from flights of ecstasy, bordering on

intoxication of spirit, to depths of depression which suggested that the

gifted woman was suffering from some sort of mania. She was always eager

to see him, always clamoring for more of his time, and yet after the

first week or so he never left her presence without being made to feel

that her hours with him had been a disappointment.

To tell the truth, he had himself been greatly disappointed in her. She

appeared to him altogether frivolous, altogether worldly. He was

completely convinced that she had not only toyed with him years ago, but

was toying with him now, although of course, in an entirely different

way.

For five days he had not seen her, but hating to give up entirely, and

finding himself one evening in the vicinity of the Hotel St. Albans, he

ventured to run in upon her for a moment. She was decked as if for an

evening party in a dress of gold and spangles, as conspicuous for an

excess of materials in the train as for an utter absence of them about

the arms and shoulders, which, on this occasion, even the blaze of

diamonds did not redeem from a look of nakedness to the eyes of the

minister,--a mental reaction which any student of psychology will

recognize as ample evidence that John Hampstead, man, had passed

entirely beyond the power of Marien Dounay, woman.

Miss Dounay received her caller with that low purr of surprise and

gladness which was characteristic, and instantly proposed that they go

out for a ride on the foothill boulevard, and a dinner at the Three

Points Inn.

While the minister had not planned to give her an evening, this was one

of the rare occasions when he had leisure time at his disposal, and

since he had resolved to make one last effort to help the woman, he

decided to accept the invitation.

The evening, however, was not a success. The dinner was good, the roads

were smooth, the night air was balmy and full of a thousand perfumes

from field and garden; but Miss Dounay's mood, at first merry, sagged

lower and lower into a kind of sullen despair, in which she reproached

the minister bitterly for his failure to understand her.

Francois, the chauffeur, had, by command of his mistress, stopped the

car on the curve of the hill, at a point where the bright moon made

faces as clear as day, and, having climbed down as if to look the car

over, they heard his boot heels grow fainter and fainter on the graveled

road as he tactfully ambled off out of earshot.

Hampstead was still patient.

"I have been so earnest in my desire to help you," he said, by way of

broaching the subject again.

"You cannot help me," Marien snapped. "Something bars you. Your

church, your position, all these foolish women who are in love with you,

this whole community which has made a 'property' god of you,--they are

to blame! They stand between us. They prevent you from seeing what you

ought to see. They make you blind. You think you are humble. It is a

mock humility. Under its guise you hide a lofty egotism. You think you

are a preacher; you are not. You are still an actor, playing your part,

and playing it so busily that you have ceased to be genuine. All this

sentiment which you display for the suffering and needy and distressed

is a worked-up sentiment. It goes with the part you play. It makes you

blind, false, hypocritical!"

"Miss Dounay!" exclaimed the minister sharply.

But beside herself with chagrin and disappointment, the woman ran on

with growing scorn, as she asked sneeringly: "Do you not see that all

this gaping adoration is unreal? That a touch would overthrow you? A

single false step, and the newspapers which have made you for the sake

of a front-page holiday would have another holiday, and a bigger one, in

tearing you down?"

Hampstead gritted his teeth, but he could not have stopped her.

"Can you imagine what would be the biggest news story that could break

to-morrow morning in Oakland?" she persisted. "It would be the fall of

John Hampstead. Can't you see it?" she laughed derisively. "Headlines a

foot tall? Can't you hear the newsboys calling? Can't you see the

'Sisters' whispering? Can't you see the gray heads bobbing? The pulpit

of All People's declared vacant! John Hampstead a by-word and worse--a

joke! Can't you see it?"

Not unnaturally, the minister was angry.

"No," he said sharply, "and you will never see it, for I shall not take

that single false step of which you speak."

"Oh, you really would not need to take it," sneered the actress, with a

sinister note in her voice, "a man in your position need not fall. He

may only seem to fall."

It seemed to John that the woman was actually menacing him.

"Francois!" he called sharply.

The chauffeur's heels came clicking back from around the turn, and in a

silence, which upon Miss Dounay's part might be described as fuming, and

upon the minister's as aggressively dignified, the couple were driven

back to the hotel, arriving in time for Rollie Burbeck to emerge from

the telephone booth, to observe the car, and to avoid its occupants.

With almost an elaboration of scrupulous courtesy, the minister helped

Miss Dounay from the automobile, walked with her to the elevator, and

ascended to the doorway of her apartment, where, extending his hand, he

said sadly, in tones of finality, but without a trace of any other

feeling than regretful sympathy: "I still desire to befriend you as I

may. But I shall not be able to come to you again."

To his surprise, Marien answered him with something like a threat!

"It is I," she rejoined quickly, "who will come to you. I do not know

how it is to happen yet, but I will come, and when I do--if I am not

much mistaken--you will be happier to receive my call than you ever were

to receive one in all your life before!"

Again there was menace in her tone, and never had she looked more

imperiously regal than as she stood holding the loop of her train in the

left hand, the right upon the knob of the door, the shimmering evening

cloak pushed back to reveal her gold and spangled figure, standing arrow

straight, while the dark eyes shot defiance.

Neither had she ever been guilty of a more studied or effective bit of

theatricalism than when, immediately following this insinuating speech,

the actress noiselessly propelled the door inward, revealing the

presence of a group of men in evening dress posed about the room in

various attitudes of boredom. As the door swung, these men turned

expectantly and with quick eyes photographed the picture of the minister

in the hall, his sober, perplexed gaze set upon the figure of the

beautiful woman, whose features had instantly changed as she made her

entrance upon an entirely different drama.

"Ah, my neglected guests!" exclaimed the actress in tones of mild

self-reproach. "You will forgive my not being here to receive you, when

you know the reason. Doctor Hampstead has been showing me some of the

more interesting and unusual phases of that eccentric parish work of

his, over which you Oaklanders rave so much. And now, the dear good man

was hesitating in the hall at intruding upon our little party. I have

insisted that he shall be one of us. Am I not right, gentlemen?"

Several of Miss Dounay's guests were well known to Hampstead personally,

and the readiness with which they dragged him within attested to the

clergyman's wide popularity among quite different sorts of very much

worth-while persons, for, as a matter of fact, Miss Dounay's guests were

rather representative. The group included an editor, an associate

justice of the Supreme Court, a prominent merchant, a capitalist or two,

and other persons, either of achievement or position, to the number of

some eight or ten.

Their presence witnessed not only that Miss Dounay, in her liking for a

virile type of man, had made quick and careful selection from those she

had met during her short stay in the city, but also testified to the

readiness with which this type responded to the Dounay personality.

That no other woman was present, and that the actress should assume the

entire responsibility of entertaining so many gentlemen at one time, was

entirely in keeping with her particular kind of vanity and the

situations it was bound to create.

Standing in the center of the room, wearing that expression of happy

radiance which admiration invariably brought to her face, her bare

shoulders gleaming, her jewels blazing, she rotated upon her heel till

her train wound up in a swirling eddy at her feet, out of which she

bloomed like some voluptuous flower, while a chorus of "Oh's" and "Ah's"

of laughing adulation followed the revolution of her eyes about the

circuit; for the guests knew that to their hostess this little gathering

was a play, and their part was to enact a vigorously approving audience.

"Gentlemen," she proposed, "you are all in evening dress; but I,"--and

she shrugged her bewitching shoulders naively,--"I have been in this

gown for ages--until I hate it. Will you indulge me a little longer?"

And she inclined her head in the direction of the red portieres through

which she had gone that first night to don the diamonds for Hampstead.

