Chapter 2

"All I know about it is that you came back here last night with a farthest north story and no fish. You're an explorer, all right."

"Look here, Curtis! Don't you believe I saw her?"

"Sure. When I fall asleep I sometimes see the same kind--all winners, too."

"I was _not_ asleep!"

"You said yourself that you were dead tired of waiting for a trout to become peevish and bite."

"I was. But I didn't fall asleep. I did see that girl. I watched her for several minutes. . . . Breakfast's ready."

Langdon looked mournfully at the flapjacks. He picked up one which was only half scorched, buttered it, poured himself a cup of sickly coffee, and began to eat with an effort.

"You say," he began, "that you first noticed her when you were talking out loud to yourself to keep yourself awake?"

"While waiting for a trout to bite," said Sayre, swallowing a lump of food violently. "I was amusing myself by repeating aloud my poem, _Amourette_:

"Where is the girl of yesterday? The kind that snuggled up? In vain I walk along Broadway-- Where is the girl of yesterday, Whose pretty----"

"All right! Go on with the facts!"

"Well, that's what I was repeating," said Sayre, tartly, "and it's as good verse as you can do!"

Langdon bit into another flapjack with resignation. Sayre swallowed a cup of coffee, dodging an immersed June-beetle.

"I was just repeating that poem aloud," he said, shuddering. "The woods were very still--except for the flies and mosquitoes; sunlight lay warm and golden on the mossy tree-trunks----"

"Cut it. You're not on space rates."

"I was trying to give you a picture of the scene----"

"You did; the local colour about the mosquitoes convinced me. Go on about the girl."

An obstinate expression hardened Sayre's face; the breeze stirred a lock on his handsome but prematurely bald forehead; he gazed menacingly at his companion through his gold pince-nez.

"I'll blue-pencil my own stuff," he said. "If you want to hear how it happened you'll listen to the literary part, too."

"Go on, then," said Langdon, sullenly.

"I will. . . . The sunlight fell softly upon the trees of the ancient wood; bosky depths cast velvety shadows----"

"What is a bosky depth? What _is_ boskiness? By heaven, I've waited years to ask; and now's my chance? You tell me what 'bosky' is, or----"

"Do you want to hear about that girl?"

"Yes, but----"

"Then you fill your face full of flapjack and shut up."

Langdon bit rabidly at a flapjack and beat the earth with his heels.

"The stream," continued Sayre, "purled." He coldly watched the literary effect upon Langdon, then went on:

"Now, there's enough descriptive colour to give you a proper mental picture. If you had left me alone I'd have finished it ten minutes ago. The rest moves with accelerated rhythm. It begins with the cracking of a stick in the forest. Hark! A sharp crack is----"

"Every bum novel begins that way."

"Well, the real thing did, too! And it startled me. How did I know what it might have been? It might have been a bear----"

"Or a cow."

"You talk," said Sayre angrily, "like William Dean Howells! Haven't you _any_ romance in you?"

"Not what _you_ call romance. Pass the flapjacks."

Sayre passed them.

"My attention," he said, "instantly became riveted upon the bushes. I strove to pierce them with a piercing glance. Suddenly----"

"Sure! 'Suddenly' always comes next."

"Suddenly the thicket stirred; the leaves were stealthily parted; and----"

"A naked savage in full war paint----"

"Naked nothing! A young girl in full war paint and a perfectly fitting gown stepped noiselessly out."

"Out of what? you gink!"

"The bushes, dammit! She held in her hand a curious contrivance which I could not absolutely identify. It might have been a hammock; it might have been a fish-net."

"Perhaps it was a combination," suggested Langdon cheerfully. "Good idea; she to help you catch a trout; you to help her sit in the hammock; afterward----"

Sayre, absorbed in retrospection, squatted beside the fire, a burnt flapjack suspended below his lips, which were slightly touched with a tenderly reminiscent smile.

"What are you smirking about _now_?" demanded Langdon.

