Chapter 4

But Harry's nervousness had left him, now that Purdie was within his reach. He returned the glance indifferently. He stood close to the major--his hand on his shoulder. The major, with his bland blue eyes twinkling from Clara to Flora, seemed the only man ready to devote himself to the service of the ladies.

"And what's the news from the front?" said Clara gaily. Kerr gave her a rapid glance; but the major blinked as if the allusion had got by him.

"I mean the mystery--the Chatworth ring," she explained. However lightly and sweetly Clara said it, it was a little brazen to fling such a question at poor Purdie, whose responsibility the ring had been.

He received it amicably enough, but conclusively. "No news whatever, my dear Mrs. Britton."

She smiled. "We're all rather interested in the mystery. Flora has made a dozen romances about it."

"Oh, yes, yes," said the major indulgently. "It will do for young ladies to make romances about. It'll be a two days' wonder, and then you'll suddenly find out it's something very tame indeed."

"Why, have they fixed the suspicion?" said Clara.

There was a restless movement from Kerr.

"No, no, nothing of that sort," said the major quickly.

Harry passed his hand through his arm. "May I see you for five minutes, Major?"

The excellent major looked harassed.

"Suppose we all step up to the house," he suggested. "Why, you're not going, man?" he objected, for Kerr had fallen back a step, and, with lifted hat and balanced cane, was signaling his farewells.

"Do let us go up to the house," said Clara. "And Mrs. Purdie, won't you drive up with me? Flora wants to walk."

Flora stood up. She had a confused impression that she had expressed no such desire, and that there was room for three in the landau; but the mental shove that Clara had administered gave her an impetus that carried her out of the carriage before she realized what she was about. Some one had offered a hand to help her, and when she was on the ground she saw it was Kerr, who had come back and was standing beside her. He was smiling quizzically.

"I feel rather like walking, myself," he said. "Do you want a companion?"

She turned to him with gratitude. "I should be glad of one," she said quickly. She was touched. She had not thought he could be so gentle.

Harry was already moving off up the board walk with the major. The carriage was turning. Kerr looked at the backs of the two women being driven away, and then at Flora. "Very good," he said, raising her parasol; "you are the deposed heir, and I am your faithful servant."

"But indeed I do want to walk," she protested, a little shy at the way he read her case.

"But you didn't think of it until she gave you the suggestion, eh?" he quizzed.

"She probably had something to say to Mrs. Purdie that--"

"My dear child," he caught her up earnestly, "don't think I'm criticizing your friend's motive. I am only saying I saw something done that was not pretty, though really, if you will forgive me--it was very funny."

Flora smiled ruefully. "It must have been--absurd. I am afraid I often am. But what else could I have done?"

He seemed to ponder a moment. "I fancy _you_ couldn't have done anything different. That's why I came back for you," he volunteered gaily.

The casual words seemed in her ears fraught with deeper meaning. Her cheeks were hot behind her thin veil. They were strolling slowly up the board walk, and for a moment she could not look at him. She could only listen to the flutter of the fringes of the parasol carried above her head. She felt herself small and stupid. She could not understand what he could see in her to come back to. Then she gave a side glance at him. She saw an unsmiling profile. The lines in his face were indeed extraordinary, but none was hard. She liked that wonderful mobility that had survived the batterings of experience.

As if he were conscious of her eyes, he looked down and smiled; but vaguely. He did not speak; and she was aware that it was at her appearance he had smiled, as if that only reached him through his preoccupation and pleased him. And since he seemed content with this vague looking, she was content to move beside him silent, a mere image of youth and--since he liked it--of prettiness, with a fleeting color and a gust of little curls blowing out under a fluttering veil.

But what was he thinking about so seriously between those smiling glances? Not her problem, she was sure.

Yet he had stayed for her when he had not meant to stay. He had been anxious to get away since he had first sighted them. Surely he must like her more than he disliked some other member of her party. Or had he simply reached forth out of his kindness to rescue her, as he might have rescued a blind kitten that he pitied? "No," he had said, "_you_ could not have done anything different."