Of course the gentlemen excused her, and Miss Dounay achieved another

startling theatricalism by reappearing in an astonishingly short time,

offering the most surprising contrast to her former self. The yellow

and spangles were gone. In their place was the simplest possible gown

of soft black velvet, with only a narrow band passing over the shoulders

and framing a bust like marble for its whiteness against the black. The

dress was entirely without ornament, presenting a supreme achievement of

the art of the modiste, in that it appeared not so much to be a gown as

a bolt of velvet, suddenly caught up and draped to screen her figure

chastely but beautifully, at the same time it revealed and even

emphasized those swelling curves and long lines which lost themselves

elusively in the baffling pliancy of her remarkable figure. The hair

was worn low upon the neck, and the jewels which had blazed in her

coiffure like a dazzling crown were no longer in evidence. With them

had gone the pendants from her ears, and that coruscating circlet of

diamonds from the neck, which was her chief pride and most valuable

single possession. There was not even a band of gold upon her arms, nor

a ring upon her tapering finger. Hence what the admiring circle seemed

to see was not something brilliant because bedizened, but a creature

exquisite because genuine, a beauty depending for its power solely upon

nature's comeliness.

No woman with less beauty or less art, desiring to be admired as Marien

Dounay passionately did, could have dared this contrast successfully.

No one who knew men less thoroughly than she would have understood that

for a purely professional artist to attain this look of a simple womanly

woman was the greatest possible triumph, stirring every instinct of

admiration and of chivalry.

And whatever was at the back of the trick Miss Dounay had played--and

there was generally something back of her caprices--in thrusting John

Hampstead, with whom she had practically quarreled, into this group of

guests, she appeared to forget him entirely in the succession of whims,

moods, and graces with which she proceeded to their entertainment.

For one thing, she admitted them to the large room which served as her

boudoir, into which they had seen her go in gold and spangles to emerge

like a miracle in demure black velvet.

Of course, there was an excuse for thus titillating the curiosity of

vigorous men with that lure of mysterious enchantment which lurks in the

boudoir of a lovely woman, and the excuse was that the room, while

half-boudoir, was also half-studio, and held tables on which were

displayed the models of the stage sets and the costumer's designs for

Miss Dounay's coming London production.

As the actress had divined, the inspection of these fascinating details

of stagecraft interested her guests as much as the display of them

delighted her.

In the hour which ensued before the supper, a collation that in its

variety and substance again proved how well the actress comprehended the

appetite of the male, two or three guests arrived tardily. The earliest

of these to enter was Rollo Charles Burbeck, who came in ample time to

roam about the room of mystery at will with the remainder of the guests.

Indeed, he stayed in it so much that its enchantment for him might have

been presumed to be greater than for the others.

Before the supper, too, one of the guests craved the liberty of

departing. This was the Reverend John Hampstead. The farewell of his

hostess was gracious and without the slightest reminiscence of anything

unpleasant, but he was prevented from more than mentally congratulating

himself upon the change in her manner toward him by the fact that in

walking some ten feet from where he touched the fingers of his hostess

to where a butler-sort of person, borrowed from the hotel staff, stood

waiting with his overcoat, Doctor Hampstead came face to face with

Rollie Burbeck, who was just emerging from the boudoir-studio with a

disturbed look upon his usually placid face, as if, for instance, he had

seen a ghost.

In consequence, the minister moved down the corridor to the elevator,

not pondering upon his own perplexities, but thinking to himself, "I

wonder now if that young man is in any serious trouble. It would break

his mother's heart--it would kill her if he were."

*CHAPTER XXIV.*

*THE DAY OF ALL DAYS*

Next morning Doctor Hampstead was up bright and early, clad in his long

study gown and walking, according to custom, beneath his palm trees,

while he reflected on the duties of the day before him. This was really

the day of all days for him, but he did not know it.

An unpleasant thought of Marien Dounay came impertinently into mind, but

he repressed it. He had failed with her. A pity! Yes; but his work

was too big, too, important, for him to permit it to be interfered with

longer by any individual.

Besides, there were with him this morning thoughts of a totally

different woman, whose life was as fresh and beautiful as the dew-kissed

flowers about him. Five years of unswerving devotion on his part had

all but wiped from her memory the admission of her lover which had so

hurt the trusting heart of Bessie. That confiding trust, the loss of

which her pen had so eloquently lamented, had grown again. The very day

was set. In four months John Hampstead would hold Bessie Mitchell in

his arms, and this time it seemed to him, more surely than it had that

day in the little summer house by the tiny painted park in Los Angeles,

that he would never, never let her out of them.

In the midst of these reflections, a thud sounded on the graveled walk

at the minister's feet. It was the morning paper tightly rolled and

whirled from the unerring hand of a boy upon a flying bicycle. The

minister waved his hand in response to a similar salute from the

grinning urchin, then turned and looked at the roll of ink and paper

speculatively. That paper was the world coming to sit down at breakfast

with him, and tell him what it had been doing in the past twenty-four

hours. It had been doing some desperate things. The wide strip of

mourning at the end of the bent cylinder, indicating tall headlines,

showed this. The paper had come to him to make confession of the

world's sins. This was right, for he was one of the world's confessors.

But with this thought came another which had occurred to him before.

This was that he had won his confessor's gaberdine too cheaply. He had

gained his position as a deputy saviour of mankind at too small a cost.

Sometimes he questioned if he were not yet to be made to

suffer--excruciatingly--supremely--if, for instance, Bessie were not to

be taken from him. Yet he knew, as he reflected somewhat morbidly to

this effect, that such a suffering would hardly be efficient. It must

be something within himself, something volitional, a cup which he might

drink or refuse to drink. The world's saviour was not Simon of Cyrene,

whom they compelled to bear the cross, but the man from the north, who

took up his own cross. True, Hampstead had thought on several occasions

that he was taking up a cross, but it proved light each time, and turned

into a crown either of public or of private approbation. Yet the cross

was there, if he had only known it, in the tall black headlines on the

paper rolled up and bent tightly and lying like a bomb at his feet.

However, instead of picking up the paper, he strolled out upon the

sidewalk and down for a turn upon the sea-wall. The lately risen sun

shot a ray across the eastern hills, and the dancing waters played

elfishly with its beams, as if they had been ten thousand tiny mirrors.

A fresh breeze was blowing, and as the minister filled his lungs again

and again with the wave-washed air, it seemed as if a great access of

strength were flowing into his veins. It flowed in and in until he felt

himself stronger than he had ever been before in his life.

With this feeling of strength, which was spiritual as well as physical,

came the desire to test it against something big, bigger than he had

ever faced before. All unconscious how weak his puny strength would be

against its demands, he lifted his arms towards the sky like a

sun-worshiper and prayed that the day before him might be a great day.

Then leaving the sea-wall, the minister walked with swinging, quite

un-gownly strides up the sidewalk and turned in between the green

patches of lawn before his own door, picking up the paper and unrolling

it as he mounted the porch. On the step before the top one he paused.

The black headline was before his eye.

"DOUNAY DIAMONDS STOLEN" was its screaming message.

The minister was quickly gutting the column of its meaning, when a step

upon the graveled walk behind startled him into turning suddenly toward

the street, where between the polished red trunks of the palms and under

their spreading leaves which met overhead, he saw framed the figure of

Rollie Burbeck, halting uncertainly, with pale, excited face. This

expression, indeed, was a mere exaggeration of the very look Doctor

Hampstead had last seen upon it; but he did not immediately connect the

two.

"Your mother!" exclaimed the clergyman apprehensively, for that precious

life, always hanging by a thread which any sudden shock might snap, was

a constant source of anxiety to those who loved the Angel of the Chair.

"Something has happened to her?"