"She was _such_ a pretty girl," mused Sayre, dreamily.

"Did you sit in the hammock with her?"

"No, I didn't. I'm not sure it was a hammock. I don't know what it was. She remained in sight only a moment."

"Didn't you speak to her?"

"No. . . . We just looked. She looked at me; I gazed at her. She was so unusually pretty, Curtis; and her grave, grey eyes seemed to meet mine and melt deep into me. Somehow----"

"In plainer terms," suggested Langdon, "she gave you the eye. What?"

"That's a peculiarly coarse observation."

"Then tell it your own way."

"I will. The sunlight fell softly upon the trees of the ancient wood----"

"Woodn't that bark you!" shouted Langdon, furious. "Go on with the dolly dialogue or I'll punch your head, you third-rate best seller!"

"But there was no dialogue, Curt. It began and ended in a duet of silence," he added sentimentally.

"Didn't you say anything? Didn't you try to make a date? Aren't you going to see her again?"

"I don't know. I am not sure what sweet occult telepathy might have passed between us, Curtis. . . . Somehow I believe that all is not yet ended. . . . . Pass the pork! . . . I like to think that somehow, some day, somewhere----"

"Stop that! You're ending it the way women end short stories in the thirty-five-centers. What I want to know is, why you think that your encounter with this girl has anything to do with our finding Reginald Willett."

There was a basin of warm water simmering on the ashes; Sayre used it as a finger-bowl, dried his hands on his shirt, lighted his pipe, and then slowly drew from his hip pocket a flat leather pocket-book. "Curt," he said, "I'm not selfish. I'm perfectly willing to share glory with you. You know that, don't you?"

"Sure," muttered Langdon. "You're a bum cook, but otherwise moral enough."

Sayre opened the pocket-book and produced a photograph.

"Everybody who is searching for Willett," he said, "examined the few clues he left. Like hundreds of others, you and I, when we first entered these woods, went to his camp on Gilded Dome, prowled all over it, and examined the camera which had been picked up in the trail, didn't we?"

"We did. It was a sad scene--his distracted old father----"

"H'm! Did you see his distracted old father, Curt?"

"I? No, of course not. Like everybody else, I respected the grief of that aged and stricken gentleman----"

"_I_ didn't."

"Hey? Why, you yellow dingo----"

"Curt, as I was snooping about the Italian Garden I happened to glance up at the mansion--I mean the camp--and I saw by the window a rather jolly old buck with a waxed moustache and a monocle, smoking a good cigar and perusing his after-breakfast newspaper. A gardener told me that this tranquil old bird was Willett Senior, who had arrived the evening before from Europe via New York. So I went straight into that house and I disregarded the butler, second man, valet, and seven assorted servants; and Mr. Willett Senior heard the noise and came to the dining-room door. 'Well, what the devil's the matter?' he said. I said: 'I only want to ask you one question, sir. Why are you not in a state of terrible mental agitation over the tragic disappearance of your son?'

"'Because,' he replied, coolly, 'I know my son, Reginald. If the newspapers and the public will let him alone he'll come back when he gets ready.'

"'Are you not alarmed?'

"'Not in the least.'

"'Then why did you return from Europe and hasten up here?'

"'Too many newspaper men hanging around.' He glanced insultingly at the silver.

"I let that go. 'Mr. Willett,' I said, 'they found your son's camera on the trail. Your butler exhibits it to the police and reporters and tells them a glib story. He told it to me, also. But what I want to know is, why nobody has thought of developing the films.'

"'My butler,' said Mr. Willett, eyeing me, 'did develop the films.'

"'Was there anything on them?'

"'Some trees.'

"'May I see them?'

"He scrutinised me.

"'After you've seen them will you take your friend and go away and remain?' he asked wearily.

"'Yes,' I said.

"He walked into the breakfast room, opened a silver box, and returned with half a dozen photographs. The first five presented as many views of foliage; I used a jeweller's glass on them, but discovered nothing else."

