Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: "’I shall have the detectives here—a man and a
woman—within half an hour.  There is nothing to do but wait’"—Page 61]

                                  *THE
                              SIXTY-FIRST
                                SECOND*

                                   BY

                              OWEN JOHNSON

                    AUTHOR OF "STOVER AT YALE," ETC.

                     _ILLUSTRATED BY A. B. WENZELL_

                                NEW YORK
                      FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS

                      _Copyright, 1912, 1913, by_
                     THE MCCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INC.

                         _Copyright, 1913, by_
                      FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

    _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
                 languages, including the Scandinavian_

                             _March, 1913_

                            *ILLUSTRATIONS*

"’I shall have the detectives here—a man and a woman—within half an
hour.  There’s nothing to do but wait’" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"In that gay party one person was a thief—but which one? ... A match
sputtered.  There was a cry of amazement and horror.  The table was
absolutely bare"

"’Look here, Rita.  Can’t I help out some way?’"

"’Come outside—in the garden.  I want to speak to you.  Come quietly’"

"’I have not hesitated to trust in you—you must in me’"

"’Aha!  I made them sit up, didn’t I—your cold women!’"

                        *The Sixty-First Second*

                              *CHAPTER I*

In the year 19—, toward the end of the month of October, the country was
on the eve of a stupendous panic.  A period of swollen prosperity had
just ended in which Titans had striven in a frenzy for the millions that
opportunity had spilled before them.

For months the stock market had steadily lowered, owing to the flight of
the small investor, affrighted by the succession of investigations, the
fear of readjustments, and the distrust of the great manipulators. The
public, which understands nothing of the secret wars and hidden
alliances of finance, had begun tremulously to be aware of the
threatening approach of a stupendous catastrophe.  So in the ominous,
grumbling days of October, when the air was full of confusing rumors and
violent alarms, the public, with its necessity for humanizing all
sensations, perceived distinctly only two figures, each dramatically in
peril, about whose safety or ruin the whole comprehensible drama of the
financial cataclysm seemed to center.

These two figures, both presidents of great trust companies, giants in
their own sphere, represented two opposite elements of that great mass
of society which seeks its level in Wall Street.  Bernard L. Majendie,
president of the Atlantic Trust Company, member of every exclusive club,
patron of the arts, representative of one of the oldest American
families, accustomed to leadership and wealth from colonial times, was
linked in a common danger with John G. Slade, president of the
Associated Trust Company, promoter, manipulator, owner of a chain of
Western newspapers, a man who had hauled himself out of the lowest
depths of society.  Many believed that both, in the relentless
readjustment which the banks were forcing on the trust companies, were
destined to be blotted out in the general catastrophe.  Many others,
perceiving the strange oppositeness of the two individuals, speculated
on which would survive the other, if indeed either were to persist.

About three o’clock of a certain afternoon, when each extra brought a
new alarm, John G. Slade came abruptly from the great library, down the
sounding marble descent that was a replica of the famous rampe of the
Château of Gerny, into the tapestry-hung vestibule of his palace on
upper Fifth Avenue.

He stood a moment in blank meditation, while the third man held his
overcoat open and ready, watching anxiously the frown on the face of the
master, who stood before him, a massive six-foot-four. Already in the
great marble home itself was that feeling of alarm from the outer world
which had communicated itself to the servants.  Suddenly Slade,
returning to himself, detected the furtive scrutiny of the footman and
the butler, who had so far departed from their correctly petrified
attitudes as to exchange wondering glances.  He frowned, pointed to his
loose black felt hat and his favorite cane, and tore so rapidly through
the heavily ironed doors and down the steps to the waiting automobile
that the second footman stumbled twice in his haste to be before him.
Two or three reporters, who had been lurking behind the great marble
bastions, sprang forward as Slade, disappearing in the motor, was
whirled away.

"Up river," he said briefly, and sank back in his seat.

He was in the middle forties, a man noticeable anywhere for the
overmastering vitality of his carriage and the defiant poise of his
head.  Nature had admirably designed him for what he was intended to
be—a being always at war with men and surrounding circumstances.  His
face was devoid of any fine indications of sensibility, of reflection,
or humorous perception of life.  The upper and lower maxillary bones
were in such gaunt relief they seemed rather steel girders hung to
support a granite will.  The head was square, sunk rather than placed
upon his shoulders, and the line of the head at the back was straight
and full of crude power.  He had, at the same time, a suggestion in the
shoulders of the obstinacy of the buffalo, the most distinctive of
American beasts, and in the eye-pits of the fatalism of the Indian,
which as a type often seems not so much the physical tenacity of an
unexplained race as it does the peculiar impress of a continent and an
atmosphere surcharged with vitality.

The eyes were a clear blue, the eyes of a boy in mischief who is still
sublimely defiant of the tripping obstacles of an ethical code.  This
quality of the boy, characteristic too of the American, was the secret
of all his seeming inconstancy of unrelenting cruelty and sudden
sentimental impulsiveness.  Life was to him a huge dare, and all the
perils of finance the hazards of a monstrous gamble, which alone were
able to supply him with that overwhelming quality of sensation that such
men covet in life.

A waif at six; a wharf rat at twelve, endowed with the strength of a
man; leader of a gang at sixteen, hated, feared, always fighting;
gaining his first start in politics, and then, by making a lucky strike
in the silver mines of Colorado, educating himself with primitive
necessary knowledge, always acquiring, never relaxing what his fingers
touched, a terrible antagonist, risking his all a dozen times in the
hunger for a greater stake—he had emerged at last from the churning
vortex of a brutal struggle, possessor of a fortune that fifty times had
hung on the events of a day.  For five years he had been involved in
countless lawsuits, accused of chicanery, extortion, conspiracy, and
even murder.  At the end of which period he came forth victorious,
without losing a single suit, surrounded, it is true, by every calumny
that could be invented, accused of manipulating legislatures, corrupting
judges, and removing witnesses.

Through it all he had remained unshattered, boyishly delighted, his body
unyielding to the strain of sleepless nights and months of unrelenting
vigilance. He had lived hard, ready to gamble for a thousand or a
hundred thousand, cynically announcing his motto:

"No friends.  So long as every man is my enemy, I am safe."

And this theory of life he had carried out to the minutest detail.  Men
represented to him simply the male of the species, to be met head on, to
strive with and overthrow.  So completely did this obsess him that no
one, not even his secretaries (whom he changed constantly), had the
slightest inkling of his plans.  Two of his subordinates, hoping to
profit by their intimacy, had foolishly invested on his deliberately
given tips—and had been ruined. Afterward he cited their cases as a
warning to other applicants.

From the start, always counting on the year ahead, he had outrun his
income.  When he had ten thousand, he was spending fifteen; at fifty
thousand, seventy-five.  Every one who came in contact with him was paid
twice over, and robbed him in the bargain—a fact on which he counted and
to which he was quite indifferent.

Coming to Wall Street in that period of fevered speculation, he had been
among the first to perceive the enormous instruments at hand in the
development of a chain of trust companies which would supply a
conveniently masked agency for the enormous capital that he needed to
compete on equal terms with the leaders of the Street.

That now, for the first time, he was confronted with a situation of
absolute and impending ruin, brought him not the slightest depression,
but rather that exhilaration and sudden clearness of mind which is
characteristic of the gambler face to face with the supreme hour which
means absolute bankruptcy or a fortune.

At every block some one on the crowded sidewalk, or a group in a passing
carriage, turned with a hasty exclamation at the sight of his bulky
figure under the black sombrero, fleeing in the red automobile that was
itself at this period a rarity.  At one point where a blockade compelled
him to halt, a newsboy, jumping on the sideboard, thrust a newspaper in
his face. He flung a dime and glanced at the headlines:

                        MARKET STILL GOING DOWN

                          RUMORED SUSPENSIONS

Then he tossed it aside and returned to his own calculations.  All at
once he roused himself and addressed the chauffeur:

"Harkness, Mrs. Braddon’s.  Take the park."

But as the automobile, turning from the river, descended by way of green
woods, he began restlessly to repent of his choice.  His hatred of men
had made him strangely dependent on women.  It was not that they were
able to establish any empire over his senses, but that they supplied a
curious outlet to his vanity.  At times, especially as in the present,
when he felt the necessity of assembling every resource to meet a
crisis, it became absolutely necessary for him to find, in the tribute
he exacted from them, that self-confidence which he needed to override
other obstacles.  Often he would take in his automobile three or four
women of that class which is half professional, half of the world, and,
running slowly through the pleasant country, recount stories of his
early struggles, of how he had railroaded an enemy to prison, or caught
an adversary in a turn of the market and broken him.  And when these
tales of unrelenting enmity made his audience shudder, he keenly
perceived it, and enjoyed almost a physical delight.

But this afternoon, as the car came to a stop before one of the great
apartment-houses that front the park, he remained seated, unsatisfied
and defrauded. It was not a woman of the superficial wit of Mrs. Braddon
who could occupy and stimulate his mind in this crisis.

"Drive on," he said sharply.  "Turn the corner and stop at the hotel."

There he descended, and entering went to the telephone.

"Mrs. Kildair?" he said eagerly, a moment later.

"Who is it, please?"

"This is Slade—John Slade.  I’m coming over."

"I can’t see you now," said a voice with a curious musical quality of
self-possession.  "I told you five o’clock."

"What difference does half an hour make?" he said impatiently.

"I have other company.  You will have to be patient.  At five."

The connection was shut off.  He rose angrily, unaccustomed to any check
to his immediate impulses. At the steps a boy came skipping down for the
toll he had forgotten.  He paid the exact amount, contrary to his
custom, and drove his body back into the cushioned seat.

"Where to, sir?" said Harkness, turning.

"Anywhere," he answered gruffly, and, thwarted in his desire, he said to
himself furiously: "That woman always opposes me!  I must teach her a
lesson.  I won’t go at all."

But at the end of a moment he pulled out his watch impatiently and
calculated the time.

"Home," he said suddenly.

At the house, he ran rapidly through the opening doors and up the stairs
to his bedroom, where he unlocked a little safe fixed in the wall behind
a tapestry that hid it, and took out a tray of rings.  Sorting them
quickly, with a low, cynical chuckle, he selected a magnificent ruby,
slipped it into his pocket, closed the safe, and passed out of the house
with the same rapidity with which he had entered.

"Mrs. Kildair’s, Harkness," he said.  "Drive so as to get me there at
five-fifteen."

"Now we shall see," he said to himself, with a smile, gazing at the ring
in the palm of his hand with a man’s contemptuous contemplation of the
stone which could hold such fascination over a woman’s soul.  For him it
was absolutely necessary, as a first step toward his conquest of all his
enemies, to feel his power over this one present resistance.

The idea that had come into his head restored his good humor and aroused
in him a certain joy of energy.  He had forgot momentarily his errand,
absorbed in his own battle for existence.

"Today is Thursday," he said, with renewed energy.  "Next Wednesday will
be the crisis.  I must find out what Majendie is going to do.
Snelling’s the man to know—or Garraboy."

The car stopped.  He sprang out and, without giving his name, entered
the elevator.  At the apartment a Japanese servant took his things and
ushered him into the low-lit greens of the studio, which ran the height
of the two floors that formed the duplex apartment.

Mrs. Rita Kildair was stretched on a low Récamier sofa, watching him
with amused eyes as he entered with that atmosphere of strife and fury
that seemed always to play about him.  She waited until he had come to
her side before she raised her hand to his, in a gesture that had no
animation, saying:

"How do you do?"

Something in the tranquil, amused self-possession of her pose made him
stupidly repeat the question. Then, forgetting his resolve to show no
impatience, he said impetuously:

"Why did you keep me waiting?"

"Because I did not wish to see your highness then."

"Not dressed?"

"No, I was simply amusing myself with a very nice boy."

"Who?"

She smiled, and, without heed to his question, motioned him to a chair
with a little gesture, not of her arm, but of her fingers, on which she
wore several rings of unusual luster.  She had, as a woman, that same
magnetic self-consciousness that distinguishes the great actress, aware
that every eye is focused on her and that the slightest change of her
hand or shift of her head has an instantaneous importance.

Slade obeyed her with a sudden sense of warm content.

"Smoke?" he said, taking out a cigar.  "Permission?"

He helped himself to a match, sunk himself in the great chair, crossed
his legs, and looked at her.

Rita Kildair gave that complex appearance of a woman much younger than
she seemed, or of a woman much older.  She was at that mental phase in
her life when she exhaled to the fullest that perfume of mystery which
is the most feminine and irresistible of all the powers that a woman
exerts over the masculine imagination, if indeed it is not the sum of
all seductions.  The inexplicable in her own life and individuality was
heightened in every way by the subservience of outward things, whether
by calculation or by an instinctive sense of interpretation.

The great studio, to the neglect of the electric chandelier, was lit by
half a dozen candles, which flung about conflicting eddies of wavering
lights and shadows.  In farther corners were a divan, a piano, a
portrait on an easel, lounges, waiting like so many shadows to be called
forth.  A standing lamp, not too near, bathed the couch on which she lay
with a softened luster.  Her tea-gown of liberty silk, with tones that
changed and mingled with each other, was of the purple of the grape, an
effect produced, too, by the superimposition of one filmy garment on the
other.  A slippered foot and ankle came forth from the fragrant disorder
of the skirt, either by studied arrangement or by the impulse of a woman
who is confident of all her poses.  Her nose, quite the most individual
feature, was aquiline, yet not such as is associated with a masculine
character.  Rather, it was vitally sensitive, and gave, in conjunction
with the intent and instantaneous aspect of her grayish eyes, the
instinctive, almost savage appetite for possession and sensation that is
characteristic of her sex. No one looked at her without asking himself a
question.  Those who believed her under thirty wondered at the
experiences that must have crowded in upon her.  Those who believed her
nearer forty still marveled at her mastery over youth.  Those of an
analytical mind left her always with a feeling of speculation framed in
two questions—whence had she come and where would she end?