"No! To me!" groaned the young man hoarsely, hurrying forward as the

minister stepped down to meet him.

"Something awful! Can I see you absolutely alone?"

"Why, certainly, Rollie," replied the minister with ready sympathy.

"Come this way."

Hastily the minister led his caller around the side of the wide,

low-lying cottage to the outside entrance of his study.

"Is that door locked?" asked Rollie, as, once inside the room, he darted

a frightened glance at the doorway connecting with the rest of the

house.

Although knowing himself to be safe from interruption, the minister

tactfully walked over and turned the key. He then locked the outer door

as well, lowered the long shade at the wide side window, and snapped on

the electric light.

"No eye and no ear can see or hear us now, save one," he said with

sympathetic gravity. "Sit down."

Rollie sat on the very edge of the Morris chair, his elbows on the ends

of its arms, while his head hung forward with an expression of

ghastliness upon the weakly handsome features.

"You saw the paper?" he began.

The minister nodded.

"Here they are!" the young man gulped, the words breaking out of him

abruptly. At the same time there was a quick motion of his hand, and a

rainbow flash from his coat pocket to the blotter upon the desk, where

the circlet of diamonds coiled like a blazing serpent that appeared to

sway and writhe as each stone trembled from the force with which Burbeck

had rid himself of the hateful touch. The minister started back with

shock and a sudden sense of recollection.

"Oh, Rollie," he groaned, and then asked, as if not quite able to

believe his eyes: "You took them?"

"I--I stole them," the excited man half-whispered.

"Why?" questioned Hampstead, still wrestling with his astonishment.

"Because I am short in my accounts," Rollie shuddered, passing a

despairing hand across his eyes. "I have to have money to-day, or I am

ruined."

"But you could not turn these into money. You must have been beside

yourself."

"No!" replied the excited man, with husky, explosive utterance; "the

scheme was all right. Spider Welsh was going to handle 'em for me. We

were to split four ways. But the Red Lizard fell down."

"The Red Lizard?" interrupted the minister; for he knew the man who bore

the suggestive title.

"Yes. He was to hang a rope down from the cornice on the roof of the

hotel, opposite her window, so it would look like an outside job, and he

didn't do it. I got the diamonds easy enough--easier than I

expected--you know how that was, with all those people coming and going

in that room. But I went to bed and couldn't sleep for thinking about

the rope. I got up before daylight and went down to see if it was

there. So help me God, there's no rope swinging. That makes it an

inside job; it puts it up to the guests. By a process of elimination,

they'll come down to me. I am ruined any way you look at it, and the

shock will kill mother!"

The minister studied the face of his caller critically. Did he love his

mother enough to greatly care on her account, or was this merely an

afterthought?

"What am I going to do?" the shaken Rollie gasped hoarsely, his eyes

fixing themselves in helpless appeal upon the clergyman.

"The thing to do is clear," announced the minister bluntly. "Take these

diamonds straight back to Miss Dounay. Tell her you stole them. Throw

yourself on her mercy."

A sickly smile curled upon the young man's lip.

"Her mercy?" he repeated. "Do you think that woman has any mercy in

her? She has got the worst disposition God ever gave a woman. She

would tear me to pieces."

The young fellow again lifted a hand before his eyes, shuddering and

reeling as though he might faint.

With a feeling almost of contempt, Hampstead gripped him by the shoulder

and shook him sternly.

"Your situation calls for the exercise of some manhood--if you have it,"

he said sharply. "Tell me. Why did you come here?"

"To get you to help me out!" the broken man murmured helplessly,

twisting his hat in his hands. "That was all. I won't lie to you.

You've never turned anybody down. Don't turn me down!"

"It was on your mother's account?"

"No, I'm not as unselfish as that. It's just myself. I don't know

what's the matter with me. I've lost my nerve. I had it all right

enough when I took 'em, except for just a minute after; that's when I

met you going away, and with that damned uncanny way of yours you

dropped on that something was wrong. But I had my nerve all right; I

had it till I got out there on the street this morning and that rope

wasn't swinging there over the cornice. Damn the Red Lizard! All I ask

is to get out of this, and then to get him by the throat!"

Surely the man had recovered a portion of his nerve, for at the thought

of the failure of his partner in crime, his face was suffused with rage,

and his weak, writhing hands became twisting talons that groped for the

throat of an imaginary Red Lizard.

At sight of this demonstration, Hampstead leaned back in his chair, with

the air of one whose interest is merely pathological, observing the

phenomena of a soul in the throes of incurable illness. His face was

not even sympathetic.

"You have come to the wrong place," he said briefly.

"You won't help me out?"

"Not in your state of mind--which is a mere cowardice in defeat--mere

rage at the failure of an accomplice. I should be accessory after the

crime."

"Not even to save my mother?" whined the wilted man.

"I should be doing your mother no kindness to confirm her son in crime."

Young Burbeck sat silent and baffled, yet somehow shocked into vigorous

thought by the notion that he had encountered something hard, a man with

a substratum of moral principle that was like immovable rock.

For a moment the culprit's eyes wandered helplessly about the room and

then returned to the rugged face of the minister, with so much of

gentleness and so much of strength upon it. Looking at the man thus,

Rollie had a sudden, envious wish for his power. This man had a

strength of character that was enormous and Gibraltar-like.

"You can help me if you will!" he broke out wretchedly, straining and

twisting his neck like a man battling with suffocation.

"Yes," said the minister quietly, his eyes searching to the fellow's

very soul, "I can--if you will let me."

"Let you?" and a hysterical smile framed itself on the young man's face.

"My God, I will do anything."

"It's something you must _be_, rather than do," explained the physician

to sick souls, once more deeply sympathetic, and leaning forward, he

continued significantly: "I want to help you, not for your mother's

sake, nor your father's, but for your own whenever you are ready to

receive help upon proper terms. You have come here seeking a way out.

There is no way out, but there is a _way up_!"

The cowering man shook his head hopelessly. He had not courage enough

even to survey a moral height.

For a moment the minister studied his visitor thoughtfully, wondering

what could make him see his guilt as he ought to see it; then abruptly

he drew close and began to talk in a low, confidential tone. Almost

before the surprised Rollie could understand what was taking place, the

Reverend John Hampstead, to whom he had come to confess, was confessing

to him; this man, whom he had thought so strong, was telling the story

of a young girl's love for him; of his weak infatuation for another

woman, of the heart-aches that half-unconscious breach of trust had

occasioned him, and worst of all, the pangs it had cost the innocent

girl who loved him and believed in his integrity with all her

impressionable heart.

There was a moisture in the minister's eye as he concluded his story,

and there was a fresh mist in Rollie's as he listened.

But the clergyman passed on immediately from this to tell modestly how,

when the death of Langham had imposed the lives of Dick and Tayna on him

like a trust, he had been true to it, although at the cost of his great

ambition; but that afterward this surrender had brought him all the

happiness of his present life as pastor of All People's, while the hope

of winning that first love back had been given to him again.

"And so," Hampstead concluded, "to be disloyal to a trust has come to

seem to me the worst of all crimes; while to be true to one's

obligations appears to me as the highest virtue. In fact, the whole

active part of my creed could be summed up pretty well in this little

idea of trust.

"Trust is almost the highest thing in life. It is the cement of

civilization. Trust is the very foundation of banking. You believe in

banking, don't you? In the principle? The idea that hundreds of people

trust some banker with their surplus funds, and he puts those funds at

the service of the community as a whole through loaning them to persons

who redeposit them, to be reloaned and redeposited again, so that the

bank, a bundle of individual trusts of rich and poor, becomes one of the

fulcrums upon which civilization turns?"