"Was there anything to jar you on the sixth photograph?" inquired Langdon, interested.

Sayre made an impressive gesture; he was a trifle inclined toward the picturesque and histrionic.

"Curt, on the ground under a tree in the sixth photograph lay something which, until last evening, did not seem to me important." He paused dramatically.

"Well, what was it? A bandersnatch?" asked Langdon irritably.

"Examine it!"

Langdon took the photograph. "It looks like a--a hammock."

"What that girl held in her hand last night resembled a hammock."

"Hey?"

Sayre leaned over his shoulder and laid the stem of his pipe on the extreme edge of the photograph.

"If you look long enough and hard enough," he said, "you will just be able to make out the vague outline of a slender human hand among the leaves, holding the end of the hammock. See it?"

Langdon looked long and steadily. Presently he fished out a jeweller's glass, screwed it into his eye, and looked again.

"Do you think that's a human hand?"

"I do."

"It's a slim one--a child's, or a young girl's."

"It is. _She_ had be-u-tiful hands."

"Who?"

"That girl I saw last evening."

Langdon slowly turned and looked at Sayre.

"Well, what do you make of it?"

"Nothing yet--except a million different little romances."

"Of course, you'd do that anyway. But what scientific inference do you draw? Here's a thing that looks like a hammock lying on the ground. One end seems to be lifted; perhaps that _is_ a hand. Well, what about it?"

"I'm going to find out."

"How?"

"By--fishing," said Sayre quietly, rising and picking up his rod.

"You're going back there in hopes of----"

"In hopes."

After a silence Langdon said: "You say she was unusually pretty?"

"Unusually."

"Shall I--go with you, William?"

"No," said Sayre coldly.

III

SAYRE had been fishing for some time with the usual result when the slightest rustle of foliage caught his ear. He looked up. She was standing directly behind him.

He got to his feet immediately and pulled off his cap. That was too bad; he was better looking with it on his head.

"I wondered whether you'd come again," he said, so simply and naturally that the girl, whose grey eyes had become intent on his scanty hair with a surprised and pained expression, looked directly into his smiling and agreeable face.

"Did you come to fish this pool?" he asked. "You are very welcome to. _I_ can't catch anything."

"Why do you think that I am out fishing?" she asked in a curiously clear, still voice--very sweet and young--but a voice that seemed to grow out of the silence instead of to interrupt it.

"You are fishing, are you not? or at least you came here to fish last evening?" he said.

"Why do you think so?"

"You had a net."

He expected her to say that it was a hammock which she was trailing through the woods in search of two convenient saplings on which to hang it.

She said: "Yes, it was a net."

"Did my being here drive you away from your favourite pool?"

She looked at him candidly. "You are not a sportsman, are you?"

"N--no," he admitted, turning red. "Why?"

"People who take trout in nets are fined and imprisoned."

"Oh! But you _said_ you had a net."

"It wasn't a fish net."

He waited. She offered no further explanation. Sometimes she looked at him, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream. There was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she stood there--a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim, with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless, thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of the whitest neck he had ever seen.

The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inward contemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her serene self-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily, to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowly turned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt like saying "excuse me."

"Do they bite you?" she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle.

"Bite me! Good heavens, don't they bite you? But I don't suppose they dare----"

"What?"

"I didn't mean 'dare' exactly," he tried to explain, feeling his ears turning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made such a foolish remark.

"What _did_ you mean?"

"N--nothing. I don't know. I say things and--and sometimes," he added in a burst of confidence, "they don't seem to _mean_ anything at all." To himself he groaned through ground teeth: "What an ass I am. What on earth is the matter with me?"

She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew his ears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot with an interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon her inspection.

Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caught his, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little.

"Do you know," she said, "I ought not to have come here again."

"Why?" he asked, astonished.