They had almost reached the major's gate, and it was now or never to find out what he thought of her. She looked up at him suddenly, with inquiring eyes.

"Do you think I am weak?" she demanded.

The lines of his face broke up into laughter. "No," he said, "I think you are misplaced."

She knitted her brows in perplexity, but his hand was on the white picket gate, and she had to walk through it ahead of him as he set it open for her.

Of their party only the two women were in sight waiting on the diminutive veranda. Clara had a mild domestic appearance, rocking there behind the potted geraniums. All the windows were open into the little shell of a house. Trunks still stood in the hall, though the Purdies had been quartered at the Presidio for nine months. From the rear of the house came the sound of bowl and chopper, where the Chinese cook was preparing luncheon, and the major's man appeared, walking around the garden to the veranda, with a cluster of mint juleps on a copper tray.

In this easy atmosphere, how was it that the thread of restraint ran so sharply defined? Clara and Mrs. Purdie were matching crewels; and, sitting on the top step Flora instructed Kerr as to the composition of the tropical glacier they were drinking. Ten girls had probably so instructed him before, but it would do to fill up the gap. It was so, Flora thought, they were all feeling. Even the carriage, driving slowly round and round the rectangle of officers' row, added its note of restlessness.

Like a stone plumped into a pool the major and Harry reëntered this stagnation. They were brisk and buoyant. Harry, especially, had the air of a man who sees stimulating business before him. Immediately all talked at once.

"Now that we've got you here, you must all stay to luncheon," Mrs. Purdie determined.

It looked as if they were about to accept her invitation unanimously, but Harry demurred. He had to be at Montgomery Street and Jackson by one o'clock. "I hoped," he added, glancing at Flora, "that some one was to drive me--part of the way, at least."

Flora, with an unruly sense of disappointment, yet opened her lips for the courteous answer. But Clara was quicker. She rose.

"Yes," she said, "I'll drive you back with pleasure."

Harry's glimmer of annoyance was comic.

"I have to be at the house for luncheon," Clara explained to her hostess as she buttoned her glove, "but there is no reason why Flora shouldn't stay."

"Oh, I should love to," Flora murmured, not knowing whether she was more embarrassed or pleased at this high-handed dispensation which placed her where she wanted to be.

But the way Clara had leaped at her opportunity! Flora looked curiously at Harry.

He seemed uneasy at being pounced upon, but that might be merely because he was balked of a tête-à-tête with herself. For while Clara went on to the gate with their hostess he lingered a moment with Flora.

"May I see you to-night?"

"All you have to do is to come."

She gave him an oblique, upward glance, and had a pleasant sense of power in seeing his face relax and smile. She had a dance for that evening; but she thrust it aside without regret. For suppose Harry should have something to tell her about the Chatworth ring? She wondered if Clara would get it out of him first on the way home.

The four left on the veranda watched the two driving away with a sudden clearing of the social atmosphere. In vain Flora told herself it was only the relief she always felt in getting free of Clara. For in the return of the major's elderly blandishments, in Kerr's kindlier mood, as well as in her own lightened spirits, she had the proofs that, with them all, some tension had relaxed. It seemed to her as if those two, departing, were bearing away between them the very mystery of the Crew Idol.

IV

FLOWERS BY THE WAY

Flora liked this funny little dining-room with walls as frail as box-boards, low-ceiled and flooded with sun. It recalled surroundings she had known later than the mining camp, but long before the great red house. It seemed to her that she fitted here better than the Purdies. She looked across at Kerr, sitting opposite, to see if perhaps he fitted too. But he was foreign, decidedly. He kept about him still the hint of delicate masquerade that she had noticed the night before. Out of doors, alone with her, he had lost it. For a moment he had been absolutely off his guard. And even now he was more off his guard than he had been last night. She was surprised to see him so unstudied, so uncritical, so humorously anecdotal. If she and the major, between them, had dragged him into this against his will he did not show it. She rose from the table with the feeling that in an hour all three of them had become quite old friends of his, though without knowing anything further about him.