It was this latter speculation more than any other that absorbed Slade,
irresistibly intrigued by the elusiveness of a fascination which he
could not analyze. She endured his fixed glance without annoyance,
absorbed, too, in the thoughts which his entrance had brought her.
Finally, adapting her manner to his, she said with his own abruptness:

"Well, what do you want to say to me?"

"I’m wondering what you are after in this life, pretty lady?" he said
directly.

"What do you want?"

"Power."

"Not to be bored."

They smiled by common consent.

"And now we know no more than we did before," he said.

She stretched out her slender hand against the purple folds of her gown,
and her eyes lingered on the jewels that she held caressingly before
them—a look that did not escape the man.

"By thunder, you’re the strangest thing I’ve run into," he said,
shifting his legs.

"On each of the eight times we have been alone," she said, smiling, "you
have made precisely that same discovery.  Did you forget?"

"I’d like to know something about you," he said.

"How old I am—about my husband—what I am doing here—am I rich—what’s my
past—and so on.  Consider all these questions asked and refused—for the
ninth time.  And now, what—why did you come here?"

He put aside his cigar impatiently, propelled himself to his feet, and
came forward until his knee touched the couch.  She looked up,
pleasantly aware of so much brute strength held in leash above her.

"Sit down."

And, as he remained standing, she took a little electric button attached
to a coil that was on the couch, and pressed it.  In the hall outside a
buzz was heard, and then the soft, sliding step of Kiki.

"Tea?" she said, turning to him with an amused look, the little button
pressed against her thin, sharp row of teeth, that were clear and tiny
as a child’s.

"No, of course not," he said furiously.

"No tea, Kiki," she said, in that same round, musical tone from which
she seldom varied.  She held the button in her long fingers, caressing
her cheek with it, and, looking at him with half-closed eyes, repeated:

"Sit down."

Though the forward movement of Slade had been unconscious and quite
devoid of any personal object, he was angrily aware that she had availed
herself of his action to introduce a tantalizing defiance which awakened
all the savage in him, as he realized the helplessness of his crude
strength before the raillery that shone from her eyes.

He drew his chair closer to her, sat down on its edge, one knee forward,
his chin in his hand half concealing his face, looking at her with the
shrewd cruelty of a prosecuting attorney.

"What’s your game?" he said.

"The game itself," she answered, with a little animation in her eyes and
a scarcely perceptible, gradual turning of her whole body toward him.

"What’s your game?" he repeated.

She looked at him a moment as she might have looked at a child, and
then, imitating the gesture with which he had sunk his chin in his palm,
said:

"What a convenient formula!  And is that the way you always begin?"

"Perhaps."

"Do you know," she continued, "it is extraordinary how simple you big
men—you trust kings—are. You have the vision of an eagle on one side,
and the groping glance of a baby when you deal with us.  Sometimes I
think that it’s all instinct, that all you understand is to throw down
what resists you—that you haven’t great minds at all, and that that is
all that interests you in business and in us. That is why a big man will
always end up by meeting some little woman who will lead him around by
the nose.  Any little fool of a woman who knows enough never to cease
resisting you can do it."

"Do you like me?" he said brutally.

"Yes."

"Much?"

"Quite a good deal."

"Are you planning to marry me?"

She smiled her languid, amused smile without shifting her glance from
his.

"Why don’t you come to the point?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t have to ask your game; I know it."

"What do you know?"

"Shall I tell you why you came here at a moment when you are at bay,
attacked everywhere?"

"Why?"

"To find out what I know about Majendie."

"Do you know anything?"

"He is coming here tonight," she said.

"No, that is not it," he said scornfully, rising and again approaching
her.  "You know better.  You exhilarate me—you wake me up; and I need to
be stimulated.  So you’ve got it back in your little brain to marry me,"
he said, looking down with amused contemplation at the reclining figure,
that was not so much human as a perfumed bed of flowers; "that is, if I
pull through and keep my head above water."

He hesitated a moment, and then said:

"Why did you keep me waiting?  Just to annoy me?"

"I wonder," she said, looking up from under her eyelashes at his
towering figure.  "Perhaps it was to teach you some things are
difficult."

"That’s it, eh?"

"Perhaps—and I’m afraid I shall irritate you many more times."

He took a step nearer and said abruptly:

"Look out!  I don’t play fair."

"Neither do I," she said.

She took the button up again, frowning in a nonchalant way, and held it
a moment while she waited for his decision.  He shrugged his shoulders
and stood back, taking several steps toward the center of the room.

"Listen, John G. Slade," she said, her tone changing from the felinely
feminine to the matter-of-fact, "don’t let’s continue as children.  You
are no match for me at this game.  I warn you.  Come.  Be direct.  Will
you have me as an ally?"

He turned and looked at her, considering.

"In what way?"

"Is it of importance to you to know the probable fate of Majendie and
the Atlantic Trust?"

"Yes—in a way."

"I may have means of learning just that information tonight."

"What do you want in return?"

"Full confidence.  I want two questions answered."

"What?"

She had raised herself to a sitting position out of the languor which
was not the indolence of the Oriental, but rather the volcanic
slumbering of the Slav, always ready to break forth into sudden
tremendous exertion.

"Can the Associated Trust meet its Wednesday obligations without
assistance?"

"And second?" he said, amazed at the detailed knowledge that her
question implied.

"Second, if it can’t, will the Clearing-house help it through?"

"What difference to you would it make to know?"

"It would."

"How long have you known Bernard Majendie?" he said slowly.

She accepted the question as a rebuff.

"There are my terms," she said, sinking back on the couch.  "You don’t
wish an ally, then?"

"No."

"You don’t trust me?"

"No."

"I knew you wouldn’t," she said indolently; "and yet, I could help you
more than you think."

"I trusted a man once," he said scornfully.  "I have never made that
mistake with a woman."

"As you wish."

"Are you trying a flyer?" he said, smiling. "That’s the game, is it—a
tip?"

"I have told you," she said coldly and in a tone that carried
conviction, "that what interests me is to win the game itself, the
excitement and the perils. And I have been behind the scenes many
times."

"I believe it," he said abruptly.  "I should like to hear—"

"I am a woman who keeps the secrets of others and her own," she
answered, interrupting his question.

"And if you marry?" he said curiously.

"Even then."  She dismissed the return to the personal with the first
quick movement of her hand and continued: "I should say, you are the
best hated man in Wall Street."

"That’s not exactly inside information."

"No one is going to come to your help out of friendship."

"True."

"If Majendie and the Atlantic Trust Company fail, nothing in this world
can pull you through," she said, seeking in some uncontrolled movement
of his an answer to the statement that was in reality a question.

From the moment she had begun to question him, he experienced a sudden
change.  He was no longer dealing with a woman, but with an element he
had outguessed a hundred times.

All at once an odd idea came to him which struck him as stupendously
ridiculous, and yet made him glower in covert admiration at the woman
who watched him while seemingly engaged with the rearrangement of her
draperies.

"Is it possible, after all," he thought, "that that ambitious little
head is playing with both Majendie and me, and that she is setting her
cap for the survivor?"

He came back, reseated himself, and said, with an appearance of candor
which would have deceived most people:

"You say Majendie is coming here tonight?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where he is this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"And the object of his visit?"

"The object is easy to guess," she said indifferently. "You know
perfectly well that he is in conference with Fontaine, Marx, and
Gunther, and what you wish to know is whether they are going to stand
aside and let him sink.  Are you ready to answer my two questions?"

"And when will you know if he has failed or succeeded?"

"Tonight."

"He will tell you?"

"I shall know tonight," she said, with an evasive smile.

"What’s your private opinion?"

"They will come to his assistance," she said carefully.

"Because they are his personal friends," he said, with an accent of
raillery.

"Naturally."

"You believe Majendie will pull through?"

"I do."  She looked at him a moment, and asked the question, not so much
to receive an answer as to judge from his manner: "Can the Associated
Trust meet its obligations on Wednesday without assistance?"

"I can," he said quietly, and to himself he added: "There—if Majendie
has set her to pump me, little good that’ll do him."

"But if the Atlantic Trust Company shuts its doors," she persisted, "you
are caught?"

"That is the general opinion."

"Will you fail?"

"No."

She was quiet a moment, dissatisfied, looked away from him and then
said:

"So you don’t care to know what I shall learn to-night?"

"My dear lady, I won’t tell you a thing," he said, with a laugh, "so
stop trying.  Leave us to fight our own battles.  Plot all you want in
your cunning head your little feminine plans, but don’t get beyond your
depth."

"I see you believe I’m interested in Majendie," she said, with a shrug
of her shoulders.  "You are not very well informed."

"No," he said bluntly; "you are interested in no one but Rita Kildair.
I know that much."  He rose, took several strides back and forth, and,
returning, stood by her.  "I hate allies," he said; "I prefer to
consider you as a woman."

His remark brought a sharp gleam of curiosity to her eyes, a spark of
instinctive sex antagonism that flashed and disappeared.

"Remember, I have warned you," she said, retiring as abruptly into the
feline languor of her pose.

He stood, swayed by two emotions, the purely gentle, almost caressing
effect her indolence brought him, and the desire to establish some
sudden empire over her—to feel his strength above hers.

"What’s the weak point in your armor?" he said savagely.

"I wouldn’t tell you."

"I think I know one."

"Really?"

He drew his chair still closer, and, leaning over, touched with his
stubby forefinger the rings on her outstretched hand.

"Jewels?" she said, smiling.

"Yes."

"Any woman is the same."

"Why?"

"I don’t know—it is so," she said, and, raising the deep lusters, she
allowed her glance to rest on them as in a dream of opium.

He drew from his pocket the ring with the ruby, and held it out.

"Try this on."

She took it between her finger-tips slowly, looking at him with a glance
that was a puzzled frown, and slipped it on her finger.  Then she
extended her hand gradually to the full length of her white arm against
the purple, and half closed her eyes.  There was no outward sign; only a
deep breath went through her, as though an immense change had taken
place in the inner woman.

"Now I know what I want to know," he said, watching her closely with
almost an animal joy in this sudden revelation of an appetite in her.

"It’s a wonderful stone," she said in a whisper; then she drew it off
slowly, as though the flesh rebelled, and held it out to him, turning
away her eyes.

"Keep it."

She raised her eyes and looked at him steadily.

"You are cleverer than I thought," she said.

"Keep it."

"Is this for information about Majendie?" she said slowly.

"Not for that."

"For what, then?" she said steadily.

"For a whim."

"Thanks; I don’t trust your whims."

For all reply, he took her hand and again placed the ring on it.

"Wear it," he said.

She turned the stone quickly inside her palm as though unable to endure
its lure, and looked at him profoundly.

"_Are_ you going to pull through?" she said angrily.

"Will it make a difference?" he asked, rising, with a quick glance at
his watch.

She rose in her turn, facing him with a sudden energy.

"Do you know the one great mistake you have made?"

"What?"

"You have condemned yourself to success."

"What do you mean by that?" he said.

"You must always succeed, and that is terrible! At the first defeat
every one will be up in arms against you—because every one wants to see
you ruined."

"Every one?" he said, looking in her eyes.

A second time she took off the ring and gave it to him, and as he
protested she said coldly:

"Don’t make me angry.  The comedy has been amusing.  Enough.  Also,
don’t trouble yourself about my motives.  I haven’t the slightest
intention of marrying you or any one else."

And she accompanied the words with a gesture so imperative that, amazed
at the change, he no longer insisted.  As he put out his hand, she said
suddenly, as if obeying an intuition:

"I will tell you what you want to know.  Gunther is almost sure to come
to Majendie’s aid.  I know it by a woman.  Take care of yourself."

"And I will tell you exactly the opposite," he said, bluffing.  "Gunther
will not lend a cent; Majendie will go under, and I’ll pull through."

"You’ll pull through even if the Atlantic Trust closes?"

"Exactly."

"Good-by," she said, with a shrug.

"Remember what I said," he repeated, and went out.

Five minutes later the bell rang, and Kiki brought her a little box and
an envelope.  She recognized Slade’s writing, and read:

DEAR LADY,

Apologies for my rudeness.  If you won’t accept a gift, at least wear
the ring for a week.  I should like to know what effect it could have on
your cold little soul.  Oblige my curiosity.  It’s only a little
reparation for the disappointment I gave you.  J.G.S.

"Decidedly, he is cleverer than I thought," she said musingly.  In the
box was the great ruby ring. She took it up, examined it carefully, made
a motion as though to replace it in the box, and then suddenly slipped
it on her finger.

                              *CHAPTER II*

Mrs. Kildair knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society
in New York which is drawn from all levels, without classification, and
imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing.  Her home, in
fact, supplied that need of all limited and contending superimposed
sets, a central meeting-ground where one entered under the protection of
a flag of truce and departed without obligation.  She knew every one,
and no one knew her.  No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history
or her resources.  No one had ever met a Mr. Kildair.  There was always
about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limit of
acquaintanceship had been touched.  Mrs. Enos Bloodgood, who saw her
most and gave her the fullest confidence, knew no more than that she had
arrived from Paris five years before, with letters of introduction from
the best quarters.  Her invitations were eagerly sought by leaders of
fashionable society, prima donnas, artists, visiting European
aristocrats, and men of the moment.  Her dinners were spontaneous, and
the discussions, though gay and usually daring, were invariably under
the control of wit and good taste.

As soon as Slade’s present had been received she passed into the
dining-room to assure herself that everything was in readiness for the
informal chafing-dish supper to which she had invited some of her most
congenial friends, all of whom, as much as could be said of any one,
were habitués of the studio. Then, entering her Louis Quinze bedroom,
which exhaled a pleasant stirring atmosphere of perfume, she slipped off
her filmy purple tea-gown and chose an evening robe of absolute black,
of warm velvet, unrelieved by any color, but which gave to her shoulders
and arms that softness and brilliancy which no color can impart.