Burbeck listened rather dazed. "I never thought of the principle," he

faltered after a minute, "I thought of it as a job."

"Well, you see the point, don't you? It's rather a high calling to be a

banker. Now in this case the dead man whose fund you have looted

trusted the bank; the bank has trusted you, and you have stolen from the

bank. Miss Dounay has trusted you, and you have stolen her diamonds.

You see at what I am getting?"

Hampstead paused and glanced penetratingly into the face of Rollie, who

had been a little swept out of himself, as much in wonder at the new

insight into the life of the minister as at the convincing clarity of

the lesson conveyed.

"Yes," he replied thoughtfully and with an air of conviction, "that I am

not to think of myself as merely a thief, but as something worse,--as a

traitor to many sacred trusts."

"Exactly," exclaimed the minister with satisfaction at the sign of moral

perception growing. "To shield a thief from exposure is possibly

criminal. To help a man repair the breaches of his trust, to put him in

the way of never breaking another trust as long as he lives, that is the

true work of the ministry. If it is for that you want help, Rollie, you

have come to the right place."

"I did not come for that," admitted the young fellow, strangely able to

view himself objectively as a sadly dispiriting spectacle. "I came, as

you said, in cowardice, because I didn't know which way to turn,

desiring only to find a way out. Somehow, I felt myself a victim. You

make me see myself a crook. I came here feeling sorry for myself. You

make me hate myself. You make me want to be worthy of trust. You give

me hope. I have a feeling I never had before, that I am not much of a

man, that I am not equal to a man's job. But tell me what I must do to

repair the breaches in my trust, and let me see if I think I can do

them."

Burbeck's manner had become calmer, and something of the grayness of

despair had left his face, but now at the recurrence of all his

perplexities, he presented again the picture of a man cowering beneath a

mountain that threatened to fall upon him.

"First of all, you must go back to Miss Dounay with her diamonds,"

prescribed the minister seriously. "If you have not manhood enough to

face her with your confession, I do not see the slightest hope for your

character's rehabilitation."

"But the executors!" exclaimed Rollie, with the sense of danger still

greater than his sense of guilt. "They will be checking me up at

eleven. I've got to cover the shortage, or I'm lost. J.M. would be

more terrible than Miss Dounay. It would not be vengeance with him.

He'd send me to San Quentin, entirely without feeling, just as a matter

of cold duty. He'd shake hands and tell me to look in when I got out.

That's J.M."

"Yes, I think it is," said the minister, pausing for a moment of

thought. His body was balanced and rocking gently in the swivel chair,

his hands were held before him, the tips of the thumb and fingers of the

right hand just touching the tips of the thumb and fingers of the left

hand and making a rudely elliptical basket into which he was looking as

if for inspiration.

Rollie, waiting,--hoping, without knowing what to hope,--had begun to

study Hampstead's face with a respectful interest he had never felt

before. He noticed the dark shadows beneath the gray eyes, and that

lines were beginning to seam the brow, while just now the broad

shoulders had a bent look. For the first time it occurred to him that

Hampstead's work might be hard work, and he began to feel a kind of

reverence for a man who would work so hard for other people, and to

reflect that it was noble thus to expend one's energies,--noble to be

true to trusts of any sort. It was admirable. It was worthy of

emulation. A sudden envy of Hampstead's character seized him, and he

began, in the midst of his own distress, to think how one proceeded to

get such a character. By the simple process of being true to trusts,

the minister had suggested. But this seemed rather hopeless for Rollie.

His chance had gone--unless! His mind halted and fastened its hope

desperately to this grave, silent, meditative face.

The minister was considering very delicate questions: trying to decide

how much weight the slender moral backbone of this softling could carry,

asking whether by leaning upon the side of mercy, by taking some very

serious responsibility upon himself, he might not shelter him from the

consequences of his crime while a new character was grown.

But such questions are not definitely answerable in advance, and it was

neither Hampstead's usual magnanimity nor his leaning toward mercy, but

his moral enthusiasm for the rehabilitation of lost character that

impelled him to take a chance in his decision.

"When do you say they will be upon your books?" he asked abruptly.

"Before twelve, sure; by eleven, probably," was Rollie's quick, nervous

answer.

"And how much is your defalcation?"

"Forty-two hundred," sighed Rollie.

"The expedient is almost doubtful," announced the minister solemnly, and

with evident reluctance; "and I do not say that the time will not

come--when you are stronger, perhaps--when you must tell Mr. Manton that

you were once a defaulter; but that bridge we will not cross this

morning, and in the meantime, I will let you have the money to cover

your shortage."

"Brother Hampstead!" gulped Rollie, reaching out both hands, while his

soul leaped in gratitude. It was also the first time he had ever called

Hampstead "Brother" except in derision.

The minister waved away this demonstration with a gesture of

self-deprecation, and a smile that was almost as sweet as a woman's

lighted up his face, while he took from a drawer of his desk a small,

flat key, familiar to Rollie because he had seen it before, and many

others resembling it.

"Here," said Hampstead, "is the key to my safe deposit box in the

Amalgamated National vault. In that box is eleven hundred dollars. It

is not my money, but was provided by a friend for use in a contingency

which has not arisen. I feel at perfect liberty to use it for this

emergency. As you will remember, there is already on file with the

vault-room custodian my signed authorization for you to visit the box,

because you have served as my messenger before. You will be able,

therefore, to gain unquestioned access to it the minute the vaults are

open, which as you know is nine o'clock. Take the envelope marked

'Wadham currency.' In the meantime I will go to a friend or two, and

within thirty minutes after the bank's doors open, I will bring you

another envelope containing thirty-one hundred dollars."

Rollie listened as a condemned man upon a scaffold listens to the

reading of his reprieve.

"How can I thank you?" he croaked finally, clutching at the minister's

hand.

"You don't thank me," adjured Hampstead, towering and strong, while he

gripped the pulseless palm of Burbeck. "Don't thank me! Do your part;

that's all."

Rollie clung to the strong hand uncertainly for a few seconds until he

himself felt stronger, when his face seemed to lighten somewhat.

"You have a wonderful way with you, Doctor Hampstead," he exclaimed.

"You have put conscience into me this morning--and courage."

"Both are important," smiled the minister.

At this moment, Rollie, who was beginning to recover his presence of

mind, did one of those innocent things which thereafter played so

important a part in the tragical chain of complications which followed

from this interview. The act itself was no more than to select from a

small tray of rubber bands upon the study desk, the only red one which

happened to be there, and to snap it with several twists about the neck

of the vault-box key, remarking as he did so:

"For ready identification. There are sometimes several of these keys in

my possession at once."

The minister nodded approvingly. "I suppose," he commented, "other

people make use of you as a messenger to their boxes."

"Half a dozen of the women have that habit," the young man observed.

"Trusted!" exclaimed the minister impulsively, laying a cordial hand

upon the young man's shoulder. "You have been greatly trusted. It is a

rare privilege, isn't it?"

Rollie nodded thoughtfully.

"And these?" questioned Doctor Hampstead, motioning to where the diamond

necklace curled, appearing to Rollie less like a serpent now and more

like a strangler's knot.

"I'm afraid of them," said the young man with a shudder.

"Couldn't--couldn't you take them back to her and tell the story?"

The clergyman shook his head solemnly.

"I cannot confess your sins for you," he averred. "If you are not man

enough for that, we might as well stop before we begin."

Hampstead's tone was final.

"You are right," admitted Burbeck, in tones of conviction; "you are

right."

But still he could not bring himself to touch the diamonds, and stood

gazing as if charmed by the evil spell they wrought. Sensing this, the

minister took up from his desk a long envelope which bore his name and

address in the corner, opened it, lifted the sparkling string by one

end, dropped it inside, moistened the flap, sealed it, and handed it to

Burbeck.

