CHAPTER III.

MR. DUMPHY MEETS AN OLD FRIEND.

Peter Dumphy was true to his client. A few days after he had returned to San Francisco he dispatched a note to Victor, asking an interview. He had reasoned that, although Victor was vanquished and helpless regarding the late discovery at One Horse Gulch, yet his complicity with Mrs. Conroy's earlier deceit might make it advisable that his recollection of that event should be effaced. He was waiting a reply when a card was brought to him by a clerk. Mr. Dumphy glanced at it impatiently, and read the name of "Arthur Poinsett." Autocrat as Dumphy was in his own counting house and business circle, the name was one of such recognised power in California that he could not ignore its claims to his attention. More than that, it represented a certain respectability and social elevation which Dumphy, with all his scepticism and democratic assertion, could not with characteristic shrewdness afford to undervalue. He said, "Show him in," without lifting his head from the papers that lay upon his desk.

The door opened again to an elegant-looking young man, who lounged carelessly into the awful presence without any of that awe with which the habitual business visitors approached Peter Dumphy. Indeed, it was possible that never before had Mr. Dumphy's door opened to one who was less affected by the great capitalist's reputation. Nevertheless, with the natural ease of good breeding, after depositing his hat on the table, he walked quietly to the fireplace, and stood with his back toward it with courteous, but perhaps too indifferent patience. Mr. Dumphy was at last obliged to look up.

"Busy, I see," yawned Poinsett, with languid politeness. "Don't let me disturb you. I thought your man said you were disengaged. Must have made a mistake."

Mr. Dumphy was forced to lay aside his pen, and rise, inwardly protesting.

"You don't know me by my card. I have the advantage, I think," continued the young man with a smile, "even in the mere memory of faces. The last time I saw you was--let me see--five years ago. Yes! you were chewing a scrap of buffalo hide to keep yourself from starving."

"Philip Ashley!" said Mr. Dumphy in a low voice, looking hastily around, and drawing nearer the stranger.

"Precisely," returned Poinsett somewhat impatiently, raising his own voice. "That was my _nom de guerre_. But Dumphy seems to have been your real name after all."

If Dumphy had conceived any idea of embarrassing Poinsett by the suggestion of an _alias_ in his case, he could have dismissed it after this half-contemptuous recognition of his own proper cognomen. But he had no such idea. In spite of his utmost effort he felt himself gradually falling into the same relative position--the same humble subordination he had accepted five years before. It was useless to think of his wealth, of his power, of his surroundings. Here in his own bank parlour he was submissively waiting the will and pleasure of this stranger. He made one more desperate attempt to regain his lost prestige.

"You have some business with me, eh? Poinsett!" He commenced the sentence with a dignity, and ended it with a familiarity equally inefficacious.

"Of course," said Poinsett carelessly, shifting his legs before the fire. "Shouldn't have called otherwise on a man of such affairs at such a time. You are interested, I hear, in a mine recently discovered at One Horse Gulch on the Rancho of the Blessed Innocents. One of my clients holds a grant, not yet confirmed, to the Rancho."

"Who?" said Mr. Dumphy quickly.

"I believe that is not important nor essential for you to know until we make a formal claim," returned Arthur quietly, "but I don't mind satisfying your curiosity. It's Miss Dolores Salvatierra."

Mr. Dumphy felt relieved, and began with gathering courage and brusqueness, "That don't affect"----

"Your mining claim; not in the least," interrupted Arthur quietly, "I am not here to press or urge any rights that we may have. We may not even submit the grant for patent. But my client would like to know something of the present tenants, or, if you will, owners. You represent them, I think? A man and wife. The woman appears first as a spinster, assuming to be a Miss Grace Conroy, to whom an alleged transfer of an alleged grant was given. She next appears as the wife of one Gabriel Conroy, who is, I believe, an alleged brother of the alleged Miss Grace Conroy. You'll admit, I think, it's a pretty mixed business, and would make a pretty bad showing in court. But this adjudicature we are not yet prepared to demand. What we want to know is this--and I came to you, Dumphy, as the man most able to tell us. Is the sister or the brother real--or are they both impostors? Is there a legal marriage? Of course _your_ legal interest is not jeopardised in any event."

Mr. Dumphy partly regained his audacity.

"_You_ ought to know--_you_ ran away with the real Grace Conroy," he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Did I? Then this is not she, if I understand you. Thanks! And the brother"----

"Is Gabriel Conroy, if I know the man," said Dumphy shortly, feeling that he had been entrapped into a tacit admission. "But why don't you satisfy yourself?"

"You have been good enough to render it unnecessary," said Arthur, with a smile. "I do not doubt your word. I am, I trust, too much of a lawyer to doubt the witness I myself have summoned. But who is this woman?"

"The widow of Dr. Devarges."

"The _real_ thing?"

"Yes, unless Grace Conroy should lay claim to that title and privilege. The old man seems to have been pretty much divided in his property and affections."

The shaft did not apparently reach Arthur, for whom it was probably intended. He only said, "Have you legal evidence that she _is_ the widow? If it were a fact, and a case of ill-treatment or hardship, why it might abate the claim of my client, who is a rich woman, and whose sympathies are of course in favour of the real brother and real sister. By the way, there is another sister, isn't there?"

"Yes, a mere child."

"That's all. Thank you. I sha'n't trespass further upon your time. Good-day."