"We must do this again," Mrs. Purdie said, as they parted from her in the garden.

"Surely we will," Kerr answered her.

But Flora had the feeling that they never, never would. For him it had been a chance touching on a strange shore.

But at least they were going away together. They would walk together as far as the little car, whose terminal was the edge of the parade-ground. But just outside of the gate he stopped.

"Do you especially like board walks?" he asked.

It was an instant before she took his meaning. Then she laughed. "No. I like green paths."

He waved with his cane. "There is a path yonder, that goes over a bridge, and beyond that a hill."

"And at the top of that another car," Flora reminded him.

"Ah well," he said, "there are flowers on the way, at least." He looked at her whimsically. "There are three purple irises under the bridge. I noticed them as I came down."

She was pleased that he had noticed that for himself--pleased, too, that he had suggested the longer way.

The narrow path that they had chosen branched out upon the main path, broad and yellow, which dipped downward into the hollow. From there came the murmur of water. Green showed through the white grass of last summer. The odor of wet evergreens was pungent in their nostrils. They looked at the delicate fringed acacias, at the circle of hills showing above the low tree-tops, at the cloudless sky; but always their eyes returned to each other's faces, as if they found these the pleasantest points of the landscape. Sauntering between plantations of young eucalyptus, they came to the arched stone bridge. They leaned on the parapet, looking down at the marshy stream beneath and at the three irises Kerr had remarked, knee-deep in swamp ground.

"Now that I see them I suppose I want them," Flora remarked.

"Of course," he assented. "Then hold all these."

He put into her hands the loose bunch of syringa and rose plucked for her in the Purdies' garden, laid his hat and gloves on the parapet; then, with an eye for the better bank, walked to the end of the bridge.

She watched him descending the steep bank and issuing into the broad shallow basin of the stream's way. The sun was still high enough to fill the hollows with warm light and mellow the doubles of trees and grass in the stream. In this landscape of green and pale gold he looked black and tall and angular. The wind blew longish locks of hair across his forehead, and she had a moment's pleased and timorous reflection that he looked like Satan coming into the Garden.

He advanced from tussock to tussock. He came to the brink of the marsh. The lilies wavered what seemed but a hand's-breadth from him. But he stooped, he reached--Oh, could anything so foolish happen as that he could not get them! Or, more foolish still, plunge in to the knees! He straightened from his fruitless effort, drew back, but before she could think what he was about he had leaned forward again, flashed out his cane, and with three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown. It was deftly, delicately, astonishingly done, but it gave her a singular shock, as if she had seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them cleverly toward him in the crook of his cane, took them up daintily in his fingers, and returned to her across the shallow valley. She waited him with mixed emotions.

"Oh, how could you!" she murmured, as he put them into her hand.

He looked at her in amused astonishment. "Why, aren't they right?"

They were as clean clipped off and as perfect as if the daintiest hand had plucked them.

"Oh, yes," she admitted, "they're lovely, but I don't like the way you got them."

"I took the means I had," he objected.

"I don't think I like it."

His whole face was sparkling with interest and amusement. "Is that so? Why not?"

"You're too--too"--she cast about for the word--"too terribly resourceful!"

"I see," he said. If she had feared he would laugh, it showed how little she had gauged the limits of his laughter. He only looked at her rather more intently than he had before.

"But, my good child, resourcefulness is a very natural instinct. I am afraid you read more into it than is there. You wanted the flowers, I had a stick, and in my youth I was taught to strike clean and straight. I am really a very simple fellow."

Looking him in the eyes, which were of a clear, candid gray, she was ready to believe it. It seemed as if he had let her look for a moment through his manner, his ironies, his armor of indifference, to the frank foundations of his nature.