"There," he exclaimed, "you don't even have to touch them again. Go

straight to her hotel."

"Oh, but I cannot," exclaimed Rollie, apprehension trembling in his

tones. "I shall not dare to leave the bank until the shortage is

covered. The executors might come in ahead of time, and I must be there

to stall them off, if necessary. But I might telephone to Miss Dounay."

"Telephones are leaky instruments," objected Hampstead, with a shake of

his head.

"Or send her a note," suggested Burbeck.

"Notes miscarry," controverted the minister sagaciously, "and they do

not always die when their mission is accomplished. Since you are taking

my advice, I would say summon all your self-control, contain your secret

in patience during the hours you must wait until your shortage is made

good, and you can leave the bank to see Miss Dounay in person. You must

do your part entirely alone, for my lips are sealed."

"Sealed?" questioned Rollie, not quite comprehending.

"Yes, the secret is your own. Think of your confession as made to God!"

"You mean that you would never tell on me, no matter what happened?"

"Just that. The liberty is not mine. I can only expect you to be true

to your trust as I am true as a minister to mine."

This was an idea Rollie could not grasp readily. It was taking away a

prop upon which he had meant to lean.

"But," he argued, "you make it possible for me to take your money and

that of your friends and keep it, if you don't have some kind of a club

over me."

"Exactly," replied the minister. "I want no club over you, Rollie. You

must be a free agent, or else I have not really trusted you. Your right

action would mean nothing if compulsory. You must be true to your trust

from some inner spiritual motive."

But Rollie was still groping. "And if I should, for instance, steal the

money you give me?"

"You would know it, and I, and one other," replied the minister, raising

his eyes devoutly.

Rollie swept his hand across his face slowly, with a gesture of

bewilderment. This minister was taking him to higher and higher ground.

He began to feel as if he had been led up to some transfiguring mountain

peak of moral eminence.

"It is the highest appeal which could be made to the honor of another,"

he breathed in tones approaching awe.

"Exactly," declared Hampstead again with that air of finality, "and if I

should fail to be true to my part of the trust, what has passed between

us this morning has been the mere compounding of a felony and not the

act of a priest of God looking to the regeneration of a soul."

In a wordless interval, Rollie Burbeck pressed the minister's hand once

more and departed, his face still wearing a veiled expression as if he

had not quite caught the import of all that had been said.

But neither, for that matter, had the minister; although he was never

surer of himself than now, when he ushered his guest out of the side

door with a cheery, courage-giving smile, and hastened in to his greatly

delayed breakfast.

With a thoughtful air and a feeling of intense satisfaction in his

breast, he unfolded his napkin, broke his egg, and sipped his coffee,

still with no suspicion that this was the day of all days for him, or

that he had just sawed and hammered the cross which might make his title

clear to saviourhood.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*HIS BRIGHT IDEA*

Young Burbeck's desk at the Amalgamated National was in an open space

behind a marble counter. About him in the same open space were desks of

two other assistant cashiers. Back of these were the private offices of

the cashier, the president and the vice-president, as well as one or two

reception rooms. Beyond the marble counter was a broad public aisle, on

the farther side of which the tellers and bookkeepers worked, screened

by the usual wire and glass. The safe deposit vaults were in the

basement and reached by a stairway from the open lobby on the first

floor.

Hurrying from the minister's house, Burbeck reached his desk at ten

minutes before the hour of nine. This left him ten minutes of waiting

before he could get the eleven hundred dollars of the Wadham currency;

and waiting was the very hardest thing he could do under the

circumstances. He was the first of the assistant cashiers to arrive,

but the cashier, Parma, heavy-jowled, with dark wall eyes, was visible

through the open door of his office, checking over some of the auditor's

sheets with a gold pencil in his pudgy hand. His thick shoulders and

broad, unresponsive back somehow threw a chill of apprehension into

Rollie. What brought that old owl down here at this time of the

morning, he wondered.

The colored porter, resplendent in his uniform of gray and brass,

advanced with obsequious courtesy and proffered a copy of the morning

paper. Rollie snatched at it with a sense of relief, but the relief was

only momentary. There was the hateful headline again. It had been

hours, days, weeks since he saw that headline first, while standing on

the street and looking up for the rope that was to be swinging over the

cornice of the Hotel St. Albans. Couldn't they get something else for a

headline? Why, of course not. The paper had been on the street but

three hours. That headline must hold sway till the noon edition.

Besides, it was a good headline.

Rollie grasped the paper firmly with both hands, threw his head back,

and pretended to read; but he was not reading. He was looking to see if

his hands trembled. Unmistakably they did. They trembled so the paper

rattled as if it were having a chill. But pshaw! There was really

little to read anyway, beyond the headline. The news had come in too

late to make a story for the morning papers. It only said that Miss

Dounay had been entertaining some friends and on retiring at half-past

two had chanced to notice that her diamond necklace was missing. A

search failed to reveal it in the apartment. She at once notified the

police. That was all. No word as to who was present, who was

suspected, whether a guest, or a servant, or a burglar, or whether any

clue had been discovered. There had been no time for that. That would

be the story for the afternoon papers. They would find out all about

Miss Dounay's movements the night before, and all about her party, and

who was present. They would interview each guest, and get a statement

from him. They would be sure to interview John Hampstead. Rollie had a

sudden feeling of security as he thought of their investigating

Hampstead. It was amazing what a rocklike confidence a man could feel

in Hampstead.

But they would also interview him--Rollie Burbeck. Because he was so

readily accessible, they would interview him first. What would he tell

them? How would he bear himself? Would his voice tremble when he tried

to talk, as now his hands trembled when he tried to hold the newspaper?

At this very moment the diamonds were in his inside coat pocket. Could

he receive the reporters with his usual urbanity, sit smiling

nonchalantly, and recite the incidents of the evening, suggest theories

and clues, express his righteous indignation at the crime,--all with

that envelope and its contents rustling under every movement of his arm?

Could he?

To the young man's tortured imagination, the necklace became again a

serpent. He could feel it crawling there over his heart, could hear it

hissing and rattling as if about to strike. Then it ceased to be a

serpent, and was a nest of birds. He knew that every time a reporter

asked a question, one of those birds would stretch its wings and call

"Cuckoo."

There! It said "Cuckoo" just then. Was the bank haunted? Rollie

looked up frightened. Cold sweat was on his brow. Not his hands alone

but his whole body trembled. He was really in a very bad way. Could a

man have delirium tremens, just from fright? Rollie didn't know, but if

a reporter came in just then, he was sure that he would take out the

diamonds and hurl them at the news gatherer.

Speaking of delirium tremens, he wished he had a good stiff highball.

He must slip out presently long enough to get one. Worse than reporters

would be coming round, too. Detectives would come. Chief of detectives

Benson might come in person. Rollie disliked Benson and mistrusted him.

Benson went on the theory that it takes a crook to catch a crook! When

it came to inducing a crook to talk, he was a very handy man with a

club. Benson would at once scour the pool rooms and hop joints.

Suppose he got the Red Lizard in the dragnet. Suppose he hit the Red

Lizard a clip or two with that small, ugly billy that was generally in

Benson's pocket when he went to the sweat room; or suppose he kept Red's

'hop' away from him for a few hours? Or suppose Benson happened to know

in that uncanny way of his that he, Rollie, had done business with

Spider Welsh? He might just walk into the bank and search Rollie on

suspicion. And Rollie would have to submit, would have to seem to

invite him, almost. His teeth were chattering at the thought.