Several times she halted, and, seating herself at her dressing-table,
fell into a fascinated contemplation of the great ruby that trembled
luminously on her finger like a bubble of scarlet blood.  When, in the
act of deftly ordering the masses of her dark ruddy hair, her white
fingers lost themselves among the tresses, she stopped more than once,
entranced at the brilliancy of the stone against the white flesh and the
sudden depths of her hair.

She rose and began to move about the room; but her hand from time to
time continued its coquetries above her forehead, as though the ring had
suddenly added to her feminine treasury a new instinctive gesture.

At half-past seven, having finished dressing, she opened the doors which
made a thoroughfare between the studio and the small dining-room, and
passed into the larger room, where, at one end, Kiki had brought forth
three Sheraton tables, joined them, and set them with crystal and
silver.

"Put in order my bedroom," she said, with an approving nod, "and then
you can go."

She moved about the studio, studying the arrangements of the furniture,
seeing always from the tail of her eye the scarlet spot on her finger.

"I wonder what it’s worth," she said softly. "Ten, fifteen thousand at
the least."  She held the ring from her, gazed at it dreamily.  "I
wonder what woman’s eye has looked upon you, you wonderful gem," she
whispered; and, as though transported with the vision of the past, she
drew it slowly toward her and pressed her lips against it.

At this moment a buzz sounded from the hall, and she recovered herself
hastily and, a little ashamed, said with a feeling of alarm as she went
to the door:

"Slade is entirely too clever; I must send it back tomorrow morning."

Before she could reach the door it had opened, and there entered, with
the informality of assured acquaintance, a young man of twenty-five or
-six, smiling, boyish, delighted at having stolen a march on the other
guests.

"You are early," said Mrs. Kildair, smiling with instinctive reflection
of the roguish enjoyment that shone on his handsome, confident face.

"Heavens, haven’t I been beating the pavements for fourteen minutes by
the watch!" he said, laughing.  "Regular kid trick."  He took her hand,
carrying it to his lips.  "The way they do in France, you know."

"You’re a nice boy, Teddy," she said, patting his hand.  "Now, hang up
your coat, and help me with the candles."

She watched him as he slipped his overcoat from the trim wide shoulders,
revealing all at once the clean-cut, well-tailored figure, full of
elasticity and youth.  Teddy Beecher always gave her a sense of
well-being and pleasant content, with his harum-scarum ways and inviting
impudence.  As he roused no intellectual resistance in her, she was all
the more sensitive to the purely physical charm in him, which she
appreciated as she might appreciate the finely strung body and
well-modulated limbs of a Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini.

"Will I help you?  Command me," he said, coming in eagerly.  "Don’t you
know, there’s a little silver collar about my neck, and the inscription
is, ’This dog belongs to Rita Kildair.’  Jove, Rita, but you’re stunning
tonight!"

He stood stock-still in frank amazement.  He had known her but a short
while, and yet he called her by her first name—a liberty seldom
accorded; but the charm he unconsciously exerted over women, and which
impatiently mystified other men, was in the very audacity of his
enjoyment of life, which imparted to women the precious sense of their
own youth.

"Really?" she said, raising her hand to her hair, that he might notice
the glorious ruby.

"Look here—I’ve only got a miserable thirty thousand a year, but I’ve
got a couple of uncles with liver trouble and a bum heart.  Say the
word—I’m yours."

While he said it with a mock-heroic air, there was in his eyes a flash
of excited admiration that she understood and was well pleased with.

"Come, Teddy," she said, a little disappointed that he did not perceive
the ring.  "To work.  Take this taper."

He took the wax, contriving to touch her fingers with feigned
artlessness.

"I say, Rita, who’s the mob here tonight?  Do I know any one?  I get the
place next to you, of course?"

"Begin over there," she directed.  "The Enos Bloodgoods are coming;
you’ve met her here."

"I thought they were separated, or something."

"Not yet."

"By George, Rita, there’s no one like you—serving us up a couple on the
verge."

"That is not all—I like situations," she said, with her slow smile.

"I like Elise; but as for the old boy, he can slip on a banana peel and
break his neck, for all I care.

"Then there’s a broker, Garraboy, Elise’s brother."

"Don’t know him."

"Maud Lille, who’s written clever books—a journalist."

"Don’t know her—hate clever women."

"Nan Charters—"

"Who?" said Beecher, with upraised wick.

"Nan Charters, who played in ’Monsieur Beaucaire.’"

"Bully!"

She smiled at his impetuousness, and continued:

"Mr. Majendie and the Stanley Cheevers."

"Oh, I say—not those—"

"Well?" she said as he stopped.

"You know the gambling story," he said reluctantly.

"Club gossip."

"Of course," he said, correcting himself.  "One of my friends was
present.  The Cheevers play a good game, a well-united game, and have an
unusual system of makes.  They are very successful—let it go at that.
You don’t mean to say that Majendie’ll be here?"

"I expect him."

"He was a friend of the dad’s—a corker, too. I don’t know much about
those things, but isn’t he supposed to be up against it?"

Three knocks in close succession sounded on the outer door, and Garraboy
entered with an air of familiarity that was displeasing to the younger
man. The two saluted impertinently, with polite antagonism, detesting
each other from the first look.

"Go on with the candles, Teddy," said Mrs. Kildair, signaling to the
newcomer, a young man of forty who seemed to have been born bald,
wrinkled, and heavy-eyed.  The long, bald head on the thin, straight
little body, and the elongated white collar, gave him somewhat the look
of an interrogation-mark.  He was heavily perfumed.

"What’s the news of the market?" she asked.

"Another odd turn—went up a couple of points," he said, looking at her
hand.  Unlike Beecher, he had instantly noted the new acquisition with a
malicious smile.  His thumb gave a little jerk and he added softly:
"Something new?"

"Yes.  Why should the market go up?" she said, seeming to be intent only
on the effect of the bracketed candles, that now licked the tapestried
walls with their restless tongues.

"There’s a general belief that a group of the big fellows will stand
behind the trust companies in return for certain concessions.  I say,"
he continued, watching the ruby ring, which instinctively she tried to
conceal from him, "I hope Elise isn’t going to make a fool of herself
about Majendie."

"Teddy, Teddy, you’ve forgotten the two over the plaque!" she said
aloud—and, a little lower: "She won’t; don’t fear."

"I know her better," he said, without, however, betraying the slightest
brotherly agitation.  "She is apt to do something crazy if anything went
wrong with Majendie.  Bloodgood’s a hard-skinned old brute, but if there
was anything public he’d cut up ugly."

"I hear he’s in the market."

"Yes—on the short side, too—in deep."

"And you?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought we never told secrets, Mrs. Kildair. Who else is coming?  Am
I representing the element of respectability again tonight?"

"The what?" She looked at him steadily until he turned away nervously,
with the unease of an animal.  "Don’t be an ass with me, my dear
Garraboy."

"By George," he said irritably, "if this were Europe I’d wager you were
in the Secret Service, Mrs. Kildair."

"Thank you," she said, smiling appreciatively, and returned toward young
Beecher, who was waiting by the piano with ill-concealed resentment.

The Stanley Cheevers entered—a short, chubby man with a bleached, vacant
face tufted with mustache and imperial, devoid of eyebrows, with watery
eyes that moved slowly with the motion of his gourd-like head; Mrs.
Cheever, voluble, nervous, over-dressed, young with the youth of a child
and pretty with the prettiness of a doll.

Beecher, who knew them, bowed with a sense of curiosity to Mrs. Cheever,
who held him a little with a certain trick she had of opening wide her
dark, Oriental eyes; and dropped, with a sense of physical discomfort,
the hand that Cheever flabbily pressed into his.

"Decidedly, I am going to have a grand little time by myself," he said
moodily.  "Where the deuce does Rita pick up this bunch?"

The Enos Bloodgoods were still agitated as they entered.  His lips had
not quite banished the scowl, nor her eyes the scorn.

"Permit me, my dear," he said, taking off her wrap, and the words struck
those who heard them with a sudden chill.

He was of the unrelenting type that never loses its temper, but causes
others to lose theirs, immovable in his opinions, with a prowling walk,
a studied antagonism in his manner, while in his bulgy eyes was an
impudent stare which fastened itself like a leech on the person
addressed, to draw out his weakness.

Elise Bloodgood, who seemed tied to her husband by an invisible leash,
had a hunted, resisting quality back of a certain desperate dash which
she assumed, rather than felt, in her attitude toward society—just as
she touched with red, cheeks that were meant to be simply the background
of eyes that were extraordinary, with a lurking sense of tragedy.

"Rita, dear, I am almost frantic tonight," she said hastily, in one of
those intimate moments of which women avail themselves in the midst of
their enemies.

"The last rumors are good," said Mrs. Kildair, bending over her
ostensibly to arrange her scarf.

"Who told you?"

"Your brother.  Every one downtown believes the panic is stopped.  The
market has gone up. Gunther and Snelling are Bernard’s personal
friends."

"Friends?" she said bitterly.  "Yes, that’s just the trouble."

"Besides, he is coming tonight—you knew?"

"Yes, I knew," said Mrs. Bloodgood, with a glance at her husband, who,
at the other side of the studio, seemed intent only on examining a
reliquary in carved stone.

"Then he will tell you himself," said Mrs. Kildair, rearranging a little
ornament that made a splash of gold on the black hair of her companion.
"Be careful—-don’t talk too much now."

"What do I care?" she said rebelliously.  "It has got to end sometime."

She passed her husband, her dark shoulder flinching unconsciously at his
near presence, and gave her hand to Stanley Cheever and young Beecher,
who, though utterly unconscious of the entanglements of the evening, was
struck by the moody sadness in her eyes that so strangely contradicted
the laugh that was on her lips.  But as he was wondering, a little
constrained, how best to open the conversation, the door opened once
more and two women entered—Nan Charters, who arrived like a little white
cloud, vibrantly alert and pleased at the stir her arrival occasioned,
and Maud Lille, who appeared behind her as a shadow, very straight, very
dark, Indian in her gliding movements, with masses of somber hair held
in a little too loosely for neatness.

"Oh, dear, am I dreadfully late?" said Nan Charters, who swept into the
studio the better to display her opera-cloak, a gorgeous combination of
white and gold Japanese embroideries, which, mounting above her throat
in conjunction with a scarf of mingling pinks, revealed only the tip of
her vivacious nose and sparkling eyes.

"You are strangely early," said Mrs. Kildair, who presented Beecher with
a gesture which at the same time directed him to attend to the wraps.

"Thank you," said Miss Charters, with a quick smile, and by an
imperceptible motion she allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders
and glide into the waiting hands, revealing herself in a white satin
shot with pigeon red, which caused the eyes of all the women present to
focus suddenly.  Garraboy, Cheever, and Bloodgood, who knew her, came up
eagerly.

Teddy Beecher, his arms crowded with the elusive garment, which gave him
almost the feeling of a human body, bore it to the hall and arranged it
with care, pleasantly aware of the perfume it exhaled.  He returned
eagerly, conscious of the instantaneous impression her smile had made on
him as she turned to thank him, a look that had challenged and aroused
him.  She was still chatting gaily, surrounded by the three men, and he
was forced to occupy himself with Mrs. Bloodgood.  His eyes, however,
remained on the young girl, who was listening with unaffected pleasure
to the compliments of her male audience. Something in the chivalry of
the younger man revolted at the spectacle of the sophisticated Garraboy
and the worldly appetites in the eyes of Cheever and Bloodgood.  He felt
almost an uneasy sense of her peril, which was in effect an instinctive
emotion of jealousy, and, profiting by the moment in which Mrs.
Bloodgood turned to Miss Lille, he slipped to Miss Charters’ side and
contrived to isolate her.

The studio was now filled with chatter.  Mrs. Kildair passed from group
to group, animating it with a word or two.  With the exception of Teddy
Beecher and Nan Charters, in the several groups there was but one
question—the events of the day in the financial world and the probable
outcome of the secret conference at Gunther’s.

Every one watched the clock, awaiting the last arrival with an
impatience that was too truly founded on the safety of their personal
fortunes to be concealed.

"The conference ended at six-thirty," said Maud Lille to Bloodgood and
Cheever; "Majendie left for his house immediately after.  I had it from
the city editor on the telephone."

"Was any statement given out?" said Cheever, who put one finger to his
lip, as he did when a little nervous.

"None."

"If he goes under, it means the bottom out of the market," said Cheever,
fixing his owlish stare on Bloodgood’s smug face.

"Are you long?" asked Bloodgood, turning on him with curiosity.

"A thousand shares," answered Cheever, but in a tone that carried no
conviction.

"He won’t come," said Maud Lille obstinately.

"If he does," said Cheever slowly, "he’s pulled through and the market
ought to go up."  And a second time his finger jerked up to his lips,
with the gesture of the stutterer.

"He won’t come," repeated Maud Lille.

Bloodgood gave her a short look, trying to fathom the reason of her
belief, a question he did not care to put before Cheever.

At this moment Majendie appeared at the entrance of the studio.  The
conversation, which had been mounting in nervous staccatos, fell with
the hollowness that one sometimes feels in the air before the first
crash of a storm.  By an uncontrollable impulse, each turned, eager to
read in the first indication some clue to his personal fate.

The last arrival had opened the outer door unheard, and, profiting by
the commotion, had removed his overcoat and hat in the anteroom.

When the rest of the party perceived him, Majendie was standing erect
and smiling under the Turkish lamp that, hanging from the balcony, cast
a mellow light on his genial, aristocratic forehead. In every detail,
from the ruddy, delicately veined cheeks and white mustache to the
slight, finely shaped figure at ease in the evening coat that fitted him
as a woman’s ball gown, he radiated the patrician, but the patrician of
urbanity, tact, and generous impulses.

"My dear hostess," he said at once, bending over Mrs. Kildair’s hand
with a little extra formality, "a thousand excuses for keeping you and
your guests waiting.  But just at present there are quite a number of
persons who seem to be determined to keep me from my engagements.  Am I
forgiven?"

