SADIE BECOMES A CONSPIRATOR.
"Ah! Be careful! Don't go out there!" was the warning that had stopped
Sadie Burton in full flight for the treasure room into which her
cousin and Travers Gladwin had vanished.
She was more than half way to the door in obedience to Helen's command
when Whitney Barnes spoke. He was sitting on the arm of one of the
great upholstered chairs in a gracefully negligent attitude twirling
his gold key chain about his finger. He spoke softly but with a
mysterious emphasis that took hold and held the retreating miss fast
in her tracks. She turned with a frightened:
"Why?"
"Because I would be all alone," he said solemnly. Then as Sadie took
another hurried step forward: "Oh, no, you wouldn't desert me--you
wouldn't be so cruel! How would you like to have some one desert
you?"
This mystic remark caused Sadie to turn around and take a step toward
him. She said timidly:
"I don't understand."
"Then I'll tell you," he said, getting on his feet and going toward
her.
"No, no!" objected Sadie, and began to back away.
The young man stopped and said in his most reassuring tones:
"Fear not--I am quite harmless, I assure you. Now, I can see that you
are in trouble--is that not so?"
"Oh, yes!" Sadie admitted, delighted at this new turn in his attitude.
Her first disturbing suspicion had been that he wanted to flirt.
"You see, I'm right," he pursued. "I would like to help you."
"Would you?" she breathed, with increasing confidence.
"Of course I would," he said, earnestly, whereat Sadie lost all fear.
"Then we must hurry if we are to stop it," she said in a dramatic
whisper.
"Stop it--stop what?" The heir of Old Grim Barnes had launched the
belief that he was about to start something. There wasn't any stop in
the vocabulary of his thoughts at that minute.
"Why, the elopement!" ejaculated Sadie, exploding a little bomb that
brought Whitney Barnes down out of the clouds.
"Yes, of course--to be sure--the elopement--I'd forgotten," he raced
on. "Let me look at you. No, you must not turn away. I must look at
you--that's the only way I can help you."
If he had to take a hand in the business of preventing an elopement he
was going to combine that business with pleasure.
"You are sure you want me to help you?" he asked.
"Yes, so awfully much!" she cried.
"Then I must look at you--look at you very closely," he said, with the
utmost seriousness.
"I don't understand," murmured Sadie, both pleased and frightened by
his intense scrutiny.
"I'll show you," said Barnes. "Stand very still, with your arms at
your side--there! (my, but she's a picture!) I've found out the first
thing--I read it in your eyes."
"What!" in a stifled whisper.
"You don't approve of this elopement."
"Oh, no!" Sadie had yielded her eyes as if hypnotized.
"There, I told you so!" exulted Barnes. "You want to stop the
elopement, but you don't know how to do it."
"Yes, that's perfectly true," confessed the spellbound Sadie.
"Shall I tell you how to stop it?"
"Yes, please do."
"Then sit down."
He motioned to a chair three feet from where he stood. The victim of
this, his first excursion into the fields of mesmerism, tripped with
bird-like steps to the chair and sat down. Barnes went easily toward
her and sat down on the arm. He was as solemn about it as if his every
move were part of a ritual.
"Now, please take off your glove--the left one," he commanded softly.
Sadie obeyed mechanically. Barnes went on:
"Before deciding upon what you should do, I'd like to know definitely
about you--if you don't mind."
"What do you want me to tell you?" asked Sadie, with a brave effort to
keep her voice from running off into little tremors.
"Nothing!" replied the seer-faced Barnes. "What I want to discover you
may not even know yourself. Allow me to look at your hand, please."
Sadie yielded her hand with shy reluctance, allowing the young man to
hold only the tips of her fingers. Whitney Barnes bent his frowning
eyes over the fluttering little hand, studied the palm for a long
second, then exclaimed suddenly:
"By Jove! This is extraordinary!"
Sadie started, but her curiosity was greater than her fear.
"What?" she asked, excitedly.
"Really wonderful!" Barnes kept it up.
"What?" Sadie repeated, in the same little gasp.
"See that line?"
He had taken possession of the whole hand now and pointed with a long,
ominous forefinger to the centre of the palm.
"Which line?" inquired Sadie, eagerly, getting her head very close to
his as she pried into the plump, practically lineless palm.
"That one," said Barnes, impressively.
"No."
"Don't you see that it starts almost at your wrist?"
"Now I see. Yes. What of it?"
"Why it runs 'way round the bump, or, that is--the bump of Venus."
"What does that mean?" asked Sadie innocently.
"Oh, a lot. You are very affectionate--and extremely shy."
"Wonderful!" exclaimed Sadie, amazed at the young man's stupendous
skill.
"Now here's a cunning little line," he pursued. "That shows something
too."
"Does it show how to stop the elopement?" asked Sadie, ingenuously,
but making no effort to withdraw her hand.
"Yes, and it shows that you and your friend are"---- He paused to
allow Sadie to fill the gap, and she did.
"Cousins--and we live with Auntie--and we've been in New York a
month."
"And your cousin hasn't known Gladwin long?"
"Only two weeks." Sadie was really awed.
"That's right--two weeks; and she met him at the"----
He said to himself that here was a little game that beat any other
known sport to flinders.
[Illustration: "NOW HERE'S A CUNNING LITTLE LINE", HE PURSUED. "THAT
SHOWS SOMETHING TOO."]
"At a sale of old pictures and art objects," said Sadie, supremely
confident that he was reading her mind.
"A sale of pictures, of course," Barnes led her on.
"Yes, she was bidding on a picture and he whispered to her that it was
a copy--a fraud, and not to buy it. That was the way they got
acquainted. But he wouldn't let her tell auntie anything about him."
"Just a moment," cried Barnes. "Here's a bit of good luck. I'd almost
overlooked that line."
Sadie was on fire with curiosity and looked eagerly into his eyes.
"You meet a dark man--and he prevents the elopement."
"Perhaps that's you!" exclaimed the delighted girl, withdrawing her
hand and jumping to her feet.
"I'm sure it is," said Barnes, nodding his head.
"Oh, I'm so glad."
"But wait," said Barnes, going very close to her. "Please pay
attention to every word I say. _Do all you can to get your cousin to
change her mind; then, if she won't, tell your aunt. But don't tell
her until the last minute, and--but here's your cousin._"