He had taken up his hat and was moving toward the door. Mr. Dumphy, who felt that whatever might have been Poinsett's motives in this interview, he, Dumphy, had certainly gained nothing, determined to retrieve himself, if possible, by a stroke of audacity.

"One moment," he said, as Poinsett was carefully settling his hat over his curls. "You know whether this girl is living or not. What has become of her?"

"But I don't," returned Poinsett calmly, "or I shouldn't come to _you_."

There was something about Poinsett's manner that prevented Dumphy from putting him in the category of "all men," that both in his haste and his deliberation Mr. Dumphy was apt to say "were liars."

"When and where did you see her last?" he asked less curtly.

"I left her at a hunter's cabin near the North Fork while I went back for help. I was too late. A relief party from the valley had already discovered the other dead. When I returned for Grace she was gone--possibly with the relief party. I always supposed it was the expedition that succoured you."

There was a pause, in which these two scamps looked at each other. It will be remembered that both had deceived the relief party in reference to their connexions with the unfortunate dead. Neither believed, however, that the other was aware of the fact. But the inferior scamp was afraid to ask another question that might disclose his own falsehood; and the question which might have been an embarrassing one to Arthur, and have changed his attitude toward Dumphy, remained unasked. Not knowing the reason of Dumphy's hesitation, Arthur was satisfied of his ignorance, and was still left the master. He nodded carelessly to Dumphy and withdrew.

As he left the room he brushed against a short, thick-set man, who was entering at the same moment. Some instinct of mutual repulsion caused the two men to look at each other. Poinsett beheld a sallow face, that, in spite of its belonging to a square figure, seemed to have a consumptive look; a face whose jaw was narrow and whose lips were always half-parted over white, large, and protruding teeth; a mouth that apparently was always breathless--a mouth that Mr. Poinsett remembered as the distinguishing and unpleasant feature of some one vaguely known to him professionally. As the mouth gasped and parted further in recognition, Poinsett nodded carelessly in return, and attributing his repulsion to that extraordinary feature thought no more about it.

Not so the new-comer. He glanced suspiciously after Arthur and then at Mr. Dumphy. The latter, who had recovered his presence of mind and his old audacity, turned them instantly upon him.

"Well! What have you got to propose?" he said, with his usual curt formula.

"It is you have something to say; you sent for _me_," said his visitor.

"Yes. You left me to find out that there was another grant to that mine. What does all this mean, Ramirez?"

Victor raised his eyes and yellow fringes to the ceiling, and said, with a shrug--

"_Quien sabe?_ there are grants and grants!"

"So it seems. But I suppose you know that we have a title now better than any grant--a mineral discovery."

Victor bowed and answered with his teeth, "_We_, eh?"

"Yes, I am getting up a company for her husband."

"Her husband--good!"

Dumphy looked at his accomplice keenly. There was something in Victor's manner that was vaguely suspicious. Dumphy, who was one of those men to whose courage the habit of success in all things was essential, had been a little shaken by his signal defeat in his interview with Poinsett, and now became irritable.

"Yes--her husband. What have you got to propose about it, eh? Nothing? Well, look here, I sent for you to say that as everything now is legal and square, you might as well dry up in regard to her former relations or your first scheme. You sabe?" Dumphy became slangy as he lost his self-control. "You are to know nothing about Miss Grace Conroy."

"And there is no more any sister, eh--only a wife?"

"Exactly."

"So."

"You will of course get something for these preliminary steps of yours, although you understand they have been useless, and that your claim is virtually dead. You are, in fact, in no way connected with her present success. Unless--unless," added Dumphy, with a gratuitous malice that defeat had engendered, "unless you expect something for having been the means of making a match between her and Gabriel."

Victor turned a little more yellow in the thin line over his teeth. "Ha! ha! good--a joke," he laughed. "No, I make no charge to you for that; not even to you. No--ha! ha!" At the same moment had Mr. Dumphy known what was passing in his mind he would have probably moved a little nearer the door of his counting-room.

"There's nothing we can pay you for but silence. We may as well understand each other regarding that. That's your interest; it's ours only so far as Mrs. Conroy's social standing is concerned, for I warn you that exposure might seriously compromise you in a business way, while it would not hurt us. I could get the value of Gabriel's claim to the mine advanced to-morrow, if the whole story were known to-night. If you remember, the only evidence of a previous discovery exists in a paper in our possession. Perhaps we pay you for that. Consider it so, if you like. Consider also that any attempt to get hold of it legally or otherwise would end in its destruction. Well, what do you say? All right. When the stock is issued I'll write you a cheque: or perhaps you'd take a share of stock?"

"I would prefer the money," said Victor, with a peculiar laugh.

Dumphy affected to take no notice of the sarcasm. "Your head is level, Victor," he said, returning to his papers. "Don't meddle with stocks. Good day!"

Victor moved toward the door. "By the way, Victor," said Dumphy, looking up, calmly, "if you know the owner of this lately discovered grant, you might intimate that any litigation wouldn't pay. That's what I told their counsel a moment ago."

"Poinsett?" asked Victor, pausing, with his hand on the door.

"Yes! But as he also happens to be Philip Ashley--the chap who ran off with Grace Conroy, you had better go and see him. Perhaps he can help you better than I. Good day."

And, turning from the petrified Victor, Mr. Dumphy, conscious that he had fully regained his prestige, rang his bell to admit the next visitor.