"Yes," she answered, with a sudden feeling of admiration for the air of
absolute good humor with which he pronounced these words, mystifying
though they were to her sense of divination.

"I think I know every one," he said, glancing around without a trace of
emotion at Bloodgood and Cheever, whose presence could not have failed
to be distasteful.  "You are very good to be so lenient, and I will
accept whatever penance you impose. Are we going to have one of those
delightful chafing-dish suppers that only you know how to provide?"

"What pride!" she murmured to herself, as he passed over to Miss
Charters with a compliment that made her and Beecher break out laughing.

Up to the moment, the group had found not the slightest indication of
the probable outcome of the afternoon’s conference.  If anything, there
was in his carriage a quiet exhilaration.  But the moment was
approaching when he must come face to face with Mrs. Bloodgood, who,
either in order to gain time for the self-control that seemed almost
beyond her, or that she might draw him into more immediate converse, had
withdrawn so as to be the last he should greet.  Majendie perceived
instantly the imprudence of the maneuver, and by a word addressed to
Mrs. Kildair, who followed at his side, contrived to bring himself to
the farther side of the group, of which little Mrs. Cheever and Garraboy
were the other two.

"I make my excuses to the ladies first," he said, with a nod to
Garraboy, whom he thus was enabled to pass.  He offered his hand to Mrs.
Bloodgood, saying: "Grant me absolution, and I promise to do everything
I can to make you as gay as I feel now."

Elise Bloodgood took his hand, glancing into his face with a startled
glance, and immediately withdrew, murmuring something inaudible.

Mrs. Kildair, who with everyone had been listening to his words for the
double meaning that seemed to be conveyed, stepped in front of Mrs.
Bloodgood to cover her too evident agitation.

"Elise," she said sharply, pressing her hand, "get hold of yourself.
You must!  Everything is all right.  Didn’t you understand him?"

"Ah, if he were going to die tomorrow he would never tell me," said Mrs.
Bloodgood, pressing her handkerchief against her lips.  "Nothing will
ever break through his pride."

"But he told you in so many words," said Mrs. Kildair—who, however,
didn’t believe what she said.

"He told me nothing—nothing!"

"You must control yourself," said Mrs. Kildair, alarmed at her emotion.

"What do I care?"

"But you must!  Listen.  When I go into the dining-room don’t follow me.
I will contrive to take your husband with me.  Profit by the chance.
Besides, you are in no state to judge.  Does Bernard look like a man who
has just been told he is ruined? Come, a little courage."

She left her and, stepping into her bedroom, donned a Watteau-like
cooking-apron, and, slipping her rings from her fingers, fixed the three
on her pin-cushion with a hatpin.  From the mirror in which she surveyed
herself she could see the interior of the studio—Nan Charters’ laughing
face above the piano, where she was running off a succession of topical
songs, surrounded by a chorus of men, while Beecher, at her side,
solicitously turned the pages.

"Teddy seems quite taken," she thought.  But the tensity of the drama
drove from her all other considerations.  Completely mystified by
Majendie’s manner, she was studying the moment when she could throw him
together with Elise Bloodgood, convinced that from the woman she would
learn what the man concealed.

"Your rings are beautiful, dear, beautiful," said the deep voice of Maud
Lille, who, with Garraboy and Mrs. Cheever, was in the room.

"I never saw the ruby before," said Mrs. Cheever in a nervous voice.
"My dear, you are the most mysterious woman in the world.  Think of
having a ring like that, and never wearing it!"

"It is a wonderful stone," said Mrs. Kildair, touching with her thin
fingers the ring that lay uppermost.

"It is beautiful—very beautiful," said the journalist, her eyes fastened
on it with an uncontrollable fascination.

Mrs. Cheever, her lips parted, her black eyes wide with eagerness,
leaned over.  She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on
the ruby, withdrawing them as though the contact had burned them, while
on either cheek little spots of red excitement showed.

"It must be very valuable," she said, her breath catching slightly.

Garraboy, moving forward, suddenly looked at the ring.

"Yes, it is valuable—very much so," said Mrs. Kildair, glancing down.
Then she went to the door that led into the studio, and clapped her
hands:

"Attention, everybody!  Beecher and Garraboy are the chefs.  Each one
must choose his scullery-maid. Mr. Majendie is to make the punch.
Everyone else is butler and waitress.  Mrs. Cheever, did you ever peel
onions?"

"Good heavens, no!" said Mrs. Cheever, delicately recoiling.

"Well, there are no onions to peel," said Mrs. Kildair, laughing.  "All
you have to do is to carry dishes or make the toast—on to the kitchen!"

"Miss Charters, you are engaged at any salary you may name," said
Beecher, forestalling Garraboy, who was coming forward.

"But I shall drop every dish," said Nan Charters, rising from the piano.
"I don’t know anything about cooking."

"Splendid!  Then you’ll make no mistakes."

He installed her at one end of the table, and went off for the
chafing-dish.  When he returned, gingerly balancing it on a silver
platter, Garraboy, profiting by his absence, was seated beside Nan
Charters, speaking in a purposely low voice.  She was listening,
perfectly composed, looking straight before her with a tolerant,
uninterested smile.

If women often can conceal their true natures from women, men seldom
deceive one another.  There was a fixity in Garraboy’s glance which
Beecher understood and hotly resented.  But at the moment when, setting
the tray on the table, he was meditating some ill-advised remark, Mrs.
Cheever, passing by, said with ill-concealed impatience in her thin,
hurried voice:

"Mr. Garraboy, I am sorry for you, but I have been assigned as your
assistant, and I should like to know what I am to do."

Garraboy rose immediately, bowed with perfect suavity, and rejoined Mrs.
Cheever, who said to him something that the others did not hear, but at
which they saw him shrug his shoulders.

"Well, what are we going to make?" said Nan Charters, with the enjoyment
that this exhibition of feminine jealousy had brought still in her eyes.

"I don’t like Garraboy," said Beecher directly.

"Why not?" she said, smiling a little, and raising her eyebrows as
though interrogating a child.

"Because I like you," he answered abruptly.

Accustomed to contend with men, she was surprised by the genuineness of
his remark, which was inspired by a sentiment deeper than jealousy.  She
looked at him again with that sudden second estimate which is vital.

"He is not difficult to handle," she said carelessly, unaware of the
touch of intimacy which her reply permitted.

"I don’t like him," he said obstinately, "and I don’t like his crowd—the
crowd that is here to-night.  They’re like a pack of wolves.  What the
deuce does Rita see in them?"

"Mrs. Kildair has generally, I should say, a very good reason for whom
she invites," she said carelessly.

"But these Cheevers—they’re impossible.  How the deuce do they live?"

"I thought Mr. Majendie very charming."

"Oh, Majendie—yes, I except him," he said enthusiastically.  "He’s a
gentleman."

"That counts a good deal with you?" she said, with a touch of raillery.

"It does.  I think a gentleman is almost the rarest thing you meet with
today," he said, holding his ground, "a gentleman in the heart.  I know
only four or five."

"Yes, you are right," she said, changing her tone. She looked at him a
third time, at the honest, boyish loyalty so plainly written on his
face, and said: "You haven’t gone out much here?"

"No; I’m just back from knocking around the world, hunting in Africa and
all that sort of uselessness."

"Come and tell me about it sometime.

"May I?"

She laughed at his impetuousness, and pointed to the contents of the
chafing-dish, which had been simmering neglected; but more than once
during the operation her glance returned to the eager, earnest face.

Meanwhile, Garraboy, at the other end of the table, assisted by Mrs.
Cheever and Maud Lille, was busy with a lobster à la Newburg.  Mrs.
Kildair, having finished in the kitchen, had entered the dining-room,
where she established a sort of provisional serving-table.  She called
to her side Cheever and Bloodgood, and, under the pretext of arranging
the dishes from the china-closet, kept them isolated.  At this moment
Elise Bloodgood approached Majendie, who, at the rear end of the studio,
was occupied with the brewing of a punch.  Natural as was the movement,
it was instantly perceived by the four or five persons vitally
interested.  A moment afterward Mrs. Bloodgood passed into the bedroom;
but there was in her carriage a triumph that she did not care to
conceal.

"He’s won out," thought Bloodgood.

"The shorts will be caught," thought Cheever. "The devil!  I must
cover."

"Has he lied to her?" said Mrs. Kildair to herself.  "If everything is
all right, why should he conceal it from any one?"

She went across the room, stopping at the punch-table.

"Have you everything you need?" she asked.

"Everything, thank you," Majendie answered gently; but there was in his
voice a tired note, as if some effort had suddenly exhausted him.

"I understood what you meant," she said, looking at him not without a
little pity—an emotion which was rare with her.  "Let me congratulate
you on the result of this afternoon."

"Thank you very much for your congratulations," he said quietly, taking
her hand.  "If you knew, you will understand why I was kept so late."

As he bowed, the front of his jacket opening a little, she saw or
fancied she saw in the inner pocket a strip of green, slightly
protruding.  She left him, still unconvinced, and turned to the company.

"Everything ready, Teddy?  All right.  Every one sit down.  Mrs. Cheever
and Mrs. Bloodgood are appointed butlers—because real work will do them
good.  Sit down, sit down.  I’ll be back in a minute."

As she turned to her bedroom, there came a strong ring, twice repeated.
She paused, astonished.

"Who can that be?" she thought, frowning, and directing her steps toward
the antechamber.  "No one is allowed to come up.  It must be a
telegram."

She opened the door, and Slade entered.

"I came right up," he said directly, "because I had no success on the
telephone.  You rather excited my curiosity this afternoon.  Please
invite me to your party."

The first moment of irritation was succeeded, on her part, by the
feeling of elation.  The impulse that had brought Slade so unexpectedly
there was a feeling of jealousy, in which Beecher and Majendie were
confusedly mixed.

"He wishes to watch me with his own eyes," she said triumphantly.  "Very
well; he shall be well punished."

Slade’s arrival produced a moment of profound astonishment.  Bloodgood
and Maud Lille exchanged quick glances, believing the meeting between
Majendie and Slade had been premeditated.  Garraboy plucked Cheever
nervously by the sleeve, while Majendie, as if realizing that he was
dealing with an antagonist of a different caliber, rose with a little
nervous inflation of the chest.  Rapid as had been the interim in the
antechamber, Mrs. Kildair had had time to say:

"Majendie is here.  Do you know what happened this afternoon?"

"I do," said Slade, with malicious enjoyment, and he added: "Do you?"

"Yes," she replied, convinced, likewise, of the falsity of his
statement.  Then aloud she added: "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Slade, an
impromptu guest."

She passed with him about the table, introducing him where it was
necessary.  Slade and Majendie did not offer hands; each bowed with a
quiet, measured politeness.  On the contrary, when Beecher was reached,
the older man grasped the hand of the younger, and held it a moment with
a grip that, despite Beecher’s own strength, made him wince.

"Teddy, be a good boy and place Mr. Slade somewhere," she said, resting
her hand purposely on the young man’s shoulder.  "I’ll take off my apron
and be back immediately."

She stopped near Majendie, who had returned to the punch-table for an
extra glass, and, seeing that her movements were followed by Slade,
said:

"Bernard, believe me, I did not plan it.  I had no idea he was coming."

"It makes not the slightest difference," he said instantly.  "Mr. Slade
and I have no quarrel. Please don’t worry about me."

"You’re an awfully good sort," she said abruptly.

"That is high praise from you," he said, with a little critical smile
which showed he was not entirely the dupe of her maneuvers.

She went into her bedroom, and, divesting herself of her apron, hung it
in the closet.  Then, going to her dressing-table, she drew the hatpin
from the pin-cushion and carelessly slipped the rings on her fingers.
All at once she frowned and looked quickly at her hand.  Only two rings
were there.  The third one—the ring with the ruby—was gone!

                             *CHAPTER III*

Her first emotion was of irritation.

"How stupid!" she said to herself, and, returning to her dressing-table,
began to search among the silver and ivory boxes.  All at once she
stopped. She remembered with a vivid flash putting the pin through the
three rings.

She made no further search, but remained without moving, her fingers
slowly tapping the table, her head inclined, her lips drawn in a little
between her teeth, watching in the glass the crowded table reflected
from the outer studio.

In that gay party, one person was the thief—but which one?  Each guest
had had a dozen opportunities in the course of the time she had been in
the kitchen.

"Too much prinking, pretty lady," called out Garraboy, who, from where
he was seated, could see her.

"Not he," she said quickly.  Then she reconsidered: "Why not?  He’s
shifty—who knows?  Let me think."

To gain time, she went slowly back to the kitchen, her head bowed, her
thumb between her teeth.

"Who has taken it?"

She ran over the characters of her guests and their situations as she
knew them.  Strangely enough, with the exception of Beecher and
Majendie, at each her mind stopped upon some reason that might explain a
sudden temptation.

"And even Majendie—if he is bankrupt or running away," she thought.
"No, I shall find out nothing this way.  That is not the important thing
just now.  The important thing is to get the ring back.  But how?"

All at once she realized the full disaster of the situation.  Slade
would never believe her; and yet, how was it possible to admit before
others who had lent her the ring?

"What could I say to him?" she thought desperately. "No, no; I must have
the ring back, whatever happens.  I won’t give him that hold.  I must
get it back—some way—somehow."

And mechanically, deliberately, she continued to pace back and forth,
her clenched hand beating the deliberate, rhythmic measure of her
journey.

In the studio, meanwhile, under the gay leadership of Majendie and Nan
Charters, the spirits of the company began to rise.  The rival chefs
were surrounded by anxious admirers, who shouted laughing instructions
or protested with mock agony against the shower of red pepper.

The ceremony had served to bring Beecher and Nan Charters on terms of
sympathetic familiarity. The young actress had the secret of what is
meant by that much abused word—charm.  Her vivacious movements were all
charming.  The eagerness with which her eyes seized the excitement of
the moment, the soft and yet animated tones of her voice, the most
casual gesture she made, or the most evident reply, all seemed invested
with a peculiar charm which was at the same time a delight in pleasure
and a happiness in the consciousness of pleasing.