Discovery--disgrace--conviction--ruin--that was the sequence of the

ideas. Stripes! Ugh! Just when the way out, "the way up," was opening

to him, too. Discovery, now that a moral hope was gleaming, would be

infinitely more terrible than an hour ago, when he was only a rat

burrowing from a terrier.

He tried to shake himself together. He must brace up and play the game

with a cool head, or he could not play it at all. One thing was clear.

The diamonds must be got out of his possession temporarily. But where

should he put them? In his desk? Anywhere about the bank? Benson

would find them if he started a search, and if Benson didn't search,

some one in the bank might stumble upon them accidentally, and then the

cat would be out of the bag for fair.

There was a police whistle now! The agitated young man looked about,

startled, and then laughed at himself. It was not a police whistle at

all. It was the first clear, bell-like note of the bank clock,

beginning the stroke of nine.

With a sensation of relief that for a few minutes waiting was over and

there was occupation for mind and body, Rollie took the minister's key

and strolled in the most casual manner he could command down to the

vault room.

"Doctor Hampstead's box," he announced, exhibiting his key. The vault

clerk turned to his card index as a mere matter of form, for he

remembered well enough Rollie's authorization, and read upon the card of

the Reverend John Hampstead his signed permission for Rollo Charles

Burbeck to do with his box "as I might or could do if personally

present." The clerk stepped inside the vault, scanned the numbers and

tiers, and thrust his master-key into the proper lock. Rollie slipped

the minister's key into its own place, turned it, and the door flew

open. The vault clerk returned to his stand outside the door. Rollie

took the box and walked into one of the private rooms provided for the

safe deposit patrons. In a moment he was ripping open the envelope

marked "Wadham Currency", which he found exactly as the minister had

described it.

At sight and feeling of the money in his fingers, a great wave of hope

surged over Rollie. It was a solid assurance of escape. With this

assurance, there came to the young man a sharp, definite impulse to

begin at once the work of character building. As an initial step, he

wrote upon one of his personal cards: "I.O.U. $1,100," and signed it,

not with his initials, but boldly in vigorous chirography, to express

the stoutness of his purpose, with the whole of his name, "Rollo Charles

Burbeck." When putting this card carefully back in the envelope from

which he had extracted the currency, and placing the envelope on the top

of the papers in the box, the young man experienced a fine glow of

satisfaction. He had done a good and honorable act in this bold

assumption of his debt and in thus leaving the written record there

behind him.

But when Rollie took up the currency from the table and slipped the

long, thin package into his inside pocket, his fingers came in contact

with that other envelope, the presence of which, under the strain of

what he must go through this morning, threatened to break down his nerve

completely.

With the preacher's box lying there open before him, came a sudden

inspiration. What safer place for the Dounay jewels than in it? Doctor

Hampstead's character put him absolutely above suspicion. He was the

one guest at the supper before whose door no process of elimination

would ever halt to point the finger of suspicion. His box, at the

moment, was the safest place in the world for the Dounay diamonds.

Rollie was all alone in the closed room. No glance could possibly rest

on him; yet, as furtively as if a thousand eyes were peering, he slipped

the envelope containing the diamonds from his pocket into the box and

heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the lid cover the package from his

sight. Returning to the vault room, he locked the box in its chamber

and went upstairs to his desk in quite his usual debonair manner.

With a new feeling of confidence which made him bold and precise in all

his movements, Rollie laid the safe deposit key, with its innocent

little red rubber band about it, exactly in the center of the blotter

upon his desk, where it might be every moment under his eye. Then, in

the most casual way in the world, he pinned a penciled note to the stack

of bills representing the "Wadham currency" and sent it by one of the

bank messengers across the wide aisle to a receiving teller's cage.

When it arrived, the gap in his financial fences had narrowed to

thirty-one hundred dollars. This lessening of the breach increased his

self-control and strengthened his resolution. He had only to wait now

until the minister appeared with the additional currency, and then at

the first opportunity he would slip down to the vault, get the diamonds,

and go straight to Miss Dounay.

And in the meantime his premonition that reporters would lean heavily

upon him for information about the actress's supper party proved

correct. When he talked to these reporters, Rollie noticed that it gave

him a fresh sense of security to let his eye turn occasionally to where

the little flat key with the red band about it lay upon his desk, lay,

and almost laughed. It was really such a good joke to think where the

diamonds were.

What made this joke better was that each reporter shrewdly inquired

whether Rollie thought the diamonds had actually been stolen, or whether

this might not be the familiar device of dramatic press agents. Begging

in each instance that he be not quoted, Rollie admitted that of course

the whole affair might be no more than the latter.

Yet after the reporters had gone, Rollie wished he had not done this.

It was clever, but it was not just to the woman to whom he was going to

make his first exhibition of new character by returning her jewels and

making a plea for mercy. That was not going to be an easy job--that

confession? Besides, everything depended on whether she would grant his

plea or not. Ruin stared again at this angle; for Miss Dounay might

hand him over to Benson. Once more he had that distasteful vision of a

chalky head and a suit of stripes. The thought produced a physical

sensation as if his whole body were being stung by nettles.

But here came a big man down the aisle, his features expressing grave

consideration, and his gray eyes twinkling with evident satisfaction.

It was Doctor Hampstead. Courage and increase of confidence seemed to

come into the office with the minister, and more was imparted by his

cordial hand-clasp, as he leaned close and asked in a low voice:

"You got the Wadham currency?"

"Yes," Rollie answered eagerly and in an excited whisper told how he had

laid the foundation stone of his new character by his I.O.U. left in the

place of the currency.

"That is good," agreed the minister, his face beaming. "The right start,

my boy, exactly."

Then, with a replica of that smile, sweet as a woman's, with which he

had two hours before passed over his vault key to Rollie, he now placed

in his hands an envelope like that which had contained the Wadham

currency, only thicker. The young man seized it gratefully, but with

fingers trembling so he could hardly get behind the flap of the

envelope.

"It is there," said the minister, a little gurgle of emotion in his own

throat.

"It is here," mumbled Rollie woodenly, a surge of relief and gratitude

rising so high in his breast that it felt like a tense hard pain, and

for a moment stifled the power of speech so that for want of words he

reached out and touched the hand of the minister caressingly with his

clammy fingers.

Hampstead, happier, if possible, than Rollie, understood his emotion.

"It's all right," he whispered. "Courage, boy, courage!" At the same

time he laid a hand upon the young man's arm, with a pressure almost of

affection. With the word and touch came clarity both of thought and

feeling.

"Will you excuse me three or four minutes, Brother Hampstead?" Rollie

inquired, the sudden leap of joy in his heart that the embezzlement was

now to be legitimately wiped out so great that he could not this time

stop to send the money across by a messenger.

The minister smiled understandingly, and Rollie stepped out of the

little gate and across to the teller's window.

When he returned, old J.M. himself had come out of his office and was

chatting with the minister. There was nothing unusual about this, since

wherever Hampstead went persons of every sort were anxious to get a word

with him. Presently Parma too joined the group at Rollie's desk. Of

course the topic of conversation was Miss Dounay and her diamonds, for

both the president and the cashier had learned that the minister and

their own social ambassador were present at the supper, which every hour

became more famous. In the midst of this conversation, a telephone call

for Mr. Manton was switched to Rollie's desk.

"Yes," said the president, talking into the 'phone. "We will send a man

over to represent us. Are you ready now?"

The bank president hung up the telephone and turned to Rollie. "Step

right over to the Central Trust, Burbeck, and see us through on those

transfers, will you? They are waiting now."

There was nothing for Rollie to do but to go immediately, much as he

desired to whisper one more word of gratitude to the minister, and to

receive the additional installment of moral strength which he felt sure

would follow from a few quiet minutes with this man on whom his soul had

begun to lean so heavily.