"But, you see, the trouble is you don't in the least look it," she argued.

"So you think because I have a long face and wild hair that I am a sinister person? My dear Miss Gilsey, the most desperate character I ever knew was five feet high and wore mutton-chop whiskers. It is an uncertain business judging men by their appearance."

She could not help smiling. "But most people do."

"I don't class you with most people."

She gave him a quick look. "You _did_ the first night."

"Possibly--but less and less ever since. You have me now in the state of mind where I don't know what you'll be at next."

This was fortunate, she thought, since she had not the least idea herself, beyond a teasing desire to find out more about him. He had shown her many fleeting phases which, put together, seemed contradictory. She could not connect this man, so mild and amusing, strolling beside her, with the alert, whetted, combative person of the night before, or even with the aloof and reticent figure on the parade-ground. His very attitude toward herself had changed from the amused scrutiny of the first night into something more indulgent, more sympathetic. There was only one attitude on his part that had remained the same--one attitude toward one person--and her mind hovered over this. On each occasion it had stirred her curiosity and, though she had not admitted it, made her uneasy. Why not probe him on the subject, now that she had him completely to herself? But as soon as silence fell between them she saw that wave of preoccupation which had submerged him during their walk from the parade-ground to the Purdies' rising over him again and floating him away from her. He no longer even looked at her. His eyes were on the ground, and it was not until they had crossed the open expanse of the shallow valley and were climbing toward the avenue of cypress that she found courage to put her question.

"Have you and Mr. Cressy met before?"

He raised his head with a jerk and looked at her a moment in astonishment.

"Do you mind if I answer your question American fashion by asking another?" he said presently. "What put it into your head that we may have met before?"

"The way you looked at each other at the club, and again this morning."

Kerr shook his head. "You are an observant young person! The fact is, I've never met him--of that I'm certain, but I believe I've seen him before, and for the life of me, I can't think where. At the moment you spoke I was trying to remember."

"Was it in this country?" Flora prompted, hopeful of fishing something definite out of this vagueness.

"No, it was years ago. It must have been in England." He looked at her inquiringly, as if he expected her to help him.

"Oh, Harry's been in England," she said quickly; and then, with a flashing thought, came to her the one scene Harry had mentioned in his English experience. Was it at a ball? The question came to her lips, but she checked it there. She remembered how Harry had stopped her the night before with a nod, with a look, from mentioning that very thing. Still she hesitated--for the temptation was strong. But no; it was only loyal to Harry to speak to him first.

"So you're not going to tell me?" Kerr remarked, and she came back to a sudden consciousness of how her face must have reflected her thought.

"No--not this time!" she said, smiling, though somewhat flushed.

He knitted his brows at her. They had reached the arched gate, and the car that would carry her home was approaching.

"Ah, then, I am afraid it will be never," he said.

Was it possible this was their last meeting? Did he mean he was going away? The questions formed in her mind, but there was no time for words. He had stopped the car with a flick of his agile cane, and handed her in as if he had handed her into a carriage; and not a word as to whether they would see each other again, though she hoped and hesitated to the last moment.

Her hand was in his for the fraction of a minute. Then the car was widening the distance between them, and she was no longer looking into his face, which had seemed at their last moment both merry and wistful, but back at his diminishing figure, showing black against the pale Presidio hills.

V

ON GUARD

He had so disturbed her, his presence had so obliterated other presences and annihilated time, that it took an encounter with Clara to remind her of her arrangement for the evening. The dance? No, she had given that up. She had promised Harry to be at home. Clara wanted to know rather austerely what she intended to do about the dinner. This was dreadful! Flora had forgotten it completely. Nothing to be done but go, and leave a message for Harry--apology, and assurance that she would be home early. She wondered if she were losing her memory.