Beecher did not or could not conceal the empire she had so suddenly
acquired over his imagination, while Nan Charters, quite aware of what
was happening, laughingly provoked him further, a little excited beyond
the emotions of an ordinary flirtation.

During the progress of this personal duel, which, however, every one
perceived with different emotions, Slade, placed at the middle of the
table, followed only the expressions of Bernard Majendie, his scrutiny
at times becoming so insistently profound that the banker several times
noticed it with a swift glance of annoyed interrogation, which, however,
did not alter in the least the fixity of the other’s gaze.

Meanwhile, two or three conversations, expressed in snatched phrases,
took place between those whose interests in the stock market were put in
jeopardy by the mystery as to Majendie’s fate.

"There’ll be a rush of the shorts to cover tomorrow, if this is true,"
said Cheever in a low whisper to his wife.  "Pump Mrs. Bloodgood all you
can."

"How quick do you suppose they’ll give the news out?" said Bloodgood to
Garraboy.  "It means a buying movement as soon as they do."

"Any paper may have the news tomorrow," said the broker, and the glass
that he took from the punch-table shook as he raised it.

"Do you think Slade knows?"

"I’m not sure—but I think he does," said Garraboy carefully.  "Better
meet me at the Waldorf at eleven.  I’ll get another line on it by then."

"Why the deuce should he pull through?" said Bloodgood, with a quick,
dull fury.

Garraboy, with his malicious smile, perceiving that Bloodgood’s hatred
was purely financial, chuckled to himself, took a couple of glasses in
rapid succession, and returned to the table under perfect control, not
without a scowl at the other end of the table, where Nan Charters and
young Beecher were laughingly disputing the possession of the
pepper-shaker.

A moment later, as Mrs. Cheever was exclaiming at their hostess’
prolonged delay to Garraboy, who was dipping into the lobster à la
Newburg, which he was preparing to serve, Mrs. Kildair slipped into the
room like a lengthening shadow.  Her entrance had been made with
scarcely a perceptible sound, and yet each guest was aware of it, at the
same moment, with the same uncontrollable nervous start.

"Heavens, dear lady," exclaimed Garraboy, with a twitch of his arms.
"You come in on us like a Greek tragedy.  What is the surprise?"

As he spoke, Beecher, looking up, saw her turn suddenly on him, drawing
her forehead together until the eyebrows ran in a straight line.

"I have something to say to you all," she said in a quiet, discordant
voice, while her eyes ran restlessly through the company with a
predatory sharpness.

There was no mistaking the gravity in her voice. Garraboy extinguished
the oil-lamp, covering the chafing-dish clumsily with a disagreeable
tinny sound; Mrs. Cheever and Mrs. Bloodgood swung about abruptly; Maud
Lille rose a little from her seat; Nan Charters, dramatically sensitive,
seized unconsciously the arm of young Beecher; while the men, with the
exception of Slade, who still watched Majendie like a terrier, imitated
their movements of expectancy with a clumsy shuffling of the feet.

"Mr. Bloodgood."

"Yes, Mrs. Kildair?"

"Kindly do as I ask."

"Certainly."

She had spoken his name with a peremptory positiveness that was almost
an accusation.  He rose, placing his napkin carefully at the side of his
plate, raising his short eyebrows a little in surprise.

"Go to the vestibule," she continued, immediately shifting her glance
from him to the others.  "Are you there?  Shut the sliding doors that
lead into the studio.  Lock them.  Bring me the key."

He executed the order without bungling, while the company, in growing
amazement, fascinated, watched his squat figure returning with the key.

"You’ve locked it?" she said, making the question an excuse to bury her
glance in his.

"As you wished me to."

"Thanks."

She took from him the key, and, shifting slightly, likewise locked the
door into her bedroom through which she had come.

Then, transferring the keys to her left hand, seemingly unaware of
Bloodgood, who still composedly awaited her further instructions, her
eyes studied a moment the possibilities of the apartment and then
returned to her guests.

"Mr. Cheever," she said abruptly.

"Yes, Mrs. Kildair."

"Put out all the candles except the candelabrum on the table."

"Put out the lights?" he said, rising, with his peculiar nervous
movement of the fingers to the lips.

"At once."

Mr. Cheever, in rising, met the glance of his wife, and the look of
questioning and wonder that passed did not escape the others.

"But, my dear Mrs. Kildair," cried Nan Charters, with a little nervous
catch of her breath, "what is it?  I’m getting terribly worked up."

"Miss Lille," said Mrs. Kildair’s undeviating voice of command, while
Beecher placed his hand firmly over his companion’s, which had begun to
open and shut in nervous tension.

The journalist, more composed than the rest, had watched the proceedings
from that shadowy calm which had made her presence almost unnoticed.
Now, as though forewarned by professional instinct that something
sensational was hanging on the moment, she rose quietly with almost a
stealthy motion.

"Put the candelabrum on this table—here," said Mrs. Kildair, after a
long moment’s confrontation. She indicated the large round table on
which the punch-bowl was set.  "No, wait.  Mr. Bloodgood, first clear
off the table, cover and all; I want nothing on it."

As Bloodgood started to remove the punch-bowl, Majendie rose quickly and
took the heavy candelabrum from the hands of Maud Lille, saying:

"Permit me; that’s rather heavy for you."

"But, Mrs. Kildair—" began Mrs. Cheever’s voice, in shrill crescendo.

Mrs. Kildair, as though satisfied by her examination of the journalist,
nodded to Majendie, and, perceiving the mahogany table clear, said
without notice of Mrs. Cheever:

"Good!  Now put the candelabrum down on it."

In a moment, as Cheever proceeded lumberingly on his errand, the
brilliant cross-fire of lights dropped away in the studio, only a few
smoldering wicks winking on the walls, while the high ceiling seemed to
recede as it came under the sole dominion of the three candles bracketed
in silver at the head of the bare mahogany table.

"Now listen!" said Mrs. Kildair, and her voice was cold and abrupt.  "My
ring has just been stolen!"

She said it suddenly, hurling the news at them, and waiting ferret-like
for some indication in the chorus that broke out.

The hand that Beecher still grasped shot out from him as though it had
been stung.  For the first time, Slade, forgetting Majendie, wheeled
brusquely and concentrated his glance on Mrs. Kildair, who listened
unmoved to the storm of exclamations:

"Stolen!"

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Kildair, not that!"

"Stolen—by Jove!"

"Rita dear!"

"What!  Stolen—here—tonight?"

"The ring has been taken in the last twenty minutes," continued Mrs.
Kildair, in the same determined, chiseled accents.  "I am not going to
mince words.  The ring has been taken, and one of you here is the thief.
This is exactly the situation."

For a moment nothing was heard but an indescribable gasp, while each,
turning by an uncontrollable impulse, searched the face of his
neighbors. Suddenly Slade’s deep bass broke out:

"Stolen, Mrs. Kildair?"

"Stolen," she replied quietly, meeting his inquisitorial glance.

"Have you searched very carefully?" said Majendie.  "Mistakes are easily
made.  It may have slipped to the floor.  Are you certain that it has
been taken?"

"Exactly.  There is not the slightest doubt," said Mrs. Kildair,
conscious of the almost admiring suspicion in Slade’s glance.  "Three of
you were in my bedroom when I took off my rings, placed a hatpin through
them, and fastened them to the pin-cushion. Am I correct, Mr. Garraboy?"
she added abruptly.

"Perfectly so," said the broker, staring ahead with a sudden
consciousness of his dilemma.  He added punctiliously; "I was there."

"With the exception of Mr. Slade, each of you has passed through my
bedroom a dozen times.  The ring is gone, and one of you has taken it."

Mrs. Cheever gave a little scream and reached heavily for a glass of
water.  Mrs. Bloodgood said something inarticulate, covering her heart
with her hand in the muffled outburst of masculine exclamation:

"The devil you say!"

"Incredible!"

"I saw it."

"By Jove!  A nasty mess."

Only Maud Lille’s calm voice could be heard saying:

"Quite true.  I was in the room when you took them off.  The ruby was on
top."

Mrs. Cheever sought to add her testimony, but was incapable of speech.
In her agitation she spilled half of the glass of water as she put it
down from her lips.

"Was the ring valuable?" said Slade carefully, with a quiet enjoyment.

Their eyes met a moment—a look incomprehensible to the others.

"It was worth over fifteen thousand dollars," Mrs. Kildair answered, in
the buzz of astonishment.

"And what are you going to do about it?"

"I have not minced words," she said, turning her eyes to Maud Lille and
back to Garraboy.  "There is a thief, and that thief is here in this
room.  Now, I am not going to stand on ceremony.  I am going to have
that ring back in one way or another—now.  Listen to me carefully.  I
intend to have that ring back, and, until I do, not a soul shall leave
this room."

"A search?" said Slade quietly.

"No," she said instantly, tapping on the table with her nervous
knuckles.  "I don’t care to know the thief—all I want is the ring.  And
this is the way I am going to get it."  She stopped for another quick,
searching glance, and continued with cold control:

"I am going to make it possible for whoever took it to restore it to me
without possibility of detection. The doors are locked and will stay
locked.  I am going to put out the lights, and I am going to count one
hundred—slowly.  You will be in absolute darkness; no one will know or
see what is done, and I give my word that I will count the full hundred.
There will be no surprise, no turning up of lights. But if, at the end
of that time, the ring is not placed here on this table, I shall
telephone for detectives and have every one in this room searched.  Am I
clear?"

The transfer of the candelabrum to the further table had left those of
the diners who had remained by the dinner-table in half obscurity.
Instantly there was a shifting and a dragging of chairs, a confused
jumble of questions and explanations.

Nan Charters for the second time seized the arm of Teddy Beecher.  She
murmured something which he did not hear.  He glanced at her face, and
for a moment an incredible suspicion crossed his mind. But the next, as
he glanced down the table at the totally unnerved attitude of Mrs.
Cheever and Mrs. Bloodgood, he understood better the agitation of his
companion.

"Do you suspect any one?" he whispered, by an impulse that seemed to
spring into his mind.

The young actress turned to him with almost an expression of terror in
her eyes, which at the same time implored him to be silent.

"She knows something," he thought, with a somber feeling.  His own face
was flushed.  He felt that to all he must appear guilty.  "Every one
feels the same," he thought, looking again at his companion, who was
gazing with almost frightened intensity straight ahead of her.

He followed her glance, and saw that the object of her gaze was none
other than Mrs. Enos Bloodgood, who still held her hand pressed over her
breast, her lips parted as though suffocating with emotion. But, before
he had time even to consider the bearing of this discovery, Mrs.
Kildair’s voice, firm and unrelenting, cut short the confusion.

"Every one come to this table, please.  Take your places here," she
said, and to emphasize the command she rapped sharply for order.

In the bustle that took place, Beecher was separated from Miss Charters,
and when he found himself at the table she was opposite him, her eyes on
the table.

"Can you make a little room?" he heard Maud Lille’s low voice say, and,
drawing away from Cheever, who was on his right, he allowed the
journalist to take her place beside him.

Majendie was on the left of Mrs. Kildair, Slade next to him, sweeping
the table slowly with his direct, lowering glance, his lips slightly
pursed. Bloodgood, his hands sunk in his pockets, stared bullishly
ahead, while between Cheever and his wife there passed a covert,
terrible glance of interrogation. Garraboy, with his hands locked over
his chin, arms folded, looked straight ahead staring fixedly at his
hostess.

Mrs. Kildair, having assured herself that all was arranged as she
desired, blew out two of the three candles, which suddenly caused the
eyes on the dim faces to stand out in startled relief.

"I shall count one hundred—no more, no less," she said quietly.  "Either
the ring is returned or every one in this room is to be searched.
Remember."

She motioned to Slade, who, leaning over, blew out the remaining candle,
while a little hysterical cry was heard from Mrs. Cheever.

The wick shone a moment with a hot, glowing spire, and then everything
was black.  Mrs. Kildair began to count.

"One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—"

She gave each number with the inexorable regularity of a clock’s
reiterated note.

"Eleven—twelve—thirteen—fourteen— fifteen—sixteen—seventeen—"

In the room every sound was distinct—the rustle of a shifting dress, the
grinding of a shoe, the deep, slightly asthmatic breathing of a man.

"Twenty-one—twenty-two—twenty-three—
twenty-four—twenty-five—twenty-six—"

The counting went on, without the slightest variation, with a methodic,
rasping reiteration that began to produce almost an hypnotic effect on
the imaginations held in suspense.

"Thirty—thirty-one—thirty-two—thirty-three—"

A slight rasping breath was heard, and then a man nervously clearing his
throat.

"Thirty-nine—forty—forty-one—forty-two—"

Still nothing had happened.  No other sound had broken in on the
strained attention of every ear. Yet the voice that counted did not vary
in the slightest measure; only the sound became less human, more
metallic.

"Forty-seven—forty-eight—forty-nine— fifty—fifty-one—fifty-two—"

A woman had sighed—Mrs. Bloodgood next to him—the sigh of a woman
yielding up consciousness to pain.

"Fifty-four—fifty-five—fifty-six—fifty-seven
—fifty-eight—fifty-nine—sixty—sixty-one—"

All at once, clear, ringing, unmistakable, on the sounding plane of the
table was heard a quick metallic note that echoed and reëchoed in the
empty blackness.

"The ring!"

It was Maud Lille’s deep voice that had cried out. Beecher suddenly
against his shoulder felt the weight of Mrs. Bloodgood’s swaying body.
The voice that counted hesitated a moment, but only a moment.

"Sixty-two—sixty-three—"

Several voices began to protest:

"No, no!"

"Light the candles!"

"It’s too much!"

"Don’t go on!"