"Certainly, Mr. Manton," he answered, and then as he reached for his

hat, he turned to the minister, saying: "Shall I find you here when I

return?"

"That depends on how long before you return," laughed the minister, but

the blandness of his expression indicated that he was in no hurry, and

Rollie went out expecting to see him again in a few minutes.

But the matter of the transfers was not so easily dispatched. Over one

detail and another the young man was held for nearly forty minutes. The

delays, too, were of that vexatious sort which detained him without

employing him; so that most of the irritating interval could be and was

devoted to a consideration of his own very private and very pressing

affairs.

Giving up hope of finding the minister in the bank upon his return, he

addressed both his thoughts and his fears to the subject of Miss Dounay

and her diamonds. The prospective interview with this passionate,

self-willed, and no doubt wildly excited woman loomed before him

oppressively, and the nearer it drew, the more ominous it seemed. A man

going unarmed to return a stolen cub to a tigress in a jungle lair would

be going upon a mission of peace and safety compared to his. He feared

that in her passionate vehemence she would never permit him to get the

full truth before her. How was he to turn aside the impact of her

sudden burst of rage? She would assault him--tear him! If that curious

Morocco dagger he had seen some of the guests fumbling with last night

were at hand, she might even kill him.

The idea occurred to him that he had best lie to her, or at least begin

by lying to her; that he might play the role of restorer of her

diamonds, and put her under a debt of gratitude, explaining that the

thief had brought them to him to borrow money on them; then, in the

softer mood that would come through joy over their prospective recovery,

he might elaborate the story, touch her sympathies, and make his full

confession. She might even be happy enough over their recovery to cease

the hunt for the criminal, and thus make confession unnecessary. That in

itself would be a great relief.

Yet the common sense, if not the moral sense, of the young man rejected

a proposal to lay the bricks of new-found honesty in the mortar of a

lie. If he were true to the trust which Hampstead had reposed in him,

he would walk straight into Miss Dounay's apartments and say, "Here are

your diamonds. I am the thief. I throw myself upon your mercy!" This

was what he resolved to do.

Reentering the bank, young Burbeck walked first to the open door of Mr.

Manton's office. That gentleman was engaged with a caller, but the

shadow at the door caused his eye to rove in that direction. Rollie

waved his hand; J.M. nodded. The transfers had been accomplished; the

president had taken note of that fact, and the assistant cashier's

mission was discharged.

Rollie went immediately to his desk. There was a litter of papers

representing matters of greater or less importance which had required

attention during the interval of his absence from the office. He sifted

them quickly. Some received his penciled O.K. and went into a basket

for the messenger; two or three took him on errands to other desks

about, or to the windows opposite; the rest went into a drawer. He had

not removed his hat from his head, for he proposed to go immediately to

Miss Dounay before the remnants of his fast oozing resolution could

entirely trickle away.

But when he turned to pick up the vault key which his eye had seen so

many times this morning, it was not at hand. He removed everything from

the desk, he searched every nook and cranny of it. He took up the

waste-basket, dumped the contents upon his desk, and examined every

scrap and fold of envelope or paper. He even got down upon his knees and

made sure the key was not upon the carpet, going so far as to move the

desk. The key had disappeared. He searched his own pockets, realizing

that when he left the bank that was where the key should have been

placed.

In the excitement of the moment when Hampstead had brought in the money

that saved him from being a defaulter, and in the disconcerting presence

of J.M. and Parma, when he wanted to be alone with his benefactor, and

especially with the more disconcerting instruction to go out and look

after the transfers, he had, for the time being, forgotten the key. Now

it was not to be found.

Rollie stood nonplussed first, and then aghast. His guilty conscience

instantly suggested that some one had seen or suspected his visit to the

vault and what had occurred there. This idea brought a rush of blood to

the head. He was dizzy and had almost an attack of vertigo. Yet with a

few clearing minutes of thought, the explanation leaped plainly into

mind. Doctor Hampstead had taken the key. In the interval while Rollie

was at the teller's window, he must have seen it lying there upon the

desk, recognized it by the red rubber band, and having been assured that

the key had served its purpose, had done the perfectly natural thing of

dropping it in his pocket, and thinking no more of it.

Where was the minister now? Until Rollie could find him and get the

key, he could make no confession to Miss Dounay.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*UNEXPECTEDLY EASY*

Following his instincts rather than any rule of sense, Rollie hurried

out upon the street, posted himself upon a conspicuous corner, and for

several minutes indulged the wildly improbable hope that he might spy

the minister passing in the throng. When a little reflection had

convinced him that this was time wasted, he made a hasty inventory of

near-by places where his benefactor might have gone, and even went so

far as to hurriedly visit two of them, threading the tables of the Forum

Cafe, where sometimes Hampstead ate his luncheon, and scanning the

chairs in the St. Albans barber shop, where from time to time the

dominie's tawny fleece was shorn.

But by this time a new probability forced itself into the distracted

young man's consciousness. This was that the minister had gone to pay

his sympathetic respects to Miss Dounay and condole with her over her

loss. Rollie was so near the Dounay apartment that to go upstairs and

inquire if the minister were there would have been easy, but the

peculiar circumstances made it difficult. Indeed only to recall how near

he was to that fearsome lair of the tigress threw him into cold shivers

and made him fly to the safer vantage ground of the telephone upon his

own desk at the bank. But even merely to inquire for the Reverend John

Hampstead from there was hard. In his nervous state, depleted by gloomy

forebodings and now unfortified by the possession of the diamonds,

Rollie felt utterly unequal to even a long-distance contact with that

high-powered personality. All the morning he had been in terror lest

she herself should call him up. All the morning he had known that in

his character as an interested friend he should have telephoned to her.

Now, the moment she recognized his voice, he would be taxed with this

breach! What was he to say? Why, that he had not telephoned because he

was intending to call in at the first moment he could get away from the

bank, and that he would be up very soon now. She would be sarcastic,

but the explanation would positively have to do. Besides, he had to

locate the minister! and so, struggling to command a tone of

indifference, he gave the St. Albans number.

Of course Julie or the secretary would answer, anyway. But evidently

Miss Dounay, in her highly aroused mental state, was keeping an ear upon

the telephone bell, for it was her own animated note that rasped at him

through the instrument. It appeared, mercifully, that she did not

recognize his voice,--a fact which at first relieved him, but on later

reflection, at the conclusion of the incident, shook his remaining

self-confidence still further to pieces, for it showed how completely

out of hand he had allowed himself to get.

When, moreover, Rollie launched his timid inquiry if the Reverend John

Hampstead was there, he got a negative so sharp that the receiver seemed

to bite his ear. He broke the connection hastily and sat eyeing the

telephone apprehensively, expecting the mouthpiece to open like a solemn

eye, scan him inquiringly, and report to Miss Dounay. When it did not,

he shrugged his shoulders and elongated his neck to get rid of that

noose-like feeling which had just come upon him from nowhere. He had

not killed anybody. What was the noose for, then? But this reflection

got a most disagreeable answer: "It would kill your mother to know you

are an embezzler and a thief. You would then be her murderer." Again

he shrugged himself free of the distasteful sensation. "Buck up,

Burbeck," he commanded himself, "or you are done for." Once more he

grabbed the telephone, and this time more determinedly, for in the midst

of his misery one really first-class inspiration had come to him: this

was to communicate with the county jail. The minister was really much

more likely to have friends in the county jail than in the St. Albans;

and it was a safe wager that he went there more frequently. Rollie knew

the jailer well.