"There's no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, I realise that perfectly well now. And I think I'd better go----"

She lingered a moment, glanced at the stream running gold in the afternoon light, then turned away, bidding him good-bye in a low voice.

"Are you g-going?" he blurted out, not knowing exactly what he was saying.

She moved on in silence. He looked after her. A perfectly illogical feeling of despair overwhelmed him.

"For Heaven's sake, don't go away!" he said.

She moved on a pace, another, more slowly, hesitated, halted, leisurely looked back over her shoulder.

"What did you say?" she asked.

"I said--I said--I said----" but he began to stammer fearfully and could get no farther.

Perhaps she thought he was threatened with some kind of seizure; anyway, something about him apparently interested her enough to slowly retrace her steps.

"What is the matter, Mr. Sayre?" she asked.

"Why, _that's_ funny!" he said; "you know my name?"

"Yes, I know your name."

"Could--would--should--might----" he could get no farther.

"What?"

"M-might I--would it be--could you----"

"Are you trying to ask me what is _my_ name?"

"Yes," he said; "did you think I was reciting a lesson in grammar?"

Suddenly the rare smile played delicately along the edges of her upcurled mouth.

"No," she said, "I knew you were embarrassed. It wasn't nice of me. But," and her face grew grave, "there is no use in my telling you my name."

"Why?"

"Because we shall not meet again."

"Won't you ever let me--give me a chance--because--you know, somehow--seeing you yesterday--and to-day--this way----"

"Yes, I know what you mean."

"Do you?"

"Yes. _I_ came back, too," she said seriously.

A strange, inexplicable tingling pervaded him.

"You came--came----"

"Yes. I should not have done it, because I saw you perfectly plainly yesterday. But--somehow I hoped--somehow----"

"What!"

"That there had been a mistake."

"You thought you knew me?"

"Oh, no. I knew perfectly well I had never before seen you. That made no difference. It wasn't that. But I thought--hoped--I had made a mistake. In fact," she said, with a slight effort, "I was dishonest with myself. I knew all the time that it was useless. And as soon as I saw you with your cap off----"

"W-what!" he faltered.

A slight blush, perfectly distinct in her creamy skin, grew, then waned.

"I am sorry," she said. "Of course, you do not understand what I am saying; and I can not explain. . . . And I think I had--better--go."

"Please don't."

"That is an added reason for my going."

"What is?"

"Your saying 'please don't.'"

He looked at her, bewildered, and slowly passed his hand across his eyes.

"Somehow," he said, "this is all like magic to me. Here in the wilderness I hear a stick crack----"

"I meant you to hear it. I could have moved without a sound."

"And, looking up, I see the most beautif--I see--you. Then I dream of you."

"_Did_ you?"

"Every moment--between mosquitoes! And then to-day I returned, hoping."

She lost a trifle of her colour.

"Hoping--what?"

"T-t-to s-s-see you," he stammered.

"I _must_ go," she said under her breath, almost hurriedly; "this must stop _now_!"

"Won't you--can't you--couldn't I----"

"No. No--no--no--Mr. Sayre."

He said: "I've simply got to see you again. I know what I'm asking--saying--hoping--wishing--isn't usual--conventional--advisable, b-b-but I can't help it."

Standing there facing him she slowly shook her head.

"There is no use," she said. "It is perfectly horrid of me to have come back. I somehow was afraid--from the expression of your face yesterday----"

"Afraid of what?"

She hesitated; then, lifting her grey eyes, fearlessly:

"Afraid that you might wish to see me again. . . . Because I felt the same way."

"Do you mean," he cried, "that I--that you--that we--Oh, Lord! I'm not eloquent, but every faltering, stuttering, stammering, fool of a word I _do_ say means a million things----"

"Oh, I know it, Mr. Sayre. I know it. I have no business here; I _must_ not remain----"

"If you go, you know I'll do some absurd thing--like poking my head under water and holding it there, or walking backward off that ledge. Do you know--if you should suddenly go away now, and if that ended it----"

"Ended--what?"

