Willa rose.

"If you find Tia Juana, Mr. Thode, don't build your hopes too high.

Should she prove to be indeed the owner of the Pool of the Lost Souls, I am confident that you can never gain possession of it."

"I can try." He took the hand she held out to him. "You seem very sure, Miss Murdaugh."

"I cannot imagine Tia Juana relinquishing anything which she could claim, especially if, as you surmise, the property may once have belonged to her ancestors. Cousin Irene is signaling me. I must go!"

she added. "You will come to-morrow?"

Thode promised, but he watched her slender figure disappear with a frown of troubled thought. How much did she know? Could it be that she, too, was interested in the Pool of the Lost Souls? Instead of a mere contest between himself and Wiley had it become a three-corner affair, with Willa the apex of the triangle?

Had he but known it, he was destined not to keep his promise of the morrow, and once more it was Starr Wiley who intervened.

It happened that Thode stopped in at the club after taking leave of the Erskines, and arrived at a most opportune moment. He was emerging from the coat-room when a familiar voice came to his ears through the half-open door of one of the smaller card-rooms, and the words arrested him like a command.

"The little Murdaugh? Very nave, very charming, but I knew her in the Never-Never Land, you know, and I can a.s.sure you she's not as unsophisticated as she seems."

"Oh, come, Starr! You're tight!" a strange voice intervened. "Ladies'

names, you know----it's not done here."

"'Lady'?" Wiley hiccoughed derisively. "Who mentioned a lady? I'm speakin' of Willa Murdaugh. Gentleman Geoff's Billie they used to call her; pet of an old card-sharp, and mascot of a gambling-h.e.l.l----"

He got no farther. Someone had seized him by the shoulders and spun him around like a top and he found himself confronting Kearn Thode's blazing eyes. His half-fuddled companions shrank back in consternation.

"Take that back, you miserable cur!" Thode's voice was scarcely recognizable. "Take back your d.a.m.nable lies or I'll ram them down your throat!"

But an alcoholic courage possessed Wiley and he leered: "The knight-errant, by Jove! You know whether it's true or not! You ought to know better than anyone else----"

A crashing blow straight on his maudlin mouth sent him reeling back against the table. His wildly groping hand found a tall gla.s.s and with an oath he hurled it full in the face of the man advancing upon him. A moment later, he was lifted clear of the table by an impact that flung him against the wall a sodden, inert heap with the last ray of dazed consciousness gone.

CHAPTER XV

GONE

A metamorphosis had taken place in Vernon Halstead. He was distrait and mooned about the house, getting in people's way and apologizing with an air of such profound abstraction that the family were moved to comment.

"I think Vernon must be ill." This from his mother. "The poor dear boy seems very pale and hollow-eyed. Haven't you noticed it, Ripley?"

"I've noticed that he looks as if someone had given him a jolt that he hadn't yet recovered from," her husband retorted. "Maybe he's waking up and getting on to himself at last. It's high time! It would give anyone a shock to find they'd been wasting the best years of their lives----"

"You were never sympathetic with his sensitive highly-strung temperament----"

"'Temperament,' Irene? He's about as temperamental as an army tank!"

Ripley added more mildly: "I don't say there's no good in the boy, but it needs waking up. He asked me last night about a course in petroleum engineering, like young Thode, and that's a promising sign. I wish I felt as easy in my mind about Willa."

"I wash my hands of her." Mrs. Halstead shrugged coldly. "It was to be supposed that she would be quite impossible, coming from such an environment, but I fancied at least that she would want to advance herself. She cares nothing for making acquaintances or getting in with the right people and hasn't the slightest conception of the importance of establishing herself. If I had the proper authority over her it would be vastly different, but you and Mason----"

"We haven't it ourselves," her husband reminded her. "We've got to accept her on her own terms or not at all, it seems. She has too much principle to get herself into disgrace, I am confident on that score, but she has such ultra-democratic ideas that I am afraid she may lay herself open to comment. Have you heard anything, Irene, about a--a gray car?"

"What is that?" Mrs. Halstead sat up very straight. "I've been expecting trouble from her absurd independence, but you know my position. What about a gray car?"

"Nothing much." Ripley looked decidedly uncomfortable. "You are not to mention it to her, Irene, remember. Mason spoke of it and it's up to him to take care of it, but I thought you might keep your eyes open.

Mason has an idea that he has seen her more than once running around town in a fast little gray car with a mighty good-looking chauffeur.

He's near-sighted and he asked me to find out about it."

"I know nothing of it!" his wife said bitterly. "An elopement with a person of that sort is quite within the possibilities, Ripley. I will watch, of course, but what good will it do? I have tried to guard her, and been insulted for my pains. If I had my way, I should lock her in her room until I brought her to terms.--A chauffeur, indeed! Really, Uncle Giles' money is scarcely worth the strain, and now with poor Vernon acting so strangely, and you so unsympathetic, it is a wonder I am not down with nervous prostration!"

On the morning after the Erskine affair, however, Vernon came in at lunch time with a cheerful air of suppressed but pleasurable excitement which nullified the effect of his former solemnity.

After the meal was over, he drew Willa mysteriously into the library, and shut the door.

"Say! I've simply got to tell you! I don't peddle club gossip as a rule, but this is to good to keep. Starr got his last night!"

"What do you mean?" Willa cried. "He's not----"

"Not dead, you want to say? No, it isn't as good as that, but he got the thrashing of his life and his beauty is pretty well spoiled. Gad, if I'd only been there to see it!"

Willa turned a shade more white.

"Who--did it?" Her voice was a mere whisper.

"Kearn Thode. He is pretty well cut up about the face himself, for of course Starr didn't put up his fists like a man; he threw gla.s.sware."

"Oh, is he badly hurt?" Willa caught at her surprised informant's arm in sudden dread. "Is Mr. Thode----"

"h.e.l.lo! What's the tragic idea? Of course he's not; but you ought to see Starr! The fellows say it was all over in about two seconds, but it must have been great while it lasted!"

"Where--where did it occur?" she asked faintly.

"Right in the club, of all places in the world! The board of governors got together this morning like ducks in a thunderstorm and held a special meeting. Of course, they're both suspended until the board can get hold of the facts, but it's a pretty general opinion that Starr will be asked for his resignation. n.o.body seems to know what the row was about, or else they are all keeping mum, but Starr must have said something rather average awful. The only name he called Thode, though, as far as I can make out, was 'knight-errant'."

Willa turned away to hide a sudden trembling.

"That isn't so terrible, is it?" she stammered.

"Silly word to start anything! But you never can tell what's back of it with Starr----"

"Excuse me, Miss. Note for you by messenger." Welsh stood in the doorway.

Willa took the envelope from the salver the butler presented. The superscription was in an unknown hand, but a swift intuition came to her as she broke the seal.

"My dear Miss Murdaugh," she read silently.

"Will you believe me when I tell you that I am more than sorry I shall not be able to come to you to-day? I was caught in an annoying but superficial motor smash-up last night and the broken windshield has made a bizarre spectacle of me, but I shall be my normal self again in a few days. My sister, Mrs. Beekman, will call to-morrow and I shall present my apologies in person at the earliest possible moment, if I may.