"Hello--Sam," he called. "This is Rollie. Has Doctor Hampstead been

there this morning?"

"Yeh!"

"There now?"

"Nope."

"Know where he went?"

Evidently Sam turned to some one else in the room for information.

Rollie heard a voice answering him and caught the words "San Francisco"

and "Red Lizard."

"Did you get that?" called Sam into the 'phone. "He's gone to San

Francisco."

"Yes,--but what's that got to do with the Red Lizard?"

"He came down to see the Red Lizard."

"The Red Lizard!" Rollie could not restrain a gasp, and then wondered

if gasps are transmitted over the telephone--but went on to ask: "Is the

Red Lizard in?"

"Yeh!"

"What for?"

Rollie was clinging to the telephone now like a drowning man to a rope's

end.

"He got in some kind of a row with a service elevator man at the St.

Albans last night and landed on him with the brass knucks. This morning

the judge gave him three months in the county."

Rollie clenched his teeth, and his shoulders rocked for a moment. So

that was what happened to the Red Lizard! What a long time ago last

night was! How many things had happened! Last night he was a crook and

a defaulter. To-day he was an honest man, and his accounts would bear

the scrutiny of an X-ray. Now if only those diamonds--

But Sam had gone right on talking.

"We think Doctor Hampstead went to San Francisco on some sort of errand

for the Lizard--Red's got a woman sick over there or something. But,

say, the parson telephoned his house before he left here, and they can

tell you sure."

"All right, thanks."

"So long, Rollie!"

Gone to San Francisco! Worse and worse. Rollie huddled in his chair.

But there was still a grain of hope. Sam might be mistaken, or the trip

might be a short one, or the minister might have left a telephone number

that would reach him.

But the voice of Rose Langham dashed these hopes one by one. Her

brother had gone to San Francisco on an uncertain quest; he would not be

back until very late at night, and he had no idea himself where in the

city his search would lead him.

For the second time that day Rollie found himself in a state bordering

on physical collapse. The very stars were fighting against him. After

the strain of a year in which the fear of detection, however masked, had

always been present, his nerves were in none too good condition, anyway.

The events of the last twenty-four hours had racked them to the limit of

self-control. And yet, when safely past the danger of discovery of his

defalcation, the growing sense of the enormity of the crime of theft had

brought him to a point where in sheer self-defense he felt he must seize

the jewels and literally fling them at their owner. Now, goaded,

tricked, tantalized, defeated--everything was in a conspiracy against

him! It was enough to drive a man insane. Burbeck felt himself very

near the maniacal point. Again he was seeing things. One moment the

street outside was full of patrol wagons, all ringing their gongs at

once, while platoons of police were marching and surrounding the bank.

Another moment he had decided to anticipate the police by rushing out to

the corner by the plaza, tossing his hat high in the air, and shouting

and shrieking until a crowd had gathered, when he would exhibit the

diamonds and proclaim himself the thief.

But he was spared the possibility of this insane freak by the fact that

he could not exhibit the diamonds. They were in the vault. Damn the

vault! To hell with them! To hell with everything! To hell with

himself! That was where he was going!

Suddenly he looked up, trembling. Mercer, the assistant cashier whose

desk was next to his own, must have overheard him. But no, Mercer was

calmly writing. He had heard nothing, because nothing had been spoken.

Rollie had been thinking in shouts, not speaking. And yet he looked

about him wonderingly, like a man coming out of a temporary aberration.

"I will be shouting it next," he said to himself. "I am getting dotty;

I'll burst if I have to hold this much longer. I'll burst and give the

whole thing away."

His hat had been pushed back from his brow; he drew it forward and down

until it shaded his face, and then with his jaws set in the most

determined mood he could muster, he walked out of the bank and piloted

his steps, with knees that were sometimes stiff and sometimes tottering,

in the direction of the Hotel St. Albans.

Without waiting to be announced, he went up and knocked at the door of

Miss Dounay's apartment. It was opened a mere crack to reveal a nose

and a bit of an eyebrow. This facial fragment belonged to Julie, and

with it she managed to convey an expression at once forbidding and

inquisitorial.

"Oh, la la!" she exclaimed, after her survey. "It is the handsome man.

Come in," and the door swung wide. "Madame will be glad to see you.

Perhaps you bring the diamonds."

Julie said all this in her slight but charming accent with an attempt at

good-humored vivacity, but that last was a very embarrassing remark to a

caller in young Mr. Burbeck's delicate position. It caused one of his

knees to knock sharply against the other as he manoeuvered to a position

where he could lean against a heavy William-and-Mary chair, and thus

remain standing until Miss Dounay should enter the room; since to sit

down and then rise again suddenly was a feat that promised to be

entirely beyond him.

Moreover, light as had been Julie's manner, Rollie saw that her

appearance belied it. Her eyes were red, her sharp little nose was also

highly colored, and in her hand was a tight ball of a handkerchief that

had been wetted to such compactness by tears.

Mercifully Miss Dounay did not leave time for the young man's

apprehensions to increase. She entered almost as Julie disappeared,

wearing something black and oddly cut, a baggy thing, like a gown he

remembered once seeing upon a sculptress when at work in her studio. It

was the nearest to an unbecoming garb that he had ever known Marien to

wear, and yet unbecoming was hardly the word. It did become her mood,

which was somber. Her face was pale, and there were shadows beneath her

eyes. She looked subdued, defeated even; but by no means broken. There

were hard lines about her mouth, lines which Rollie had never seen there

before. She wore a sullen expression, and a passion that was volcanic

appeared to smoulder in her eyes. She greeted him rather perfunctorily,

as if her mind had been brooding and, after bidding him be seated and

sinking herself upon a couch, cushion-piled as usual, shrouded herself

again in a state of aloofness which reminded him of the weather when a

storm is brooding.

Rollie had expected her to be raging like a wild woman,--alternately

hurling anathemas at the thief for having stolen her gems and heaping

denunciations upon the police because they had not already captured the

criminal and recovered the necklace.

Her apparent indifference to that subject only emphasized to Rollie what

he had before observed,--that it was impossible ever to forecast the

mind of this woman upon any subject, or under any circumstances. At the

same time, the young man was extremely grateful for this abstraction,

because it made what he had to do vastly easier.

"I suppose," he ventured huskily, "you are worried to death about your

diamonds."

The sentence drew one lightning flash from her eyes, and that was all.

"To tell you the truth, I have hardly thought of them," she snapped.

Rollie sat with open mouth, totally unable to comprehend, staring until

his stare annoyed her.

"I say I have hardly thought of them," she repeated, with an asperity

entirely sufficient to recall the young man from his amazement at her

manner to the real object of his visit.

"But wouldn't you like to get your diamonds back?" he asked

perspiringly.

"Of course, silly!" the actress replied, not bothering to conceal the

fact that she regarded Burbeck as a child, sometimes useful and

sometimes a nuisance. Apparently, she had hailed his advent because her

ill humor required a fresh butt, Julie's face having indicated clearly

that she had been made to suffer to the breaking point.

But Rollie was in no position to insist upon niceties of speech or

manner. He had a trouble compared to which all other troubles of which

he had ever conceived were nothing at all. He was haunted by a terrible

fear, and to escape its torture he plumped full in the face of it by

blurting:

"I have come to tell you that you are going to get your diamonds back."

If Marien's demeanor were a pose, it must have proved that she really

was what her press agents claimed,--the greatest actress on the English

speaking stage. She did not start, or speak. For a few seconds not even

the direction of her glance was changed. Then her face did shift

sufficiently for the black piercing eyes to stab straight into Rollie's,

while her brows were lifted inquiringly. The glance said, "Well, go

on!"