"You know," he said.

She may have known, for she stood very still, with head lowered and downcast eyes. As for Sayre, what common sense he possessed had gone. The thrilling unreality of it all--the exquisite irrational, illogical intoxication of the moment--her beauty--the mystery of her--and of the still, sunlit woods, had made of them both, and the forest world around them, an enchanted dream which he was living, every breath a rapture, every heart-beat an excited summons from the occult.

"Mr. Sayre," she said, with an effort, "I shall not tell you my name; but if you ever again should happen to think of me, think of my name as the name of the girl in that poem which I heard you reciting yesterday."

"Amourette?"

"Yes. That was the name of the poem and of the girl. You may call me Amourette--when you are thinking of me alone by yourself."

"Did you like that poem?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because--I wrote it."

"You!" She lost a little of her colour.

"Yes," he said, "I wrote it--Amourette."

"Then--then I had better go away as fast as I can," she murmured.

With an enraptured smile verging perilously upon the infatuated, if not fatuous, he repeated her name aloud; and she looked at him out of soft grey eyes that seemed at once fascinated and distressed.

"Please let me go," she said.

He was not detaining her.

"Won't you?" she asked, pitifully.

"No, I won't," said William Sayre, suddenly invaded by an instinct that he possessed authority in the matter. "We must talk this thing over."

"Oh, but there isn't any use--really, truly there isn't! Won't you believe me?"

"No," he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation that sang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive.

There was a fallen log all over moss behind her.

"We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter," he said.

"I must not think of it! I must go instantly."

When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying to meet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture, and folded his arms portentously.

"To begin," he said, "I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack----"

She looked up.

"_That_ was my fault. It was all my fault. I don't know how I ever came to do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that you and Mr. Langdon were in the woods----"

"_Who_ heard?"

"We. Never mind the others. I'll say that _I_ heard you were here. And--and I took my--my net and came to--to----"

"To what?"

"To--investigate."

"Investigate what? _Me_?"

"Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously. And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what--what certain people wanted, even if you were the author of _Amourette_----"

"_I_ was not what _you_ wanted?" he repeated, bewildered.

"I mean that--that you were not what--what _they_ required----"

"They? Who are _they_? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?"

"I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew immediately that they didn't want _you_, because you are not up to the University standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gone quietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested in listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem, _Amourette_. . . . And two hours slipped by----"

"You stood there in the bushes looking at _me_ for two hours, _and_ listening to my poem--and _liking_ it?"

"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any apparent reason, I wanted you to see _me_ . . . without any apparent reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earth has happened to make me--make me--forget----"

"Forget what?"

"Everything--except----"

"Except what?"

She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted.

"Forget everything except that I--like you, Mr. Sayre."

He said: "That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said. I am absurdly happy over it."

She waited, looking down at her linked fingers.

"And," he said, "for the first time in all my life I have cared more for what a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth."

There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre.

"Do you mean it?" she asked, tremulously.

"I mean more."

"I--I think you had better not say--more."

"Why?"

"Because of what I told you. There is no use in your--your finding me--interesting."

"Are you married?" he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and denied it with haste.

His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds. Harps were playing somewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines.

"Amourette," he repeated in a sort of divine daze.

"I am--going," she said, in a low voice.

"Do you desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him, beseechingly.

"Everything is wrong," she said in the ghost of a voice. "Things are hurrying me--trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now."

And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she opened them.

"Why did you come?" she asked almost fiercely. "There was no use in it! Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By this time the Associated Press, the police, and the families of the men you are looking for have received letters from every one of the four missing young men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect to return--after their honeymoons."

Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astounded young man who stared at her wildly through his eye-glasses.

After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe that these four young men had each eloped with their soul mates.

She bit her lip. "To be accurate," she said in a low voice, "somebody eloped with each one of them."

"How? I don't understand!"

"I don't wish you to. . . . Good-bye."