"Seventy-five—seventy-six—seventy-seven— seventy-eight—seventy-nine—"

The sound dominated the protest.  Some one began to laugh, an
hysterical, feverish laughter that chilled Beecher to the bones.  He put
out his hand and steadied the body of the woman next to him.

"Eighty-five—eighty-six—"

"Hurry, oh, hurry—please hurry!" cried the voice of Nan Charters, and
some one else cried:

"Enough—this is terrible!"

"Ninety-five—ninety-six—ninety-seven— ninety-eight—ninety-nine, and one
hundred."

At once a match sputtered in the hands of Slade. There was a cry from
every one, and the table shivered with the weight of those who craned
forward. Then a second cry of amazement and horror.  The table was
absolutely bare.  The ring a second time had been taken.

[Illustration: "In that gay party one person was a thief—but which one?
... A match sputtered.  There was a cry of amazement and horror.  The
table was absolutely bare"]

                              *CHAPTER IV*

For a full, strained moment not a sound escaped the company; even the
strongest natures, Slade, Majendie and Rita Kildair seemed powerless to
grasp what had taken place.  Then the realization came, in a flash.
What the first thief had failed to carry through another had boldly
dared: a man or a woman, deliberately or hysterically, had seized the
opportunity that had lain there, in the darkness, between the
sixty-first second and the hundredth count.

The match in Slade’s hands burned his fingers, and went out.  In the
sudden blackness a dozen cries were heard:

"Light the candle!"

"Turn on the electric light!"

"Search the floor!"

"Stolen again!"

"Ghastly!"

"A light!  A light!"

Another match sputtered, and one candle caught the flame and flung its
expanding circles of light around them.

"It must have rolled to the floor," said Majendie’s voice, among the
first.

"Nonsense!" broke in Slade’s powerful bass. "There are no carpets; we
would have heard it. There is a second thief here.  Every one must be
searched.  Mrs. Kildair, if you wish I’ll call up my detective agency."

"No," said Mrs. Kildair instantly, and her voice had regained its calm.
"I will attend to that myself."

She went quickly to the door into the bedroom, unlocked it, passed
through, and locked it again.  A moment later the impatient ring of a
telephone was heard.

In the ill-lit studio the greatest confusion prevailed. Every one
seemed, by a common impulse, to desire to escape to the farthest ends of
the room, stumbling and bumping against one another in the obscurity.
Some instinct impelled Beecher to Nan Charters’ side.  He took her arm
with a strong, reassuring grip, expecting to find her still shaken with
emotion; but, to his amazement, he found her entirely collected.

"Thank you, I am all right," she said, releasing herself, with a little
smile.

"Are you sure?" he said doubtfully.

At this moment, as he stood staring at her, perplexed, Slade’s voice
rang out peremptorily:

"The electric lights—some one turn on the lights!"

He left her, and, going to the wall toward the antechamber, pressed the
three buttons embedded there. Instantly the great room was showered with
a brutal glare.  Near the piano, Mrs. Cheever was sunk in an arm-chair,
in a seemingly hysterical state, while Mr. Cheever, glass in hand, was
bending over her; Mrs. Bloodgood was seated at the dining-table, her
head resting in her hands; Garraboy and Bloodgood were turning in the
middle of the floor.  Only Maud Lille, stoic and alert, remained at her
original place.  Slade and Majendie were carefully exploring the floor.

Beecher did not at once return to his companion. Her sudden change
perplexed him with thoughts that he did not wish to analyze too deeply.
He expected that she would rejoin Mrs. Bloodgood; but the young actress,
as though purposely avoiding her, went finally to where Maud Lille was
standing, and said, with a command that startled Beecher:

"Mr. Majendie, there is always a chance that the ring may have rolled
off the table and been caught in somebody’s dress.  Such things have
happened again and again.  I suggest that every woman make a careful
search."

"Miss Charters is quite right," said Majendie, who, advancing to the
middle of the studio, repeated the suggestion.  "The situation is
frightful; we must take every precaution to avoid the chances of an
accident."

The four women immediately began to examine the ruffles and draperies of
their skirts—without success.

All at once the door at the back of the room opened, and Mrs. Kildair
reappeared.

"I shall have the detectives here—a man and a woman—within half an
hour," she said.  "There is nothing to do but wait."

She seated herself in a chair near the door, her hands stretched out
over the arms, her head lowered. Every one sat down, with the exception
of Maud Lille, who, however, shifted a little so as to have the support
of the piano.  No one spoke; the situation had passed beyond comment.

On the dining-table the little alcohol-lamp under a chafing-dish burnt
itself out unnoticed.  At the end of thirty-five minutes, during which
every one had been intent on the torturous progress of the clock, a
sudden buzz was heard.

Mrs. Kildair rose and, passing out by way of the bedroom, was heard
talking behind the closed doors that led into the hall, a sound followed
by the indistinguishable jumble of voices.

A nervous five minutes, and she reappeared, with the same
incomprehensible calm that had marked her during the period in the dark.

"The women will go into the bedroom," she said, without variation of her
voice.  "The men will be searched in the dining-room."

"One moment," said Slade, taking a step in advance.

Mrs. Kildair turned with a start, the first agitation noticeable.

"It is absolutely necessary for me to keep an appointment at ten
o’clock," he said, glancing at the clock, which stood at the last
quarter.  "As I was not here when the ring was first stolen, I ask the
privilege of being examined the first."

At this there was a murmur, and Mrs. Kildair hesitated.

Slade, giving a disdainful shoulder to the protest, strode deliberately
to Mrs. Kildair and spoke with her in a low voice.  At the end of a
moment Mrs. Kildair nodded as though convinced, and, going to the
folding doors, unlocked them.  Outside a man in a dark business suit, as
grimly correct as an undertaker, was waiting with folded arms.

Slade bowed and passed into the hall, shutting the doors behind him,
while Mrs. Kildair came back slowly, evidently running over in her mind
the order of selection.

"Mrs. Bloodgood," she said finally, "will you go first?"

Mrs. Bloodgood, surprised at the formal appellation, rose hastily, and
started blindly for the vestibule through which Slade had passed.

"In my bedroom, please," said Mrs. Kildair.

The young woman checked herself, faltering a little, and entered the
bedroom, where, for a moment, could be seen the drab figure of another
woman, ornamented by a little toque with a red feather.

"Mrs. Kildair," said Majendie, rising, "it is equally important for me
to leave as soon as possible. While I know that I ask a favor, possibly
all of you know that my affairs are at a vital stage, and I should
appreciate it very much if there were no objection to my being examined
the next."

He turned, with a courteous bow, as he concluded.

"I am perfectly willing," said Beecher at once.

"I am not," said Bloodgood, while Cheever made a gesture of dissent.

"Nor I," said Garraboy.  "I have my own appointment, that means a great
deal to me.  I regret that I cannot accede to Mr. Majendie’s request."

"These gentlemen are quite within their rights," said Majendie,
accepting the refusal with the same courtesy.  He thanked Beecher with a
smile, and added: "If you are willing, Mrs. Kildair, shall we draw lots
for it?"

"Quite so," said Mrs. Kildair, and she arranged four slips in her
fingers and tendered them.

Majendie drew the longest, and was, therefore, forced to wait until
Garraboy, Bloodgood, and Cheever had passed ahead.  He glanced at the
clock with a sudden, uneasy look, and returned to his chair: but, for
the first time, a frown appeared on his face, while his fingers tore
into bits the slip of paper, which he did not notice he had retained.

Beecher was unpleasantly aware that Garraboy was watching him, and this
scrutiny, which might have been inspired by a personal jealousy, struck
him as a deliberate suspicion.  He returned the look with a belligerent
intensity, conscious in his own mind that he had already formed a
prejudice as to the identity of the second thief.

"A woman might have taken the ring on impulse," he thought uneasily,
"but only a man could have had the cold daring to take it the second
time."

He eliminated Majendie by an instinctive rejection; Slade appeared an
equally impossible solution.

"It’s Cheever, Bloodgood, or Garraboy," he thought.  "And Cheever hasn’t
the nerve—I don’t believe it.  It’s Bloodgood or Garraboy—and Garraboy
is the most likely."

Suddenly a hot, panicky feeling came to him. What if the real
thief—Garraboy, for instance—had slipped the ring into his own pocket?
He unlocked his hands and hurriedly searched his clothes. Then annoyed
at seeing this childish action come under the notice of the broker, he
shifted in his seat and glanced toward Nan Charters.  To his surprise,
he found again the same indications of nervousness in the concentration
of her eye on the door leading into the bedroom.

At this moment Mrs. Bloodgood emerged, and Mrs. Cheever went in.  At
once the nervous tension of his companion seemed to relax, and she sank
back in her seat, with an indifferent glance around the room.

"Decidedly, there is something queer between the two," he thought,
mystified.

In the studio the same stony silence was maintained. Through the open
doors that led to the antechamber Slade reappeared, hesitated a moment
as if to reenter the studio, then bowed and went out. Behind him the
detective was seen waiting. Garraboy rose and immediately passed into
the back.

Mrs. Bloodgood had taken her seat apart, staring ahead as though by a
difficult process of mental control, for at times her glance, despite
the consciousness of her husband’s espionage, flashed over to where
Majendie was impatiently following the movements of the clock.

When Garraboy’s search had ended, he followed the precedent of Slade,
bowed without speaking, and departed; while Bloodgood, guarding the same
silence, passed into the dining-room.  Maud Lille succeeded Mrs.
Cheever, who returned in the same state of agitation that she had shown
from the beginning. She started to approach her husband, when Mrs.
Kildair’s controlled voice was heard:

"Not there, please, Mrs. Cheever.  Kindly sit at this side of the room
with Mrs. Bloodgood."

Mrs. Cheever flushed instantly, and sank, or rather collapsed, in the
chair which had been indicated.

All at once there came another ring, followed by two or three impatient
taps on the outer door.  There was a sudden stir in the room, where all
nerves were clearly on the edge, and Mrs. Cheever gave a little scream.

"I’ll answer," said Cheever, rising.

"Wait," said Mrs. Kildair.  She started toward the door, and then,
changing her mind, as if unwilling to relax her surveillance of events
in the studio, stopped.  "Mr. Beecher, please," she said thoughtfully.
"See who it is."  And she moved slightly toward the half-drawn
portières, to hear and at the same time to be concealed.

Garraboy was outside, a coat on his arm.

"Excuse me," he said, without emotion.  "I took the wrong coat.  Stupid
of me.  Just found it out."

"It looks like mine," said Beecher, examining it.

"Probably is," said Garraboy, who extracted another coat of similar
appearance from the rack, plunged into his pockets and nodded.  "Sure
enough. Sorry.  Good night."

So thoroughly disagreeable an impression had the broker produced upon
Beecher that, in a moment of suspicion, moved by an incredible thought,
he ran his hands hastily through the pockets.

"I shouldn’t have been surprised," he grumbled to himself, and returned
to the studio, where the conversation had been overheard.

The search continued, ended, and, as all expected, no trace of the ring
was found.

Mrs. Kildair excused herself, evidently maintaining her calm with
difficulty.  The guests, murmuring inarticulate phrases, took their
wraps, and young Beecher found himself shortly in a coupé beside Nan
Charters.

For several moments neither spoke, each absorbed in his own
speculations.  Beecher studied the figure at his side with covert
glances, amazed at the transformation from the childlike charm which had
first fascinated him.  An hour before he had begun to wonder how far
that feeling might develop in him; now, as he watched her, he was
conscious of a dispassionate, almost resentful analysis.  The fragrance
of her perfume, a little too overpowering, filled the interior of the
coupé.  She herself, bending slightly forward, one elbow against the
window-pane, pressed her ungloved knuckles against her chin, while her
glance, set and controlled, was lost in the cloudy shadows and striped
reflections of the street without.

"What is terrible in such a situation," she said musingly, but without
turning, "is that any one may be suspected."

The words were spoken with almost an absolute change of personality.
The very tone brought to him an increased antagonism.

"Quite true," he said.  "You may have taken it the first time, and I the
second."

She turned and tried to distinguish his expression; but, if he had hoped
to startle, he was disappointed. She said, quite possessed:

"Why do you put it that way?"

"Because I am convinced that the second time was the deliberate action
of a man, and that the first was the impulse of a woman."

"Why a woman the first time?"

"That is simply my feeling.  A woman would not calculate the chances of
detection, would have kept the ring on her person, and would have
restored it. What do you think?"

"Possibly," she said, her glance returning to the street.

"But you don’t agree with me," he said, leaning a little forward.

"I don’t know."

"Miss Charters, will you allow me to ask you a question?"

"What?  Yes."

"Don’t you know that a woman took it the first time?"

She turned very slowly and looked at him steadily a moment.

"I do not know," she said at last.

"But you suspect," he persisted.

"Do you know, Mr. Beecher, that this is a very strange question?" she
said.  "Exactly what are you implying?  Do you, by any chance, suspect
me?"

She said the last words gently, with a return of the first manner which
had so held him.  And again, without being able to resist, he felt the
charm on his senses.  He knew absolutely nothing about her.  At times
the most direct suspicions had entered his mind; never-the-less all at
once he heard himself answering:

"I know nothing in the world about you, Miss Charters, but my instinct
tells me that is absolutely impossible."

"Only?"

"Only I can not forget your agitation at certain moments."

"Naturally; that is my temperament."

"You are perfectly calm now, and you were perfectly calm at certain
times tonight."

She turned suddenly in her seat and faced him, saying sharply:

"What do you mean?"

"May I speak frankly?"

"I ask you to do so," she said peremptorily.

"I think—in fact, I am convinced—that you suspect who took the ring in
the first place."

The cab was grinding against the curb.  She put out her hand hurriedly,
as if the impulse were to jump from the carriage.  But immediately she
checked the movement, and turned, saying very simply and directly:

"Do you wish to be my friend?"

"You know I do," he said, surprised.

"Then, if you do, and trust me, never ask that question again—or make
the slightest reference to it."