She appeared to be changing altogether, for the dinner--a merry one--bored her. What she wanted was to get away from it as soon as possible for that interesting evening. When she had made the appointment with Harry she had been excited by the thought that he might tell her whether he had learned anything from the major that morning in the matter of the ring. But now she was more engrossed with the idea of asking about Kerr--whether Harry had really met him--if so, where; and, finally, why did not Harry want her to mention that Embassy ball?

Primed with these questions, she left immediately after coffee, arriving at her own red stone portal at ten. But coming in, all a-flutter with the idea of having kept him waiting when she had so much to ask, she found her note as she had left it. She questioned Shima. There had been no message from Mr. Cressy. Her first annoyance was lost in wonder. What could be the matter? If this was neglect on Harry's part--well, it would be the first time. But she did not believe it was neglect. He had been too eager that morning.

She went into the drawing-room--a dull-pink, stupendous chamber--knelt a moment before the flashing wood fire, then rose, and crossing to the window, looked anxiously out. She had a flight of fancy toward accidents, but in that case she would certainly have heard. The French clock on the mantel rang half-past ten. The sound had hardly died in the great spaces before she heard the fine snarl of the electric bell.

She restrained an impulse to dash into the hall, and stood impatient in the middle of the room.

He came in hastily, his lips all ready with words which hesitated at sight of her.

"Why, you're going out!" he said.

She had forgotten the cloak that still hung from her shoulders.

"No, I've just come in, and all my fine apologies for being out are wasted. How long do you think Clara'll let you stop at this hour?"

"Clara isn't here," he said.

"Well, then your time is all the shorter." She was nettled that he should be oblivious of his lapse. Their relation had never been sentimental, but he had always been punctilious.

"I'm sorry," he said, arriving at last at his apology. "I couldn't help being late. I've had a day of it." He drew his hands across his forehead, and she noticed that he was in his morning clothes and looked as rumpled and flurried as a man just from the office.

She relented. "Poor dear! You do look tired! Don't take that chair. It's more Louis Quinze than comfortable. Come into the library. And remember," she added, when Shima had set the decanter and glasses beside him, "you are to stay just twenty minutes."

He took a sip of his drink and looked at her over the top of his glass. "I may have to stay longer if you want to hear about it."

"Oh, Harry, you really know something? All the evening I've heard nothing but the wildest rumors. Some say Major Purdie couldn't speak because some one 'way up knows more than she should about it. And somebody else said it wasn't the real ring at all that was taken, only a paste copy, and that is why they're not doing more about getting it back."

"Not doing more about getting it back?" Harry laughed. "Is that the idea that generally prevails? Why, Flora--" He stopped, waited a moment while she leaned forward expectant. "Flora," he began again, "are you mum?"

She nodded, breathless.

"Not a word to Clara?"

"Oh, of course not."

"Well--" He twisted around in his chair the better to face her. "To-morrow there will be published a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the return of the Crew Idol, and no questions asked."

"Oh!" she said. And again, "Oh, is that all!" She was disappointed. "I don't see why you and the major should have been so mysterious about that."

"You don't, eh? Suppose you had taken the ring--wouldn't it make a difference to you if you knew twenty-four hours ahead that a reward of twenty thousand dollars would be published? Wouldn't you expect every man's hand to be against you at that price? If you had a pal, wouldn't you be afraid he'd sell you up? Wouldn't you be glad of twenty-four hours' start to keep him from turning state's evidence? Well--it's just so that he shan't have the start that the authorities are keeping so almighty dark about the reward. They want to spring it on him."

Flora leaned forward with knitted brows. "Yes, I can see that, but still, just among ourselves, this morning--"

Harry smiled. "You've lost sight of the fact that it is just among ourselves the thing has happened."

"Oh, oh! Now you're ridiculous!"

"I might be, if the thing had happened anywhere but in this town; but think a moment. How much do we know of the people we meet, where they were, and who they were, before they came here? There's a case in point. It was not quite 'among ourselves' this morning."