She held out her hand.  He took it, but without an answer, opened the
door, saw her to her vestibule, and returned silent and moody, turning
over again and again in his mind the sudden contradiction in her
character.

"I wonder if she repels or attracts me most," he said, tramping over the
quiet pavements, which flung back the riotous thumping of his cane.
But, as he went aimlessly along, he felt again creeping over him the
suddenness of her charm and a certain unsatisfied restlessness to see
her again, which came to him with the faint scent of the perfume that
had clung to his coat.

All at once he stopped.

"I’ve got to get to the bottom of all this affair," he said abruptly.
"I believe she’s as straight as they make ’em; I’d wager my soul on
it—but I’ve got to know!"

And, boarding a surface car, he returned to Rita Kildair’s.

                              *CHAPTER V*

He had arrived at the studio building and entered the lower vestibule
before he was aware of the lateness of the hour.  He pulled out his
watch, and found that it was almost midnight.

"Good heavens!" he said, taking a step back. "I quite forgot the time."
He started to go, then turned to the switchboard.  "Could I telephone up
to Mrs. Kildair’s apartment?"

"Go right up, Mr. Beecher," said the hallboy, rising.

"Are you certain?" he said doubtfully.

"Sure.  Orders is to send up any one who calls."

A little surprised, he entered the elevator.  At that moment a ring
sounded, and on the indicator the figure 4 dropped.

"That’s her floor now," said the boy, starting up the elevator.

At the fourth he came face to face with Garraboy, who saw him with a
start of surprise and a sudden look of malice.  The two nodded, without
cordiality.

"Hello," said Garraboy, looking at him with a curious fixity which he
remembered after.  "What are you doing here?"

"What are you?" said Beecher abruptly.

"Some valuable information to volunteer?" persisted the other, with a
deliberate accent of irony.

"Perhaps."

"Indeed?  Then you have come to assist in restoring the ring," said
Garraboy in a low voice; and on his young, wrinkled face was a faint
glimmer of a smile.

"Perhaps," said Beecher, flushing angrily.  "Does that annoy you?"

"Not in the least," said Garraboy drily.  "On the contrary, I am
interested—exceedingly so."  He lifted his hat slightly and stepped into
the elevator.

"Now, what in the devil has he got in his mind?" thought Beecher
angrily.  "And what was his idea in coming back?  Nice look he gave me.
Thought he had such an all-fired important engagement that he had to
hurry away!"

He tried the door absent-mindedly, and found it locked.  A long moment
after he had pressed a second time upon the bell, the door was opened by
Rita Kildair herself, who drew back in evident astonishment.

"You?" she said, frowning.

"I was going to telephone," he said, a little embarrassed; "but they
told me downstairs to come up."

"Quite right."

"Look here, Rita," he said, with a sudden feeling of intuition.  "I know
you probably think I’m a prime representative of the pinhead family, but
I’m awfully broken up by what happened.  Can’t I help out some way?"

[Illustration: "’Look here, Rita.  Can’t I help you out some way?’"]

"Is that why you’ve come?" she said slowly.

"Of course," he said, meeting her scrutiny with a puzzled glance.

She considered a moment and then said abruptly:

"Go in and sit down.  I’m busy at the telephone. I’ll be back in a
moment."

The studio was still blazing with the electric chandeliers, the
dining-table still crowded with the untouched dinner, with that sense of
desolation and fatigue which the aftermath of a banquet presents.
Lighted up as it was, the studio had none of the mystery that
charmed—rather, something of the cruel garishness of the white sun.

He moved about aimlessly, arms crossed, his imagination repeopling the
room with the strongly accentuated personalities who had gathered there
an hour before, saying to himself over and over:

"Now, why the deuce did Garraboy come back?"

He approached the table and abstractedly took an almond and began
munching it.  Then, perceiving the chafing-dish, reached over, with a
smile, and lifted the cover.  But, at the moment his hand was
outstretched, his eyes, obeying some mysterious instinct, rose to a long
Venetian mirror opposite.  In the clear reflection that showed the
balcony of the second floor, he distinctly beheld the head of a woman
protruding a little beyond the curtain.

"What the deuce!" he said, covering the chafing-dish with a bang.  "It
can’t be Rita—who then?"

All at once he comprehended.  If the ring had not been found in the
search, it was because it had been concealed in the room, and the woman
in the balcony was a detective set to watch the trap—if the real thief
had the daring to return.

At this moment Rita Kildair entered from the bedroom.

"Good heavens, Rita!" he said directly.  "You don’t mean to say you
suspect me?"

"What do you mean?" she said, stopping short, her glance instinctively
seeking the balcony.

"I mean you’ve stuck a detective up there to see what I do the moment I
come into the studio.  Good heavens! what do you think I came for?"

"My dear Teddy," she said, frowning at the stupidity of her spy, "is
there any one who can’t be suspected?  Do you blame me?"

"No, I suppose not," he blurted out.  "Only, it gives a fellow a deuced
creepy feeling to have a couple of eyes looking through him from behind
the curtain.  I say, why don’t you search the place? The ring must be
here!"

"That is possible, of course," she said thoughtfully, her lip between
her little teeth, an impulsive movement when she was plunged in thought.

"Or are you waiting for the thief to come back here and try to recover
it?  Of course, that’s the plan."

"There’s one thing," she said, with a quick, imperative gesture, looking
at him closely, "I want you to remember.  There is nothing public to be
known.  Whatever is done must be done quietly."

"Oh, of course," he said hastily.  "I say, Rita, let me try to work this
out with you—give me your confidence!  I wish you would."

She considered a moment, as though puzzled by his offer.

"I don’t think it will ever be found," she said, shaking her head and
looking at him.

"But you suspect some one," he persisted.

She hesitated a moment, and then shook her head.

"No."

The second’s delay convinced him.

"Man or woman?"

"It is only a speculation," she answered slowly, "but I believe it was a
woman."

"Both times?"

"Both times."

He took a turn, moodily disturbed, and came back.

"Tell me this, Rita," he said.  "Who else came back here tonight?"

"Garraboy," she answered slowly, "and—Mrs. Cheever."

"Mrs. Cheever!" he exclaimed, astonished. "Why, she was on the verge of
prostration."

Mrs. Kildair smiled a thin, elusive smile, and was about to reply when
there came a ring at the door.

Instantly her manner changed.  Placing her finger on her lips, at the
same time sending him a glance that commanded the utmost silence, she
took his hand and led him softly from the studio, through her bedroom
into the further obscurity of the dining-room, which was lit only by the
weak reflection which filtered through from the hall.

"Sit here, and not a sound," she said, placing her lips so close to his
ear that he felt the warm contact of her cheek.  She gave him a slight
pressure of her fingers, and went back into the studio by way of her
bedroom, closing both doors.

Beecher, left in the darkness, strained every nerve to catch the sound
that would reveal the identity of the new arrival.  It seemed to him
that he heard the sound of another woman’s voice, and then presently, as
a shadow came to him through the twilight of the hall, he heard Mrs.
Kildair saying:

"—to telephone.  Be back in a moment."

The next instant she was at his side, pressing his hand to prevent the
whisper that was on his lips. They sat thus side by side for what seemed
a full five minutes before she rose and silently passed into the hall
again.  Beecher remained in complete bewilderment, unable to detect the
slightest sound of the conversation that was taking place.  That the
same test was being applied to the new-comer which he himself had
detected, he understood; but which one of the many guests it might be,
he could not discover.

At the end of an interminable interval, he heard a few faint sounds, the
closing of the outer door, and presently the rustle of Mrs. Kildair’s
approach.

"Come now," she said, waiting for him in the hall.

"Who came back then?" he asked eagerly.

She shook her head.

"I can not tell you—at least, not now.  There are reasons why it would
not be quite fair," she said. Then, seeing his irritation, she tapped
him on the arm and added: "Listen, Teddy.  It is too late to talk over
things.  Run away now.  Come in tomorrow at five."

"I want to help, you know," he said, taking her hand, guiltily conscious
of the smile with which she examined him—a smile that seemed to convict
him of treason.  For the moment, however, the memory of the younger
woman was dimmed.  He was conscious only of the indefinite lure of
mystery which Rita Kildair always exerted over his curiosity the moment
they were alone.

"Look here, Rita," he said impulsively, "I should think, in a case like
this, you’d want all the help you can get!"

Her smile disappeared.  She looked at him a moment with almost a
masculine penetration, and then, her smile returning, said quietly:

"It’s curious, but each person who came back here tonight came back just
to—help."

Not only her words, but her manner, struck him with a sense of
discomfort.

"Come in tomorrow," she said, pushing him gently toward the door.  She
made a quick little motion with her fingers, looked at him with a
penetrating seriousness, and disappeared, leaving him thoroughly
confused and irritable.

"Why, she acts as though she suspected me!" he said, remembering her
continual examination.  "Who the deuce came back then?  What’s Garraboy
in all this?  Does he suspect me, too, and has he been saying anything
to Rita?  What is terrible in such a situation is that any one may be
suspected."  Suddenly he perceived that he had repeated the very words
that Nan Charters had used in the coupé.

"By George, what a rotten mess!  I feel like a pickpocket already," he
said, with a sudden cold horror in his back.  "Why shouldn’t Rita
suspect me as well as any one else?  This is no pleasure party; this is
serious—dead serious.  I’ve got to work it out!"

                              *CHAPTER VI*

Teddy Beecher was a fair representative of the second generation.  He
still retained the rugged democracy of the father who had fought his way
to a moderate fortune in the troubled regions of the coal-fields.  To
him a man was a man, whatever the quality of his coat.  Left an orphan
at fourteen, he had passed victoriously through boarding-school and
college without seriously troubling the peace of mind of those who were
competing for scholarship honors.  He was liked because he liked every
one, not with a politic assumption, but from a veritable enjoyment of
life and men.

After graduation, he had gone West on a ranch with several of his
classmates, for the pure love of adventure and the delights of the great
open spaces. Having thus begun his education, he continued it by
knocking about the world, with periodic excursions in search of big
game.  He had known a great many types of men without knowing them in
the least, and he appealed to all women without being deeply
impressionable to their influence.  His philosophy of life was very well
summed up in a remark he had made on his return to New York—that he
would probably go to work if he couldn’t find anything better to do.

When he awoke the day after Rita Kildair’s party, it was with the clear
and dispassionate vision of the morning.  The dramatic occurrences of
the night before flashed instantly into his consciousness, arousing all
the energy of his young curiosity.  He recalled the promise to solve the
mystery he had made in a moment of enthusiasm, and with a renewed zest
began to consider how he should prove himself.

Several things immediately rose up to perplex him in the strange and
dramatic climaxes at which he had assisted—the twisted undercurrents of
which he was still completely ignorant.  Why had Garraboy, and then Rita
Kildair, adopted an attitude of suspicion toward him when he had
returned?  For Garraboy’s hostility he found a ready answer in the
mutual antagonism that had risen from the first exchange of glances; but
the reception he had received at the hands of Mrs. Kildair thoroughly
mystified him.

"Of course, if the ring wasn’t found in the search," he said, getting
out of bed and ringing for his man, "it’s got to be in the studio; of
course—no way around that.  Whoever took it the second time didn’t get
much opportunity to hide it, either—unless it was hidden after the
candle was lit; there was a chance then—every one was stumbling around.
By Jove!  I believe that’s how it was done.  But then, why the deuce
should more than one person return?"

He stopped and suddenly remembered his own return.

"That’s so; a man might come back to offer help. But why a woman?  And
who the deuce came back after I did—Miss Lille or Mrs. Bloodgood?"

At this moment the door opened on Charles, whom he had inherited with
one half of the luxurious apartment from Freddie Duyckerman, who had
gone to England for the hunting season.

"Your bath is ready, sir," he said, standing with that perfectly vacuous
expression which had been carefully trained to express neither joy,
grief, hilarity, nor the natural surprise which he might have
experienced at beholding his master, brush in hand, standing
absent-mindedly before a great copper platter that was near the window.

"Telephone up to the stables; I’ll take Judy to-day," said Beecher,
passing into the bathroom.

A touch of the cold shower set his nerves to tingling and sent his mind
to recalling pleasantly the pretty faces of the evening before, after
the manner of young gentlemen of leisure with a proper share of vanity.
Two figures rose immediately—Rita Kildair and Nan Charters.  He
remembered them both without excitement, but with different emotions.

"By George, Rita’s a thoroughbred," he said. "She has them all
beat—mysterious as a sphinx. Prettiest sight in the world, seeing her
manipulate a crowd.  Jove, but she has nerve!"  Then he reflected a
little guiltily that he had rather deserted her for other shrines, and
he resolved enthusiastically to make amends by throwing himself, heart
and soul, into the recovery of the ring.

"By George, it’s something to have the confidence of a woman like that!"
he exclaimed, sublimely fatuous.  "That old mammoth of a Slade would
give ten years of his life, I’ll bet, to stand where I do with her."

Then he remembered Nan Charters, with a little movement of impatience at
the thought of his sentimentality.

"What the deuce got into me last night?" he said, displeased with
himself.  "I acted like a school-boy. I suppose she thinks she’s got me
on her scalp-belt—easy as a stage-door Johnny.  What the deuce got me
wabbling so?  These actresses are full of tricky stuff."

He resolved that he would show her his complete indifference by not
calling for at least a week, maybe two, and concluded, with profound
penetration:

"Good game.  She’ll remember how I started in, and wonder what changed
me.  That’s it—keep ’em guessing."

He went into the dining-room, where the coffee was boiling in the
percolator, and sat down, after assuring himself by a trip to the
opposite bedroom that Bo Lynch was still sleeping the profound sleep of
the unjust..

But hardly had he begun on the iced grape-fruit when a lank figure in
peppermint pajamas appeared at the doorway, brushing from his
sleep-laden eyes the long wisps of hair which, carefully treasured to
conceal the bare upper regions, now hung about his sharp, supercilious
nose.

"Why the devil don’t you breakfast with a chap?" he said, emerging.

"Hello, Bo," said Beecher pleasantly.  "Up till four or five, training
for your polo match this afternoon?"

"Well, Fontaine was there; we call it pairing off."

"Auction?"

"Yes, damn it.  I cut that little wild ass of a Plunket six times
running.  He’d gamble away his grandmother on a couple of aces.  I say,
Teddy," he continued, with a little more animation, emptying a bottle of
mineral water which Charles, knowing what might be termed the regularity
of his habits, had set out for him, "do you ever try a flier in the
market?"

"I have been such a fool."

"Look here; I’ve got a sure thing.  Eddie Fontaine gave it to us last
night—in dead secrecy, of course.  Worried it from the old man, and you
know old man Fontaine is the real thing.  The whole Atlantic Trust
business was patched up at a conference yesterday afternoon.  Majendie’s
to get all the backing he needs."

"Well, what of that?"

"Why, you ignoramus, that means the banks have let up on the trust
companies and are coming to the support of the market.  Everything’s
’way down below where it ought to be.  Stocks’ll go up twenty points in
two weeks.  I’ve taken another thousand of Northern Pacific myself.
Better get in on it."

"Thanks; I’ll circulate my money on a horse-race—something I know about.
By the way, Majendie was there last night."

"He was, was he?" said Lynch, with more animation. "How did he seem?"

"Cool as a cucumber," said Beecher, who, however, was surprised to find
how little he remembered of any one else’s conduct.  "I was in at one of
Mrs. Kildair’s affairs.  By the way, Nan Charters was there."

"Oh, was she?" said Lynch sleepily, hesitating between the call of his
bedroom and the cooling aspect of the waiting grape-fruit.

"Know anything about her?" asked Beecher, perceiving he would gain
nothing by indirection.

"Never met her," said Lynch.  "Charlie Lorraine was crazy about her a
couple of years ago.  We thought he was going to marry her.  I believe
they were engaged, or had an understanding."

"No scandal?"

"Oh, she’s perfectly straight.  Charlie’s a good proposition, but that
didn’t seem to hurry her any. She has a lot of ’em buzzing after her."

"I say, Bo," said Beecher suddenly, "did you ever run up against a
fellow called Garraboy?"

"What’s he do?"

"He’s a broker."

Lynch reflected, yawning behind his hand.  His occupation in life was
supposed to be stocks and bonds, according to the city register.

"Nope, never heard of the fellow."

"Who’d know at the club?"

"Ask Jack Lindabury or Tom Bovee.  Well, ta-ta; I’m going to sleep out a
bit for the match.  Tell Charles to default me to the manicure and the
scalpist," said Lynch, who termed thus the prim, middle-aged person who
had guaranteed to preserve his numbered hairs.  "By the way, how about a
little bet on the match?  I’ll give you six to five."

"Done for fifty," said Beecher obligingly.

"See you at luncheon," said Lynch, who was soon heard plunging heavily
into bed.

Beecher belonged, without yet being one of them, to that set who live
what in England is called a gentleman’s life—racing, hunting, playing
polo, seeking the sensations of big game or big fish, rather courting
danger, drinking hard as a matter of pride, on the theory of the
survival of the fittest, consuming the night in battles of cunning and
physical endurance at the card-table.  Beecher had returned to this
society partly because most of his friends "belonged," partly because,
being an idler himself, he liked their busy days dedicated to sensation,
and their curious standards of what was and what was not permitted to be
done.  He had not as yet plunged into the whirl, being more curiously
interested in the various sides of New York life that opened before him.
He preserved, in the midst of the nervous American excess of his
companion, a certain old-world moderation. He entered their card games
in a desultory way for an hour or two at a time, but without that
engulfing, brutal passion for mastery which kept Bo Lynch at the
card-tables until dawn.  When he joined a group at the bar, he drank
with them as long as he wished and no longer—a difficult matter where a
withdrawal usually was greeted with taunts; but there was about Beecher,
young as he was, an atmosphere of authority which came from having
proved himself among men the world over.

He was rising from the table when the telephone rang, and, mindful of
his afternoon engagement with Rita Kildair, he refused an invitation to
join a party to the polo match.  A call from Bruce Gunther urged him to
be one of a gay party of six, bent on a lark for the evening.

He enjoyed a furious gallop in the park, dressed, and swung alertly up
the Avenue to his club for luncheon.

There, all the talk was of the stock market which had gone up several
points on the morning’s tradings.  Bo Lynch and Eddie Fontaine
buttonholed him and besought him to avail himself of the opportunity: it
was the chance of a lifetime, the crisis was over, stocks simply had to
go up.  The friends of Majendie, who was one of the directors of the
club, were relieved and jubilant.  He had weathered the crisis; there
was nothing more to fear.  The story which was told from lip to lip as
being direct from headquarters was, that at the meeting on the afternoon
before, Fontaine had declared, with his fist on the table, that he would
never be a party to any movement that would jeopardize the future of his
lifelong friend, Bernard Majendie.  Some who still clung to the short
interest even added, with an air of knowing more than they could tell,
that the attack would now be concentrated on the Associated Trust with
the intention of making an example of John Slade, a Western intruder who
was protected by no ties of association and friendship.

Beecher, true to his habits of caution, laughingly refused all offers to
double his fortune.  Bruce Gunther drew him aside, outlining his program
for the evening.

The thought of Nan Charters came into Beecher’s mind, and he wondered
curiously if she would be there.

"I say, Bruce, what’s all this hip-hurrah?" he asked as Gunther led him
to the dining-room and they took seats at the long mahogany table.  "Has
Majendie really pulled through?  Is the story true about Fontaine?
Would you go into the market?"

"They tell it on Fontaine now, do they?" said Gunther, with a short
laugh.  "It started with my old man, but I guess he was too tough a
weight to carry.  Ted, I don’t know any more than you, but I know
this—keep out."

"My opinion," said Beecher, nodding to a new arrival.

Bruce Gunther was his closest friend—a chum from boarding-school days.
He was a stocky, rather ugly type, direct to the point of rudeness, with
more than a trace of his father’s power.  Gunther Senior had, from a
long and merciless examination of men, come to regard youth as a natural
malady, an ebullition of heated blood to be lived down before a man was
fit for great opportunities and the vision of great affairs.  When young
Gunther was graduated, he called him to his desk, wrote him out a check,
and told him to take five years, sow his oats, and be through with it—at
the end of which time his career would begin at the bottom of the great
banking offices of Gunther & Company, New York, London, and Paris.
Young Gunther was now completing the last year of his contract with a
compressed savageness that would have wrecked any but the strongest
constitution.  At heart he awaited the end of his holiday with a feeling
of relief and enthusiasm. He was quite unspoiled, and a terror to
sycophants and boot-lickers.  It was these sturdy, passionate qualities
of energy and directness in him that had attracted Beecher.

"Bruce, I’m on a very curious chase," he said, pushing back from the
table, "and I want your help. It’s too long and too confidential to tell
you now. But two things I wish you would do for me: find out all you can
quietly about two men—Enos Bloodgood and a fellow called Garraboy, a
broker."

"Garraboy—the brother-in-law?" said Gunther instantly.  They left the
table and went for cigars and coffee to the first room, to a window that
gave on the Avenue.  "I know him.  He was blackballed here a couple of
years ago.  There were some ugly stories about him; I’ll look ’em up.
Bloodgood’s another matter.  I have heard rumors he was hard hit by the
market.  It’s easy enough; I know several men I can call up.  Can’t you
tell me the whole thing now?"

When Beecher had finished, Gunther remained a long moment immersed in
reflection.

"By the Lord Harry, that is a problem," he said, suddenly waking up.
"The dickens of a tangle! What the deuce was Slade doing there?"  He
relapsed into silence again, and as suddenly said decisively: "You’re
wrong on one point, Ted.  It’s not Garraboy or Bloodgood we ought to
suspect first; it’s Cheever—the Cheevers."

"How the deuce are we going about it?" said Beecher.

"I suppose Mrs. Kildair wants the whole thing kept quiet," said Gunther,
rapping absent-mindedly on the arm of his chair.

"Naturally; besides, I promised."

"Of course.  Well, we’ll begin in a practical fashion.  You don’t mind
spending a little money, do you?"

"I expect to."

Gunther rose and went to the telephone booths, where he remained for
some time.

"Half-past six in my rooms, Ted," he said, returning.  "I’ll put you up
against the most interesting character in the United States—a real
detective.  Dress and come over."

"But the girls," objected Beecher, remembering their engagement.

"The girls can go hang," said Gunther, shrugging his shoulders.  "They
can always wait half an hour. This is something real."

At five o’clock Beecher called on Mrs. Kildair, and found her out, to
his considerable vexation.  The bell-boy gave him a little note, which
he opened and read:

DEAR TEDDY:

Forgive my breaking my engagement.  All sorts of sudden and exciting
things have crowded in on me to-day. Come to-morrow for luncheon.

RITA.

P.S. Remember—nothing public about last night!

The prospect of a tête-à-tête with Mrs. Kildair appeased him somewhat,
but his anticipations for the afternoon were sorely disappointed, and he
started aimlessly back, with a feeling that a great hole had been made
in the day.  As he reached the corner, a red automobile cut in close to
the curb, causing him to step hastily back.  Inside he recognized Slade.
He watched the red machine come to a stop before Mrs. Kildair’s and then
whirl away, after depositing the massive figure of its owner.  Beecher,
with a little wounded vanity, lingered a moment, hoping to see him
reappear; but, as the sidewalk continued empty, he was forced to
conclude that he had come by appointment.

"She might at least have seen me," he said angrily.  "What the deuce has
she got to see Slade for?"

All at once he perceived that his steps had led him in the general
direction of the quarter in which Nan Charters resided, and, as he had
come to make an impression on one woman, he soon began to consider
transferring his attack on another.  Only, he remembered that he had
determined to treat Miss Charters with indifference, to correct any
erroneous ideas that she might have formed from his previous impulsive
conduct.

"That’s so," he said, angry now at himself, at her, and at a condition
of affairs that left him with an hour of idleness on his hands.  "If I
call now, she’ll think I’m hot on the trail.  I could stop, though, and
inquire about her health," he thought, hesitating; "that would seem
natural, after last night."

But he rejected this as a subterfuge, and continued his slow, uneven
progress down Seventh Avenue, which he had selected at random in search
of a little oddity and interest; and gradually he recognized that the
vexation he felt was, in reality, not at being unable to find an excuse
for calling on Miss Charters, but the keen sense of disappointment he
had in missing an intimate hour with Rita.

It was essentially the woman of the world in her that fascinated him,
the woman of mysterious experience, of sure knowledge and complete
command of situations.  He wished to increase the intimacy of his
position, because to be favored by her meant something—something that
awoke his masculine sense of supremacy and fed his vanity.  Determined
on a long bachelorhood that would open to him all sorts and conditions
of society and adventurous experiences, he had determined likewise to
avoid the dangerous field of young girls of his own set and to exercise
his curiosity with women of the world—older women, professional women,
with whom an impulsive infatuation brought no risks, but something to be
taken at value, a mood that was charming because it would pass.

All at once an idea came to him that reconciled his easily satisfied
conscience and appeared sublimely politic.  He would drop in on Nan
Charters, just to show his indifference.

"I’ll stay fifteen minutes—be quite formal and a little bored," he said,
chuckling.

And he went without too much enthusiasm toward his destination, thinking
of Rita Kildair and planning in his imaginative mind a series of
confidential conversations for the tête-à-tête on the morrow.

"To see Miss Charters," he said, giving his card to the boy in the
elevator, who turned it over doubtfully, hesitated, and disappeared like
a float in an opera, mounting heavenward.

Beecher ceased to think of Rita Kildair, and prepared himself, smiling
astutely, for his approaching scene with the young actress whom he
intended properly to discipline for her effrontery in imagining that
he—Edward T. Beecher—had entertained for a moment any other than a
polite social interest.  Miss Charters excused herself—she was lying
down and dining out.

He cast a furious look at the telephone-booth, by means of which she
might personally have assured him of her great regret, and stalked out
in a worse temper than ever—Rita Kildair, Nan Charters, all the women in
the world consigned to perdition.

"Confound them all!" he said, brandishing his cane.  "What a lot of time
a man wastes over them. She might have telephoned me.  They only exist
in this world to distract us from what we ought to do. I wonder if she
did it on purpose—just to give me an appetite.  Well, if she did—she’s
succeeded," he said ruefully.

He went to his rooms, resolved to meet her at every opportunity, to
revenge himself by showing her he could play the game more cleverly than
she could; and in his angry resolve there was very little trace of the
indifference of which he had been so confident.

                             *CHAPTER VII*

Gunther had a suite in one of the newer hotels that tower over the
eastern entrance to the park.  When Beecher arrived, a quiet, powerfully
built man was standing in front of the fireplace, smoking with
enjoyment.  Beecher recognized immediately Cyrus McKenna, formerly of
the United States Secret Service, founder of the great detective agency
that bore his name.

"Ted, shake hands with my good friend Mr. McKenna," said Gunther,
appearing in the doorway with a refractory collar in his grasp.
"McKenna, shake hands with Mr. Beecher.  Fire away, Ted. I’ll be out in
a second."

"Glad to know you," said McKenna, grasping his hand.

Beecher was aware of the quick, estimating scrutiny and a sense of
unusual physical vitality. But he was disappointed in his first glance
at this man whose investigations had been the terror of corrupt
politicians and unscrupulous agitators. McKenna was physically the ideal
detective, in that not a feature possessed a trace of oddity which could
betray him to the public, in which he thus mingled without fear of
recognition.  He was neither short nor tall, neither thin nor unusually
heavy.  His head was round, well-spaced, and evenly formed, without
affectation of mystery or astuteness, lit up by a jovial good humor when
animated, and quite blank and indecipherable when in repose.  The eyes
alone, like the eyes of a painter or a sculptor seeking tones or
modelings that escape the common glance, were noticeable for a certain